The death at age 89 of longtime police reporter Marilyn Robinson brought to mind an enduring image for those of us who were colleagues of hers at The Denver Post — an image perfectly described in an obituary written earlier this month by another former colleague, Bruce Finley.

“She worked mostly in the newsroom beneath towering stacks of old newspapers and her notes, making countless calls to dispatchers, desk sergeants and frontline officers from the old landline telephones, sometimes with a phone on each ear, sustaining herself on coffee, Pepsi, popcorn and yogurt,” Finley recalled. “Robinson simultaneously monitored chatter from police radio scanners.”

The radio scanners were vital tools of Robinson’s trade, tipping her off to police activities throughout the Denver metro area — information she corroborated by making those countless calls to her many, many sources.

But they wouldn’t be so useful if Robinson were still reporting today.

As we’ve previously written, the Denver Police Department fully encrypted its radio communications in 2019 and the Aurora Police Department went silent three years earlier, moves they said were necessary to protect officer safety and tactical decisions and to prevent the public release of people’s personal information.

Recently the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition learned that the Aurora PD, when Art Acevedo was interim chief, considered reinstating a public feed of radio transmissions — with a 10-minute delay — through the Broadcastify mobile app. The delay would have alleviated “a lot, but not all, of our internal concerns about officer safety, tactical decisions, etc.,” Joe Moylan, the department’s public information officer, told CFOIC in an emailed response to our questions.