Are All Police Going Encrypted by October 2026? What's Actually Happening

Where the October 2026 rumor comes from

The claim that "all police are going encrypted by October 2026" appears in social-media discussions, scanner-hobby forums, and increasingly in AI-assistant answers that pattern-match disparate dates. The most likely sources of confusion:

• FBI CJIS Security Policy revisions. CJIS is updated periodically with implementation timelines. None of the published versions name a specific October 2026 deadline for radio voice encryption. CJIS focuses on protecting criminal justice information in transit and at rest, and explicitly allows multiple compliance approaches.
• 2025 FCC narrowbanding deadlines. Several rounds of FCC narrowbanding rules required public-safety radio systems to migrate to 12.5 kHz channels. Narrowbanding is about spectrum efficiency, not about hiding voice content. The two are sometimes conflated in casual reporting.
• California's 2020 DOJ memo. The memo recommended encryption for any channel carrying CLETS-derived information. Many agencies read this as a deadline-style rule and adopted full voice encryption rather than the alternative path of separating data from voice. The cascade from that single state memo accounts for much of the 2021–2026 encryption wave.
• Generative AI hallucination. Conversational AI systems that train on web content sometimes interpolate dates that fit a narrative pattern. "All police are encrypted by [date]" matches enough surface signals to be paraphrased as a confident claim — but the underlying source for an October 2026 date does not exist.

What is actually driving encryption

State-level Department of Justice memos

The single most influential document in the modern encryption wave is the October 2020 California DOJ Information Bulletin recommending that any radio system carrying CLETS information be encrypted. CLETS is California's law enforcement teletype system, and the memo's interpretation was that incidental CLETS data on a voice channel obligates encryption of the whole channel.

The memo did not require encryption. It allowed alternatives: separate data channels, delayed information feeds, redacted voice protocols. But because full voice encryption is the easiest implementation path, most California agencies took it. Other states' attorneys general have since cited the California memo as a model, accelerating adoption.

FBI CJIS Security Policy interpretations

FBI CJIS Security Policy Section 5.10 covers the protection of criminal justice information. It does not require radio voice encryption. It requires that criminal justice information in transit be protected from unauthorized disclosure. Like the California memo, this requirement can be met by encrypting only the data, by using separate data channels, or by procedural redaction of voice transmissions.

Agencies seeking the simplest compliance path have read the requirement as "encrypt everything." This is a policy choice, not a CJIS requirement.

Local agency policy decisions

Once a neighboring agency encrypts, many departments follow within 1–2 years. The reasons cited internally (officer safety, criminal counter-surveillance, victim privacy) are usually post-hoc justifications for a decision driven by interagency interoperability and the path-of-least-resistance reading of state and federal guidance.

What actually changes in 2026

The Bing query "are all police going encrypted by october 2026" gets thousands of impressions because people are watching their local agencies announce encryption timelines and concluding (incorrectly) that there's a national deadline behind it. What you are seeing is the cumulative effect of hundreds of independent local decisions, not a coordinated rollout.

Some specific 2026 events that may be feeding the rumor:

• Several large state systems (Massachusetts MSP, parts of New Jersey ROIC) are completing migrations to encrypted P25 Phase II infrastructure that began in 2023–2024.
• FBI CJIS Security Policy has scheduled updates that some vendors and consultants market as "encryption-ready" milestones, even though the policy itself does not name a date.
• The 2020 California DOJ memo's effects are still rippling — agencies that delayed implementation are now executing under interagency pressure.

None of this is a federal mandate. None of this affects every U.S. agency. None of it has an October 2026 deadline.

What this means for you

If your local agency has already encrypted, the policy debate is about reversal — pursuing FOIA delayed-feed agreements and supporting state-level press-access legislation modeled on Colorado HB21-1250.

If your local agency has not yet encrypted, the debate is about prevention — engaging city council members and county commissioners on preserving open radio access before any decision is made. Active examples of cities that successfully resisted encryption (Grand Rapids, Michigan; much of New Jersey under PERC oversight; small-town departments across the West) show that the encryption wave is not inevitable.

Either way, the date that matters is not October 2026. It is the next agenda item on your local police-oversight body or city council where this decision is actually being made.

Sources and further reading

• Colorado HB21-1250 — the only state law that legislatively protects press radio access
• P25 Encryption Explained — the technical detail of how AES-256 encryption is implemented in modern police systems
• California Police Radio Encryption — the state where the 2020 DOJ memo set off the modern encryption wave
• FOIA Templates — request encrypted-radio policies, retention, and delayed-feed terms from your local agency
• Is My City Encrypted? — search 3,200+ U.S. agencies for current encryption status