why can you buy police radios?
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The actual radio tech *generally* isn’t crazy(Save for some digital things but I’ll come back to those).
The basic analog radio isn’t really that advanced. The small barriers to stop just anyone from listening in are things like [Continuous Tone Squelch system.](https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Continuous_Tone-Coded_Squelch_System) In summary, the radio listens to a frequency, but only plays the audio from it if it receives a special signal, or knows what the signal is.
It’s not really encryption more like just only playing selected noise.
There’s other ways like transmitters automatically adding in white noise and then receivers being able to subtract that noise automatically but even then, not super advanced.
Plus, a lot of basic day to day police radio isn’t that interesting. For private matters they switch to cell phones, email, or other more secure forms, but on the air is basic stuff like locations or calls for service.
That’s for most analog radio.
Some users use digital since that can have actual encryption, not just “Mute everything that doesn’t play a special tone”. Those are harder to buy, may have more barriers like “for official sale only” or “not for export”, but even then having the radio doesn’t automatically mean it works. Codes get changed periodically.
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