Lacey Township: When Encryption Enables Information Blackout

A Township Goes Dark

Lacey Township, a community of roughly 30,000 in Ocean County, New Jersey, had maintained a reasonable balance for decades. Their police department used a UHF radio system where Channel 1—covering dispatch and primary operations—remained open for anyone with a scanner. Channel 2 was encrypted for sensitive tactical operations and officer safety situations.

This compromise worked. Residents, journalists, and volunteer firefighters could monitor routine police activity. When something sensitive arose—an undercover operation, a domestic violence response requiring privacy—officers switched to the encrypted channel.

Then, in December 2021, Lacey Township Police joined the Ocean County 700 MHz P25 Phase II trunked system. Unlike the previous setup, they encrypted everything—dispatch, tactical, car-to-car, all of it.

The Bank Robbery: A Town in the Dark

March 9, 2026. 2:30 PM on a Monday—the time when parents are picking up kids from after-school activities, when shoppers are running errands on Main Street. A man walks into TD Bank at 106 N. Main Street in Forked River, displays a black handgun, and demands money from a teller. He flees on foot with cash, likely into a waiting vehicle.

An armed gunman is loose in the community. Schools immediately go to SECURE status. But here's what makes Lacey Township different from most American towns: nobody knows why.

The Blotter Disappears

Radio encryption wasn't the only transparency casualty. In early 2023, the Lacey Township Police Department stopped publishing its weekly police blotter—a staple of local newspapers and community awareness for generations.

The blotter—a simple list of police calls, arrests, and incidents—gave residents a window into what was happening in their community. Car break-ins on a particular street. DUI arrests. Domestic disturbances. The kind of routine information that helps people understand their neighborhood.

For over a year, residents had nothing. Then, in March 2024, the blotter returned—but as a monthly publication instead of weekly. The delay means incidents that happened a month ago finally appear in an abbreviated summary.

A Culture of Secrecy

Watch the pattern carefully—because if your community is considering encryption, this is your future:

First, the radios went silent. That was December 2021. Then the weekly police blotter disappeared. That was early 2023. When it finally returned, it was monthly—a fraction of its former detail and timeliness. Then they disabled public commenting on their Facebook page. One by one, every channel for public awareness and community feedback: eliminated.

Residents who attend township committee meetings report that elected officials have made their position clear: police activity is simply none of the public's business. That attitude didn't come from nowhere—it flourished because encryption removed the last check on departmental secrecy. Once the scanners went silent, there was nobody left to notice what they stopped telling you.

And let's be clear: this has nothing to do with officer safety. The Ocean County Sheriff's Office operates on the same P25 system. They handle the county's most dangerous operations—fugitives, tactical responses, high-risk warrants. Yet Sheriff Mastronardy keeps dispatch open. If transparency endangered officers, wouldn't the Sheriff—not patrol cops writing traffic tickets—be the first to encrypt? The Sheriff's choice proves what Lacey Township refuses to admit: full encryption is a policy preference, not a safety requirement.

The Exception That Proves the Rule

Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy understood something that local police chiefs chose to ignore: transparency and officer safety aren't mutually exclusive.

The Sheriff's Office operates on the same Ocean County P25 system. They have the same encryption capabilities. But they made a different choice—keeping routine dispatch open while encrypting only tactical channels.

If encryption were truly necessary for officer safety, wouldn't the Sheriff's Office—which handles the most dangerous county-level law enforcement—be the first to encrypt everything? Their decision to maintain transparency demonstrates that full encryption is a policy choice, not a safety requirement.

The Lacey Township Lesson

Encryption enables—and encourages—broader secrecy

If your police department is "just" encrypting the radios, pay attention. What happened in Lacey Township should be a warning to every community in America.

It started with the radios. Then came the blotter. Then came the Facebook comments. Then came the attitude from leadership that police activity is simply not your concern. Each step was easier than the last—because once you lose the ability to know what police are doing, you lose the ability to notice what they've stopped telling you.

Encryption didn't create Lacey Township's culture of secrecy. But it removed every barrier to it. When there's no scanner listener who might notice something off, no journalist monitoring to verify the timeline, no independent record of what actually happened—the path of least resistance is always less transparency. And that path, once taken, only goes in one direction.

Lacey Township is a warning: encryption is never the end point. It's the beginning.

What You Can Do

If you live in Ocean County—or any community with encrypted police communications—you still have options:

• Attend township committee meetings and ask about encryption policies and transparency commitments
• Request public records on the decision to encrypt and any public input that was solicited
• Contact your county sheriff—they may maintain open communications even if local PDs don't
• Support local journalism that pushes back against information blackouts
• Demand the police blotter—weekly, not monthly, with meaningful detail
• Point to the Sheriff's Office as proof that transparency and safety coexist
• Share this case study with neighbors who may not realize what they've lost