Photo: Sheena Roszell

By Emily Keller

Police Scanner

Grande Prairie RCMP scanners go private

Jul 24, 2019 | 1:23 PM

Police scanners in Grande Prairie have now gone silent as the RCMP have officially moved to the Alberta First Responder`s Radio Communication System.

The change makes it so RCMP communications can no longer be monitored by the public.

Corporal Chris Warren says the encryption will increase privacy for Albertans as well as officers.

“As officers routinely request and communicate private information of Albertans when responding to calls, the personal information such as names, addresses and past interactions with police could be transmitted and intercepted by the public under the old system, where as now it won’t be accessed.”

The local detachment was one of the last to move over to the new system, with Grande Prairie EMS and fire departments in the region having switched over in July 2017.

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Deputy Chief of Operations with the Grande Prairie Fire Department Trevor Grant says the change has been a huge benefit for them. The reception increased exponentially.

“Firefighters are now able to communicate inside large buildings and over greater distances with the portables. Before it was more or less line of sight almost, and it was an issue once they got inside a big building like 214 place, Sunrise Tower etc., There was always a challenge to communicate outside of those buildings but with the new radios that issue has gone away completely.”

He says it’s been more efficient having AHS, EMS, fire (and now RCMP) on the same radio system.

“When our crews deployed to High Level here earlier this spring, they were able to take their own personal radios up and use what’s called a common event talk group that was assigned by the province and they just had to switch their radios over to that frequency to be able to communicate with agencies from all over the province.”

Along with an in increase in efficiency, Corporal Chris Warren says the system’s encryption will help officers in the location of suspects.

“With regards to the encryption, officers need to tactically and safely secure an area when they are trying to locate dangerous suspects, so having an insecure communications platform could allow suspects to evade capture or act unpredictably and just be one step ahead of the police, whereas now, thanks to the encryption and the new system, those communications will be kept private only amongst police.”

All RCMP frequencies are encrypted, while with the right type of scanning devices the public can still hear the fire department’s communications. It is however a lot less accessible than it was previously with the old system.