I like what radioman2001 said... Public safety officials are doing the public's business and we darn well should be able to monitor what's going on. As I've said in other postings, monitoring your local PD can really give you a deeper understanding of your community and the people who "protect and serve" -- and I've gotta tell you, I never much appreciated the police force until I spent time listening to what they dealt with day-in and day-out. Now, they get all my respect.
A 2 hour delay is ridiculous. Seriously. It doesn't serve any purpose whatsoever. How many incidents are 2 hours long (answer, almost none)? We might as well just go back to the days of having to ask for the recordings under the FOIA.
My final comment: I'm not an expert in running an encrypted radio system, but I HAVE read a great deal from people who deal with this stuff on a day-to-day basis. It seems to me that smaller police departments seriously underestimate the overhead and the annoyance of implementing encryption. Dealing with keys (loading them and maintaining them) is a lot of work. The manufacturers make it sound like it's all a cake walk, but when you think through the scenarios, it's a royal PITA and if not done correctly can actually make communications HARDER, less secure, and even put lives at risk. OTAR and mixed clear/encrypted isn't necessarily the answer, either (what happens when you do a re-key and all the radios in the group aren't ON). Or, for safety purposes, you have channels that support mixed encrypted/non-encrypted traffic and a user unintentionally keys-up not encrypted and feels free to discuss sensitive details because "nobody can hear him that shouldn't."
Folks REALLY need to think through their decisions before going either fully or partially encrypted. And they need to talk with peers who run such systems in similarly sized departments, with similar requirements. Not JUST talk to the manufacturers, who make everything sound so great and easy.
Peter
K1PGV