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Bristol uses a Digital + Encryption Radio System.

*A note as to the irony - As if criminal masterminds in the Bristol area would plan their capers in concert with electronic equipment to elude the Bristol Police is beyond comprehension. It sounded good when Motorola presented that bill of goods to the city for a hefty price tag even though there has never been a single recorded case in Bristol's history of criminals using scanners to foil the police.  The result: inferior communication quality. Delayed sound, garbled audio, reduced coverage, missed signals. All byproducts of digital encryption. It is a poor compromise that hinders police communications and reliability.  For increased reliability and clarity of communications the system should ideally be full time non-encrypted yet able to switch to encrypt mode in rare cases involving swat/ERT surveillance or extremely sensitive broadcast information, but even then, who's listening these days?, No one. The irony therefore is that getting something "better", means it sounds "worse" and is less reliable. Even plain digital transmissions sound "worse" compared to analog because they use a narrow bandwidth with restricted frequency response. Adding encryption adds another layer of fog further restricting an already low quality. Digital is becoming industry wide now but encryption has always been an option and one that hasn't proven effective. Several police departments in CT and others around the country are turning off their encryption for safety reasons. See: http://newsok.com/article/feed/1090399.