Mayor Adams Embraces Encryption to Protect NYPD; Cuts Out Press and Endangers EMS
New York City Mayor Eric Adams looks none too happy fielding Work-Bites’ questions at this week’s City Hall press briefing. Photo/Bob Hennelly
'Operational Security’ Trumps the Right to Know
By Bob Hennelly
New York City Mayor Eric Adams this week dismissed concerns the NYPD’s encrypting of its radio communications will undermine transparency and the ability of the press to report on breaking news — but did say he would look into issues raised by the union that represents FDNY EMS officers about the initial rollout of encryption in Brooklyn North precincts.
In an answer to a question from Work-Bites, Adams, a former NYPD captain, said scrambling to obstruct the public’s monitoring of the radio traffic was necessary to prevent crafty criminals from being able to track and anticipate police deployments.
“Public safety is number one, and I know that for members of the media it’s easier to get the information as they report crimes that are taking place in progress — but bad guys are doing it [monitoring the radio] also. They are being aware when police officers are responding — they are being aware of the routes police officers are doing. There are bad people out there.”
Adams went on to observe that the city had “been fortunate” to not get hit with another major terrorist event but that he was concerned the open police radio traffic could be accessed by “sleeper cells” that were “sophisticated.”
Work-Bites followed up by pressing for a response to the operational complaint raised by FDNY EMS Lt. Vincent Variale, president of DC 37’s Local 3621, that his members in Brooklyn North precincts had lost the vital ability to track police activity in real time, which is essential to ensure they use the safest response route to something like an active shooter.
“I will have the team look at it because the goal is for transparency and safety —[they] can live side-by-side — but I have a high bar when it comes to making sure our officers when they respond to a job that someone is not sitting there waiting to harm them,” Adams told reporters.
Variale, however, later told Work-Bites, it’s not like it used to be “when you could listen to all the police channels and know specifically where the danger was — like if there was a shooting going on and you could actually start responding while also avoiding getting caught in the middle of it.”
A classic example, Variale said, is you have a shooting and “EMS rolls up to the scene and they have no clue the shooter is still there — or that the police are running after the shooter in the very same direction of where one of our crews is located.”
“We dropped the ball here,” Variale added, “and put the cart before the horse. They should have worked out access for us and all the other professionals — as well as for all the volunteer EMS units that we rely on from Day One of this rollout.”
Last week, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams blasted the Mayor’s encrypting of NYPD radio traffic and his continued suppression of the City’s 9/11 WTC files that would shed light on what the city knew about the toxic air in and around lower Manhattan and when it knew it.
“I think that there is a problem,” Speaker Adams said in response to a Work-Bites question at her pre-stated press conference. “And it is problematic whenever we don’t have transparency that people need and deserve. We can only get better by being held accountable for the work that we are doing. So, by holding back that information we cannot improve ourselves. There has to be a check and balance. There has to be transparency. That’s the only way we are going to get our jobs right.”
For several months, major media organizations, civil libertarians, and police accountability advocates have sounded the alarm about the NYPD’s shift to non-public radio transmissions.
PRESS AS PERPS?
"Nobody is saying the NYPD shouldn't have new radios, and certainly everyone is in favor of having police officers safe from interference in their communication,” wrote Todd Maisel, veteran breaking news photographer and the founder of the New York Media Consortium. “The mayor and the NYPD are correct that the ‘bad guys’ should not have access to police communications, but we are asking a simple question — when and why did we, the press, become the bad guys?”
Maisel’s email, written after the Adams press conference, continued, “The NYPD has made promises for more than five years now saying the press will have access to communications. However, we are now being told that they never had any intentions of providing access even though many municipalities in this country are providing access to the press and public. Which leaves us to the conclusion that the NYPD doesn't truly believe in transparency. They want to provide crime information hours, if not days after an incident. And sometimes they provide no information.”
Why, Maisel further asks, should the NYPD have the “full narrative, and what makes them an expert in what is news in New York City? Do they know what is news better than the media? Some officials have privately promised that there will be access, with up to a 30-minute delay on radio transmissions. This is obviously dangerous to the press and to the public, and we are seeking real time access to radio transmissions — unless the mayor and the NYPD can say ‘we are the bad guys.’”
At a November City Council hearing on the encryption program, Reuben Beltran, Chief of the NYPD’s Information Technology Bureau, confirmed the department had started the program in Brooklyn because it was “necessary to ensure operational safety and security,” adding that “criminal groups” had been “known to monitor” NYPD radio traffic “in order to strike vulnerable areas when officers are required to respond to events at other locations.”
The strategy is part of a $400 million radio upgrade that will migrate the NYPD police radio network from analog to digital by the end of this year. The department maintains that in recent years they have documented at least 60 instances where criminal suspects were apprehended in possession of a police scanner they were using to elude apprehension.
During Beltran’s Council testimony, he told the panel that during the civil disturbances and looting that broke out in the aftermath of the George Floyd police murder, police deployments that were gleaned from monitoring the NYPD public transmission were shared via social media in real time. He told the Council panel that issues like EMS integration would be resolved as the rollout continued.
Charles Jennings is an Associate Professor in John Jay’s Department of Security, Fire and Emergency Management, as well as the director of the Christian Regenhard Center for Emergency Response Studies. He also served as the deputy commissioner of Public Safety for White Plains. Jennings has tracked the national debate over police departments encrypting their radio traffic amidst a growing movement for increased transparency in the wake of the George Floyd police murder. He predicted encryption would shield the NYPD from informed scrutiny.
“When things don’t go right how are you going to know they didn’t go right — you are never going to know if you count exclusively on the police department to tell you because they are going to give you the cleaned up time frame for good or for bad on how things may have played out,” Jennings said.
TURNING THE PAGE?
In February of 2022, Mayor Adams signed Executive Order 6 which committed his administration to “respect and protect the right of free speech and the right to peaceful protest; and provide detailed information about its policies, practices, and activities in publicly accessible ways.”
In his remarks to the press at the time, Mayor Adams told reporters it was his goal “to be as transparent [as possible] to make sure we regain the faith and trust in government.” He referenced his time as an NYPD officer “on the ground” during Occupy Wall Street when “we saw members of the press who were arrested — who were harassed — who were not allowed to cover the story even those who were wearing their press passes.”
Executive Order 6 was issued following a report produced by the New Yorkers for Social Justice entitled Social Justice Recommendations for Mayor-Elect Adams issued as part of the incoming Mayor’s “re-committing the city to the principles of the First Amendment” and increased transparency. Noted civil liberties attorney Norman Seigel was the chair of that panel and played a prominent role at the signing of the executive order press event. Mayor Adams told reporters that Seigel had “saved” his job when the NYPD was trying to fire him.
When contacted by Work-Bites, however, Seigel expressed disappointment with the mayor’s decision to press ahead with encrypting of the NYPD’s radio traffic.
“I disagree with the Adams administration encrypting the police radios,” Seigel said. “It’s essential for people, especially the press, to have access to these radio messages so they can cover breaking news stories and we the people will lose because without a vibrant, muckraking press we don’t get the real truth.”
Seigel, who has long represented 9/11 first responders and their families on multiple cases said he was equally disappointed with Mayor Adams’ decision to continue suppressing the Giuliani-era 9/11 WTC files.
“That information should be publicly available unless there is a valid legal basis for not making it public,” Seigel said. “We are approaching a quarter of a century since that happened.”
In answer to a Work-Bites query on that very same subject, Adams said the fate of the 9/11 WTC Giuliani-era internal documents are in the hands of the city’s Corporation Counsel and the “entire team” who will make the determination on what if anything is released because, he reasoned, it “didn’t take place under this administration.”
‘SAFE TO BREATHE’
Three days after the 9/11 attack, Christine Todd Whitman, then-head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters that "the good news continues to be that air samples we have taken have all been at levels that cause us no concern." Two years later, an investigation by the EPA Inspector General found that the agency "did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement" when it did.
"Air-monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern," the Inspector General concluded. The report also stated that President George W. Bush's White House Council on Environmental Quality heavily edited the EPA press releases "to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."
The IG found that the Council described the readings as just "slightly above" the limit, despite the fact that samples taken indicated asbestos levels in lower Manhattan were double — or even triple the EPA's limit.
When the agency watchdog tried to determine who had written the press releases, investigators were “unable to identify any EPA official who claimed ownership," because they were told by the EPA Chief of Staff that there was "joint ownership between EPA and the White House," which gave final approval.
U.S. Reps. Maloney and Nadler cited those findings in their letter to Mayor de Blasio, writing, "This report outlined what the federal government knew about the extent of the problem and the clear health threat, after the EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman had repeatedly said that the 'air was safe to breathe.' However, we have yet to see a full accounting of what then-Mayor Giuliani and his administration knew at the time."
In addition to the Congressional request, which was re-issued to Mayor Adams from Rep. Nadler and Maloney’s successor Rep. Dan. Goldman (D-NY), lawyers Andrew Carboy and Matthew McCauley, who represent 9/11 WTC first responders, have longstanding Freedom of Information Law requests that the Adams administration has steadfastly denied, according to the Daily News.
In the twenty plus years since the attack, the 9/11 WTC Victims Compensation Fund has paid out over $13 billion and processed 70,000 claims to first responders and survivors. The 9/11 WTC Health Program has over 86,000 first responders and 41,000 civilian survivors enrolled from every state in the union. Close to 70 percent of the program participants suffer from more than one certified health condition including close to 70 different kinds of cancer.
In the years since 9/11, thousands more people have died from their toxic exposure to that air than the 2,600 that died the day of the attack. There are currently over 125,000 first responder and civilian survivors enrolled in the 9/11 WTC Health Program. Over 33,000 have one or more cancers.
Potentially thousands of retired New York City civil servants, who were ordered back to their desks at locations like the David Dinkins Municipal Building at One Center, but are not considered 9/11 WTC first responders, suffered a life-altering toxic exposure from their chronic exposure to the hot zone. Many of these retirees are currently fighting the attempt by the City of New York to force them off of their traditional Medicare and onto a for-profit Aetna Medicare Advantage plan that the Adams administration has said will help the City save $600 million a year.