The Grand Strand Goes Silent: Myrtle Beach Region Encrypts All Police Radio
On April 2, 2026, Horry County Police Department encrypted all radio communications, completing a regional blackout that began when Myrtle Beach PD went dark in 2024. The move affects 413,000 residents and a region that hosts 17 million visitors annually—with no public process, no media access program, and no announced alternatives.
Key Facts
What Happened
On the morning of Tuesday, April 2, 2026, Horry County Police Department moved all radio traffic to encrypted channels. Scanner listeners who had monitored the county for years suddenly heard nothing. The Broadcastify audio feeds that local journalists, neighborhood watch groups, and curious residents had relied on went silent within hours.
The change was made by administrative directive. County leaders instructed the Public Safety Department to flip the switch — no public hearing, no ordinance, no advance notice to local media. Thomas Bell, the county's Director of Public Information, confirmed it publicly only after scanner listeners started asking why traffic had gone quiet.
"It really boils down to officer safety." — Thomas Bell, Horry County Director of Public Information, WMBF News, April 6, 2026
Bell cited a nationwide pattern rather than any specific Horry County incident: suspects in other jurisdictions had used scanner apps to track officer locations during active calls. The encryption was preventive, not reactive — a hedge against a problem the county hadn't experienced.
The Regional Context: A Two-Year Blackout
Horry County's April 2026 encryption did not happen in isolation. It completed a two-year regional transition that has left the entire Myrtle Beach metro area without public scanner access.
City PD encrypted all 14 radio talkgroups, including dispatch, beach patrol, traffic, and narcotics channels. Residents lost access to the city's primary law enforcement communications.
County PD encrypted all communications, covering unincorporated Horry County and extending the blackout to areas not yet affected by Myrtle Beach's 2024 encryption.
Neighboring town forced to approve $68,496 in emergency spending to purchase compatible encrypted radios after the county's system switch rendered their existing equipment unable to communicate with county officers.
The ripple effect is significant. When Horry County encrypted, Surfside Beach—a smaller beach community that relied on interoperability with county communications—discovered their radios were now incompatible. The town's police chief told WBTW that the department needed to upgrade to maintain the ability to communicate with neighboring agencies during large events and emergencies.
Why a Tourism Destination Matters
The Myrtle Beach metro draws roughly 17 million visitors a year — one of the most-trafficked beach destinations on the East Coast. The Grand Strand stretches 60 miles along the coast through Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Conway, and dozens of smaller communities.
For a region with that kind of visitor volume, public safety communications carry weight beyond what they do in a typical suburban county:
Millions of tourists each year navigated the region without local knowledge. Scanner access gave real-time situational awareness during accidents, beach rescues, and public safety incidents along the densely packed oceanfront.
Stations WMBF, WBTW, and WFXB serve a large regional market. Without scanner access, journalists covering incidents in a region that sees heavy summer crime, traffic accidents, and crowd-related events must wait for official press releases.
Ocean rescues, rip current incidents, and crowd emergencies on a 60-mile beach corridor previously allowed public situational awareness. Encryption removes that layer of public information during exactly the kinds of chaotic events where real-time information matters most.
US-17 and US-501 are major evacuation routes for the entire coastal region. During hurricanes and major storms, scanner access has historically allowed residents and visitors to understand road closures and emergency response staging.
The Officer Safety Argument and Its Limits
Thomas Bell's "officer safety" rationale is the most common justification for police radio encryption. The argument is straightforward: if a suspect can hear where officers are responding, they can evade or prepare.
The factual basis is narrower than the argument implies. Broadcastify, the largest public safety audio streaming service in the country, has said it has never been given documented evidence that public scanner access led to an officer injury. The cases law enforcement agencies typically cite involve suspects with scanner apps during pursuits — but those suspects also had GPS-enabled smartphones and could receive tips by phone.
Beyond that, encrypting routine dispatch — "officer responding to a noise complaint at 123 Main Street" — goes well beyond what officer safety requires. Tactical channels coordinating active operations are a defensible target for encryption. Routine dispatch is public information.
A former FBI official, quoted in coverage of the Horry County encryption, acknowledged the tradeoff: total encryption can undermine public trust and may make community members less willing to cooperate with law enforcement. Transparency and accountability affect whether communities help police solve crimes.
No Alternative Access Announced
Several jurisdictions that have encrypted police radio have implemented partial transparency measures to cushion the loss of public access. Horry County announced none of them.
What other cities did
- Boston implemented a 5-minute delayed public audio feed after encrypting in August 2025
- Baltimore broadcasts a 15-minute delayed public stream via online audio
- San Francisco runs a formal media credentialing program for real-time encrypted radio access
- San Antonio has operated newsroom radio terminals for credentialed journalists for 30 years
What Horry County did
- No delayed feed announced
- No media credentialing program
- No public channel for major incidents
- No public hearing before the switch
- No ordinance—administrative directive only
The absence of any alternative is striking in a market with three local TV stations. Journalists covering Horry County now depend entirely on officials who have every incentive to manage what information reaches the public — and no obligation to provide anything close to the real-time access that scanners gave independent reporters.
The Hidden Cost: Neighboring Towns Pay the Price
Horry County's encryption decision created an immediate financial burden for at least one neighboring municipality. Surfside Beach Town Council approved a $68,496 budget amendment in April 2026, drawing from accommodations tax funds, to purchase three Motorola radios and a specialized response vehicle compatible with the county's encrypted system.
Surfside Beach Police Chief told WBTW that modern radio technology is proprietary and that incompatibility between manufacturers can create dangerous communication gaps. When Horry County switched to encrypted channels on an updated system, departments using older equipment couldn't communicate seamlessly with county officers—a problem that becomes critical during large beach-crowd events and mutual-aid responses.
The $68,496 came from accommodations tax funds originally intended for visitor services — tourism money redirected to radio hardware because a neighboring county made an administrative decision without any public process.
What Horry County Could Have Done Instead
The officer safety concern is real. But addressing it doesn't require eliminating all public access. Several approaches preserve meaningful transparency while limiting tactical exposure:
Tactical-only encryption
Encrypt channels used for active operations, pursuits, and sensitive investigations while keeping routine dispatch open. Seattle uses this model under PSERN, proving it works at scale.
Delayed public feed
A 5 to 30-minute delayed public audio stream preserves almost all accountability value while preventing real-time tactical monitoring. Boston and Baltimore both implemented this.
Media credentialing program
Provide credentialed journalists with receivers for real-time encrypted audio. San Francisco's model has operated for years without documented misuse.
Public incident channel
Maintain a single open channel broadcasting confirmed major incidents—fires, serious accidents, evacuations—while encrypting everything else.
The South Carolina Encryption Wave
Anderson County, Beaufort County, Charleston, Columbia, and multiple smaller South Carolina agencies had already encrypted before Horry County joined them. The state has no law requiring agencies to provide media access or maintain any open channels.
Colorado's HB 21-1250 requires any encrypting agency to develop a media access policy. South Carolina has no equivalent. Agencies can encrypt without any obligation to preserve alternative access for journalists or the public.
Horry County's move will likely accelerate the trend among remaining open agencies in the state. Each encryption creates interoperability pressure on neighboring departments — exactly what Surfside Beach discovered — pushing them toward compatible encrypted systems even if they hadn't planned to encrypt.
What Horry County Residents Can Do
Request a public hearing on encryption policy and demand an alternative access mechanism for journalists and the public. The decision was made without public input—public input can reverse it.
Request all communications, legal opinions, and budget documents related to the encryption decision under South Carolina's Freedom of Information Act.
WMBF, WBTW, and WFXB have already covered this story. Encourage them to press for a formal media access policy modeled on San Francisco or San Antonio.
Advocate for state legislation requiring agencies that encrypt to establish media access policies—the approach that worked in Colorado.
Full encryption without process is an accountability failure
Horry County handled a major transparency decision as a routine administrative action. No public hearing, no ordinance, no announced alternatives. A county that hosts 17 million visitors a year should be able to do better than a Facebook post.