The fact that New York has about 5 million more people and about 30,000 more police officers. Not saying LA doesn’t have freelance reporters, but New York has a ton, as well as New Jersey, and they all monitor NYPD radio traffic.
Now given the fact that New York City has been a terrorist target several times in the past, and continues to be, it is important to a lot of people to monitor and know what is going on in the city. If you take that away, in the event of a catastrophic event people may not be well informed and deaths, god forbid may come because of that lack of information. I’m just thinking outside the box and bigger picture, well because those of us in New York City have been through it before, and it is very real to us.
I know they are using the excuse of unauthorized radios on the system and jammers and that is all very real as well, but there are ways to control that as well. So as far as going full encryption, I’m not sold on it. But as we all know, it’s a sad reality these days.