NYPD Radio Encryption Silences Queens G-COP Patrols, With $20,000 in Radios Now Gathering Dust

As New York City police encrypt their radio communications, a pillar of community policing in Queens is left in limbo, raising questions about the tension between security, transparency, and civic partnership.

When static replaced the familiar squawk of NYPD radio traffic at the 104th Precinct’s Civilian Observation Patrol (G-COP) last month, an era quietly ended in Queens. For over four decades, G-COP’s volunteers—armed with little more than reflective vests, radios, and patience—have patrolled their community, relaying their observations to police and diffusing minor disorder before it becomes major trouble. Now, these local “eyes and ears” have been forced off the streets—not by cutbacks or fading civic spirit, but by an algorithmic wall, as the NYPD completed its long-anticipated encryption of police radio frequencies across Eastern Queens.

From Glendale to Ridgewood, G-COP’s bread-and-butter had been simple: patrol the neighbourhood, spot trouble, report it, and let the professionals handle the rest. On holidays and at parades, they provided auxiliary crowd management, freeing sworn officers for trickier work. President Elizabeth Delacruz characterized the current predicament bluntly at this month’s meeting: “We cannot know if there’s a shootout, if there’s any robberies… We cannot go out there without knowing where we’re driving the state laws.” For now, patrols are paused, volunteers sidelined, and $20,000 of new equipment—procured thanks to State Senator Joseph Addabbo’s largesse—lies idle in a storage closet.

This impasse is the latest tremor in the shifting ground beneath American policing. In New York, radio encryption is hardly new: police departments in Chicago, San Francisco, and elsewhere have already sealed their airwaves, citing operational security. The argument runs that criminals, street racers, and other ne’er-do-wells had taken to scanning police chatter, allowing them to vanish before flashing lights could close in. The final switchover in Queens appears to have been the last domino.

At first glance, this would seem a tidy trade: a marginal reduction in transparency for a firmer grip on crime. Yet, the calculus is rarely so simple, especially for New York’s sprawling metropolis, where civic trust is always a work in progress. Volunteers like those of G-COP—unpaid, generally unarmed, and cautiously self-effacing—embody the city’s dogged tradition of community resilience. Officially sanctioned and sometimes statutorily referenced, patrols like G-COP claim lineage from the boro’s earliest block watches.

The sudden break in this long-standing collaboration exposes more than a mere technological divide. On the ground, the absence of auxiliary patrols forces the precinct to stretch its own already thin resources more widely. Fewer volunteers at parades and festivals means more uniformed police assigned to logistics rather than policing, a fact that might not matter—until it does. At heart, the issue frames a perennial tension: the city’s insatiable appetite for both safety and visible accountability.

Downstream effects are likely to ripple through neighbourhood life. The G-COP vacuum leaves older residents without their familiar, slow-rolling reassurance; for business owners wary of vandalism or car theft, it is one less deterrent. The symbolism also stings: years of careful trust-building unravelled by a programming update, with former partners now on opposite sides of an encrypted wall.

A city’s partnership with its public frays

Zoom out, and the policy shift fits a broader turn towards algorithmic governance and information restriction not only in New York but in urban centres from Los Angeles to London. In many cities, the encryption debate is framed as a contest between police efficacy and civil liberties. Supporters of open airwaves, including press advocates who lobbied unsuccessfully for the Keep Police Radio Public Act in Albany, warn that locking out not only reporters but civic partners like G-COP sets a worrying precedent. Governor Kathy Hochul’s December veto of the measure, despite lip service to “transparency,” underscores the balancing act facing big-city executives.

Globally, such moves come at a sensitive time for policing’s social licence. Many Western democracies have reckoned with past police overreach and are busily investing in “community policing” models heavy on transparency and cooperation. Yet, cordoning off information—however well-intentioned—can have a chilling effect locally. New York’s experiment may yet prove a case study in how much social capital can be traded, and how quickly, for perceived tactical gain.

Not all risks run in one direction. The NYPD’s caution is, in part, justified: in recent years, technologically adept criminals increasingly used open airwaves to coordinate or evade detection. In the calculus of big-city policing, even a handful of such incidents can embolden the enterprising illicit operator. Still, entirely shuttering access for all seems a rather blunt approach, especially where long-standing, trusted partners are concerned.

It is difficult to view the current standoff as anything but a communications failure—both literal and figurative. The city’s investment in encrypted radios addresses a modern risk but, in the process, sacrifices a civil infrastructure painstakingly built over decades. As Senator Addabbo observed, losing “more eyes and ears and a good partner” in the form of G-COP is, at minimum, a Pyrrhic victory for law-and-order traditionalists.

We reckon New York can ill afford to let such partnerships wither quietly. If police leaders truly value community ties, expedited solutions—be they restricted digital access, live communication protocols or vetted relay programmes—will need testing, not theoretical debate. Civic partnership need not be a casualty of technological advance; indeed, its preservation will be a telling measure of urban resilience in the algorithmic age.

In a city built on noisy pluralism, the loss of even one volunteer patrol’s voice makes New York a little less cohesive, and a little less itself. Without a clear path to reconnect community volunteers and law enforcement, encryption may buy security at the price of hard-earned trust—a poor exchange by any standard. ■