They're public employees. Their privacy is non-existent while on duty. There is actually no reason for police radios to be encrypted. The only reason police feel even a modium of responsibility to the public is because they are able to be constantly watched by citizens, and their unencrypted comms is an important part of that.

ETA: I get what you were saying and adding onto it, not trying to contradict

I don't quite get these comments, I think our emergency services went encrypted a while back in Vancouver Canada and I'm surprised NY wasn't already encrypted?

What about keeping the communications encrypted for the privacy and safety of people involved, and storing the records for a set amount of time. Anyone with access to the live feed can access the backups during that time, and report issues as needed.

I'm not familiar with the issues with the police department, so maybe a better compromise would be to open up the feeds publicly after a set amount of time?

When I was in the USCG Auxiliary in Boston in the 90’s they used the same VHF radio as all boaters for most comms, but they also had an encrypted radio they could switch to if they needed to discuss anything sensitive. The encrypted radio was crap though and only worked over short distances. But they’d use it when relaying personal details of boats/people they stopped, dealing with drunk boaters, etc.

As time progressed they switched to using mobile phones when they wanted privacy. Cell coverage along the coast proved far better than the proprietary encrypted radio…

Where I live it's partly to protect the privacy of the people involved.

Copy/pasting from another comment, but it's assholes who ruin it for everyone

In prior articles on this, religious nutjobs would listen to police radio and visit the active crime scene and start praying in the middle of the chaos. Like, every crime scene. People and police started getting really sick of their shit during an emergency. Other flavors of morons would also show up to watch shit go down. Sometimes, private information would also get said on the radio such as names or addresses, which could lead to harassment or true crime nuts showing up to victims' homes.

I kinda get why making channels private for everyone but reporters (for transparency) is happening.

They currently aren't hiding anything on the radio and are still getting away with the shit they've been doing since forever, hard to see this as actually being worse when the lack of encryption hasn't lead to a perfectly transparent police force.

It's not the proper argument but I get your point. Of course they got things to hide. However, public servants like police shouldn't be allowed to hide anything.