EDITORIAL | Ten Weeks After SDPD Encryption, Transparency Still Hasn’t Arrived

Date: August 18, 2025

Note: This is an op-ed, not breaking news. I did not receive an email reply from SDPD PIO Lt. Travis Easter. We spoke briefly in person; out of respect for that conversation, I am not quoting him directly.

What changed since our June 24 piece

• Dispatch Online: No visible changes. It is still delayed and thin on detail.
• Watch Commander: Minor improvement in frequency, but the substance remains limited.
• Press releases: No noticeable increase. Most serious incidents still appear only after review, hours or days later.
• Pursuits: SDPD often announces a patch to a regional channel, but it frequently never connects. In several cases the patch appears only after the pursuit is canceled (10-22). The public and the press are learning of pursuits after the fact, if at all.

I was told website changes are still two to three months away and may include a 15-minute delay. I was also told not to expect much more detail than what exists today. My view is simple: a 15-minute, low-detail feed will not help the public in real time, will not guide reporters to active scenes, and will not restore accountability.

We are not asking to “turn it all back on”

Would that be great? Yes. But we have to acknowledge where public-safety tech is heading. Vendors are pushing toward devices, tablets, watches, and homogenous data networks. Two-way radio as we knew it may fade. The ask is transparency that matches the real-time nature of police work. If responses happen in real time, public observation has to happen in real time too.

A fair comparison: SDSO vs. SDPD

San Diego Sheriff’s Office is not perfect, but the public gets two things SDPD does not currently provide:

1. A near real-time list of incidents (including ADWs and other serious crimes) with an approximate location.
2. A 24/7 media inquiry line.

Those two tools do not solve everything, but they meaningfully improve situational awareness and trust.

Where SDPD stands today

• The public has no practical situational awareness in their neighborhoods.
• Only major crimes like homicides or OIS tend to be disclosed, and only after a vetted press release.
• Serious traffic incidents are selectively shared by the Watch Commander hours after they occur, which is too late to help people avoid danger or assist with suspect information.
• Cop watching now depends almost entirely on coincidence. You might approve or disapprove of cop watching, but shutting out extra eyes increases distrust and invites suspicion.
• Pursuits carry a heightened public interest. People want to know how they were conducted and whether policy was followed. Given past tragedies, independent third-party validation (fancy IT term for transparency) is the best way to satisfy that interest. And if a third-party video reveals mistakes and leads to a lawsuit, that’s painful—but it’s also an opportunity to learn and improve. Don’t run and hide from it. Embrace it.
• Use of force incidents are complex and often litigated. When independent video from the time of the incident is missing, the public must rely almost entirely on evidence controlled by the agency under scrutiny.

The media world changed. The info policy didn’t.

Agencies still tend to shape communication as if a few big TV stations are the only news outlets that matter. In that world, you prioritize a handful of major stories and package them for a nightly newscast.

That world is gone. The internet created millions of small outlets serving micro-audiences. A neighborhood newsroom in Bird Rock that serves a few thousand people has the same right to know what is happening as a citywide broadcaster. The problem is that SDPD still releases information as if only the old model exists.

The solution is not to hire more staff to write more tiny press releases. The solution is to get out of the way of the information flow. Publish a clean, privacy-safe data stream and let big and small outlets decide what matters to their audiences. The job of the agency is to sanitize the data, not to pre-decide what the public gets to know.

What would actually help

Here is a minimal, workable package that restores transparency without exposing sensitive content:

1. A near real-time CAD feed (one to five minutes delay) with incident type, time, and approximate location. Redact names, medical details, tactical notes, and anything marked confidential.
2. Daily shift summaries posted on a fixed schedule, including pursuits, shootings, stabbings, and other violent felonies.
3. Clear pursuit patch rules: if an interop patch is announced, it connects immediately and stays up unless there is a specific safety reason not to. If safety requires delay, say so plainly.
4. A 24/7 media line with basic incident confirmation, mirroring SDSO.
5. A public status page showing whether the info feed is up, the current average delay, recent outages, and how many incidents were posted each day—plus a simple audit log so the public can see when entries are added or edited.

A delayed, low-detail web page is not a solution. It is a placeholder. San Diego can do better without compromising officer safety or victim privacy.

Until the city provides timely, structured information, the public will remain in the dark, rumors will fill the gap, and trust will continue to erode. The fix is not complicated. It just requires choosing transparency that keeps pace with modern policing.