Good info, and good suggestions guys, thanks. Guess I'll see what I can find. Being new up here, I don't know much about the culture of law enforcement and EMS up here, but I'm pretty surprised things are so locked down. I just assumed everyone would still be on old conventional systems and wide open! Any idea why everything is encrypted? Is there history or something that led to that?
Couple of things at play here. Troopers started going encrypted over ten years ago, and everyone else started to follow. Anchorage PD was in the clear once they moved to the 700mhz system in 2012, then shortly after encrypted the TAC and records channels. Then, in late 2013, they encrypted completely, but actually provided a feed via this site - which was delayed first by 5, then 10 minutes, and they could control/temporarily mute. Then, in 2016, a decision was made to take down the feed permanently, as well as encrypt the Anchorage/Girdwood/Chugiak fire along with everything, and the rest is how it is.
A major driving force behind this, whether people want to admit it or not, was the proliferation of social media sharing, like the facebook group called "Anchorage Scanner Joe", which started small, but eventually turned into a very large group who literally had people sitting around, listening to radio traffic and transcribing everything they heard into the group posts.
There was a separate incident in early 2013, where there was a weapons/bomb threat in an Anchorage school, a bunch of parents showed up after news picked up scanner traffic and reported on it before APD even could finish their response. At least that was one of the issues cited by APD for going encrypted originally.
From my own perspective - as a user of a lot of these encrypted channels, there has always been a big push in the State of Alaska for data privacy and protecting personally identifiable information, which has carried over into radio communications. This is the reason they used to encrypt fire - though right now, encrypted fire departments in Alaska are an exception - I'm only aware of Anchorage and Kodiak doing this.
It's lame having my scanner be silent in Anchorage a lot, but there is stuff to listen to - especially if you travel to other communities.