While unethical, agencies across the country are mooching big money from their municipal budgets to upgrade to encryption comms in order to keep the public in the dark, especially among today's racial LE conflicts. I've spoken to several friends, and family from municipal to metro NYC to Federal LE, and they all express this same concern. And I don't blame them. I love the technology, but there is no question that it's hindering investigations and creating premature noise from the media; not to mention giving criminals with any smartphone a head-start to bail before police are even half way to a scene.
I'm not worried about LTE/FirstNet -- to my understanding, that will be used as a data platform, at least at first. Look at P25 trunk systems around the country and watch the "E" letter pile on with every migration. And get used to monitoring Fire, EMS and DPW only, in the not-so-distant future.
At least someone will retire with a nice pile of cash, but don't look forward to too many additional generations of scanner hardware, as I believe we have jumped the shark. At least Uniden has a wide scope of products, so they'll stay in business.
I'm not worried about LTE/FirstNet -- to my understanding, that will be used as a data platform, at least at first. Look at P25 trunk systems around the country and watch the "E" letter pile on with every migration. And get used to monitoring Fire, EMS and DPW only, in the not-so-distant future.
At least someone will retire with a nice pile of cash, but don't look forward to too many additional generations of scanner hardware, as I believe we have jumped the shark. At least Uniden has a wide scope of products, so they'll stay in business.
