You can't just go down to Wal-Wart or who ever and say I want that off the shelf. But it happens.
This isn't just a Kenwood issue. Motorola sales guy sold a VHF repeater to our PD a few years back. I got a call one day to come down and "pick up a package". When I got there I found a VHF Quantar and a box of stuff. This was the first I'd hear of this. The police chief wanted me to install the "new radio system" so they could get off our 800MHz trunked system.
So, Motorola sales guy walks in and makes a sale. Zero engineering, Zero design, Lots of profit. Oh yeah, only one frequency, so we still had to go through all the work to coordinate a new frequency for the input as well as modify the license, and get all the surrounding agencies on board. Of course the Chief wanted to do that, so we ended up with a frequency that was 150KHz away from the repeater output. That meant expensive duplexers and a lot of desense issues. Finally had to get a new frequency to make it all work correctly.
I got stuck installing a system that I knew was going to be trouble. By the time we were done we had to install 3 remote receiver, a back up repeater and all the goodies that go with it.
800MHz system they were on worked fine, with a few known coverage issues that they had learned to work with.
VHF system is an improvement in that all the surrounding agencies are VHF, so we have the interoperability angle nailed down.
Moral to the story is:
Never let a Police Chief talk directly with a sales guy. It won't end pretty.