Radio encryption and what the public can still see

Not long ago, anyone with a scanner could hear a police department at work. That is ending across New Jersey. Matching this site's agencies against the encrypted-agency database at PoliceRadioEncryption.com, at least 97 departments in our data encrypt their radio communications, 87 of them across all operations.^[1] The real number is higher, because 24 encrypting agencies in that database could not be matched to a department here by name, and 2 matched more than one.^[1]

This site takes a position on that, and it is worth stating plainly rather than smuggling in.

Encryption is a transparency signal

When a department encrypts its radio traffic, it removes a real-time, unmediated view of how it polices. Reporters lose it. Neighbors lose it. Oversight groups lose it. What is left is what the department chooses to report after the fact, which is most of what this site is built from.

That is why encryption belongs on these pages. A department's internal affairs numbers and its discipline record tell you what surfaced through official channels. Whether you can also hear it happen in real time tells you something about how much the public is trusted to watch. Several of the state's larger departments encrypt fully, including Jersey City, Camden, and Trenton, each of which also carries dozens of major discipline records from 2020 to 2025: 92, 49, and 44.^[2]

Which encryption, and how much of it

The database records what kind of encryption an agency uses and whether it covers everything. Of the 97 matched agencies, 87 encrypt all operations and 10 encrypt part of them, typically a tactical or detective channel while dispatch stays in the clear.^[1]

Source: the PoliceRadioEncryption.com snapshot, matched agencies only.^[1]

The technical column matters more than it looks. AES-256 is the standard the federal government specifies for Project 25 radios, and it is not something a hobbyist or a newsroom can get around; 90 of the 97 agencies use it.^[1] ADP, used by 5, is a lighter scheme that the same radio vendors describe as basic privacy rather than security.^[1] Either way the public is locked out, but the AES figure says the choice is a considered one, made when the radio system was bought, not a default left switched on.

The verification split is a caveat the database itself carries and this site carries with it. Only 22 of the 97 statuses were verified by the database's maintainers; 75 rest on a report that was recorded and not independently confirmed.^[1] A department that disputes its flag can say so on the corrections page.

Where the encrypted departments are

Encryption is a shore phenomenon more than a city one. Monmouth County has 20 matched encrypting agencies, more than any other county; Ocean has 13, Atlantic 12, and Middlesex 11.^[1] Essex has 8, Union 6, Bergen and Passaic 5 each, Camden and Hudson 4 each.^[1] Six counties have none in the matched set, and Cape May and Somerset have one each.

The pattern is consistent with how county radio systems are bought. When a county builds a shared trunked system and its municipalities join it, encryption tends to arrive for all of them at once, which is why the counts cluster by county rather than by city size. Of the 97 matched agencies, 91 are municipal police departments, 5 are county sheriff's departments, and 1 is a corrections agency.^[1]

Encryption is not in the grade

Because this site grades departments, it is fair to ask whether an encrypting department is graded worse. It is not, and the numbers show it. Among the matched encrypting agencies that carry a report-card grade, 23 are graded A, 16 B, 24 C, 13 D, and 21 F.^[3] That is close to the flat fifth-by-fifth spread every peer group produces. Encrypting departments are neither concentrated at the top of their peer groups nor at the bottom; they are spread across the curve like everyone else, which is what you would expect from a choice made about radios rather than about conduct.

This is labeled as analysis, and it is a modest piece of it. It says the grade and the flag are independent. It does not say encryption is harmless, and it does not say the opposite. The site puts the two facts side by side on each department's page and leaves the reading to you.

The line this site will not cross

Here is the discipline. The encryption argument is analysis, and it is labeled as analysis everywhere it appears. This site will not tell you that encrypting departments have worse discipline records, because that is not something the data here establishes, and dressing a correlation up as a finding would be exactly the move this project exists to avoid.

What the site does instead is put the two facts next to each other and let you hold them at once. A department encrypts. A department has a discipline record. Both are sourced, both are dated, and the reading you take from the pair is yours.

When the status was recorded

The encryption snapshot this site uses was generated on 2026-05-31, and the individual agency statuses in it were recorded between 2026-03-06 and 2026-04-21.^[1] The snapshot is not refreshed on a schedule. A department that encrypted after that spring, or one that reopened a channel, will not be reflected until the snapshot is retaken, and each department page shows the date its own status carries so a reader can judge how stale it might be.

How the match works

Encryption status comes from PoliceRadioEncryption.com, matched to this site's departments by municipality, county, and agency type, and only where the match is unambiguous.^[1] Agencies whose names could not be matched, or that map to more than one department, are left unflagged rather than guessed. Every flagged department links to its entry there, with the encryption type and the date the status was recorded. The full list is on the encrypted departments page.