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HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) — City Council Speaker Tommy Waters wants to restore the news media’s ability to listen when first responders are called in an emergency.
He considers it important for public safety.
“For the news media to have access to this so that they can report to the rest of society what is happening. I think that’s really, really important,” Waters said.
Honolulu completed the $15 million overhaul that changed the scanner system from analog to digital, encrypting frequencies for police, fire and EMS calls.
While this helps with communication for all first responder agencies, the media has been cut off and forced to resort to other means of getting the information.
Rade Vanic, acting chief of the Honolulu Police Department, promised the police commission that HPD was working on a system to notify news as needed.
“Emails that will notify the media of certain types of cases such as homicides, robberies and missing persons,” Vanic told the commission, a day after the changeover ended.
But the Excel page emailed to outlets last week provided few details and did not mention that the first incident on the list was a homicide.
It was the brutal beating of a homeless woman outside the gate of Kapolei police station.
The email also did not arrive in HNN’s inbox until the day after the incident.
Vanic told the commission that was not supposed to happen. “Normally it would have been passed on to the media, but in this particular incident it was not,” he said.
Vanic said they are working to resolve the issues.
Waters said he did not believe the error was intentional, but believed the board could act.
HNN’s sister station in Las Vegas received the encrypted scanners from their police department.
Councilman Waters thinks HPD should do it too.
“Hopefully the work in progress means they’re going to give you the encryption key because email won’t work for me, it’s not enough,” Waters said.
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