What Radios Do Police Use

What Radios Do Police Use in the US

The short answer is Motorola — overwhelmingly. The Motorola APX series is the dominant hardware in American law enforcement. Most medium-to-large departments have standardized on one of three models:

• APX 6000 — the most widely deployed full-size P25 Phase 2 portable. Multiband capable (700/800/VHF/UHF), IP67 waterproof, AES-256 encryption standard. Standard issue in many major city departments.
• APX 900 — slimmer, lighter, aimed at plainclothes officers and detectives. P25 Phase 2, single-band (typically 700/800 MHz), AES-256. Costs less than the 6000, common in mid-size departments.
• APX NEXT — the current flagship. Adds LTE connectivity alongside P25 radio, touchscreen display, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and integrated location services. Introduced in 2018, now standard in departments building out FirstNet-based infrastructure.

But Motorola isn’t the only player.

L3Harris holds a significant share of federal and military-adjacent law enforcement contracts. The XG-100P is their flagship portable — a multiband radio covering P25 Phase 1 and Phase 2, TETRA, and conventional analog. FBI field offices, DEA, and US Marshals often carry Harris equipment. It’s heavier and more expensive than Motorola’s consumer-facing APX line, but it handles multi-system interoperability that matters on federal operations crossing multiple agency networks.

Kenwood NX-5000 series shows up in smaller departments and agencies with tighter budgets. It’s P25 Phase 2 compliant, competitive on price, and more common in rural sheriff’s offices and transit police than in major urban departments.

P25 Digital Radio: What Every Police Dispatch System Actually Runs On

P25 — short for Project 25 — is the standard, not the radio. Think of it as the operating protocol that all the hardware above speaks.

It was developed in the 1990s by APCO specifically for North American first responders. Before P25, every state, city, and county ran incompatible analog systems. Officers from neighboring jurisdictions literally couldn’t talk to each other on scene. P25 fixed that by defining a common digital air interface. Now, a NYPD officer and an NYPD State Trooper can key up on the same system mid-incident.

There are two versions in active use:

• P25 Phase 1 — older, still common in smaller departments. 12.5 kHz channel spacing. Runs on legacy infrastructure.
• P25 Phase 2 — current standard. 6.25 kHz channel spacing, which doubles channel capacity. Two simultaneous calls per 12.5 kHz channel. Most large city systems migrated to Phase 2 between 2012 and 2020.

P25 is also what makes interoperability work on large-scale incidents. When a fire breaks out across a county line, mutual aid channels allow every department involved — fire, EMS, law enforcement — to coordinate on a shared network without anyone needing to swap radios.

If you want to understand how radio communication works at the base level, the how walkie talkies work breakdown covers the underlying principles. The difference with P25 is scale: the transmission process is the same, but P25 wraps it in a digital protocol with encryption, error correction, and ID signaling built in.

What Frequency Do Police Radios Use

This depends on the department, the region, and how old the system is. But there are clear patterns.

800 MHz band (851–869 MHz): The most common choice for US law enforcement, especially in urban and suburban areas. Most major city P25 networks operate here. Good building penetration, manageable antenna size, well-established infrastructure.

700 MHz band (769–806 MHz): The newer build-out band, associated with FirstNet — the national broadband network reserved for public safety agencies. Departments upgrading to APX NEXT and LTE-capable equipment increasingly operate here alongside 800 MHz. Better wall penetration than 800 MHz at the same power.

VHF 150–174 MHz: Still in active use in rural counties and some state police systems that haven’t migrated to 700/800 MHz. Longer propagation range on flat terrain, but large antennas and worse building penetration. Common in Midwest and Southern rural sheriff departments.

UHF 450–512 MHz: Some older urban systems and correctional facilities. Being phased out in most jurisdictions as equipment ages out.

The key point here: knowing what frequency police use doesn’t mean you can monitor it. More on that below in the FAQ.

For context on how UHF and VHF actually differ in practice — not just for police but for any radio use — the UHF vs VHF comparison covers real-world performance differences between the two bands.

What Radios Do Police Use for Tactical and Special Units

Not every officer carries the same radio. What radios do police use when the stakes go up?

SWAT and tactical units typically carry the same P25 hardware — usually APX 6000 or APX NEXT — but with full AES-256 encryption enabled and programming locked down to law enforcement-only talkgroups. Some units use Harris XG-100P for its multi-system capability on operations involving federal agencies.

Federal agencies — FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals — often operate Harris equipment, partly for vendor diversification and partly for multi-band capability. Field operations crossing state lines or involving military support require radios that can bridge P25 networks seamlessly. The XG-100P handles this; most commercial Motorola units don’t out of the box.

Corrections facilities run separate radio systems from patrol. Jails and prisons often use older UHF or 800 MHz conventional (non-P25) systems. There’s no dispatch center comparable to patrol operations — it’s direct officer-to-officer radio across a controlled perimeter. You’ll see older Motorola XTS or ASTRO 25 equipment here well past their normal replacement cycle.

If you’re comparing police-grade hardware to what’s available for civilian security and field operations, the military-grade walkie talkie guide covers the commercial equivalents — radios that carry MIL-STD-810 certification, IP67/68 ratings, and some encryption capability, but without the trunked network infrastructure behind them.

Why Police Radios Reach 40 Miles When Yours Barely Makes a Block

This question comes up constantly. Someone hears a patrol officer key up and reach a dispatcher 20 miles away, then looks at their $60 Midland claiming 35 miles on the box. Same basic technology. Completely different results. What’s going on?

The radio itself isn’t the difference. A Motorola APX 6000 is a 5-watt handheld. So is an FRS walkie talkie — well, legally capped at 2 watts on FRS, but you get the point. The power difference alone doesn’t explain the range gap.

What explains it is the repeater infrastructure.

Police radio systems are trunked. That means every radio transmission goes to a repeater site — typically on a building rooftop, water tower, or communications tower — which rebroadcasts the signal at much higher power across a far wider area. A network of 10–15 repeater sites can cover an entire metropolitan area. The handheld doesn’t need to reach the destination directly; it just needs to reach the nearest repeater, which might be half a mile away.

FRS consumer walkie talkies don’t have this. They’re simplex: radio-to-radio direct. If something is between you and the other person — a building, a hill, a tree line — the signal degrades or drops. That’s the entire explanation behind why a $40 pair of walkie talkies claims 35 miles on open water and delivers 0.5 miles in a city. For a full breakdown of what actually limits radio range, the walkie talkie range guide covers terrain, obstacles, and power in detail.

What Radios Do UK Police Use

UK policing runs a completely different system from the US. There’s no P25 here.

The UK’s national police radio infrastructure is called Airwave, and it runs on TETRA — the European equivalent of P25. Airwave was built out in the early 2000s and covers England, Wales, and Scotland. The hardware most commonly issued to officers is the Sepura SC20 and the newer SC21.

TETRA and P25 are both digital trunked systems with encryption, but they’re incompatible at the air interface level. A UK officer’s Sepura can’t talk to a US officer’s APX without a gateway in between.

The UK is currently mid-transition away from the Airwave/TETRA network toward ESN — the Emergency Services Network — which runs on 4G LTE with a dedicated spectrum band. The transition has been delayed repeatedly; as of this writing, Airwave/TETRA remains the active system.

UK officers also carry a body-worn radio earpiece connected to the Sepura via cable — you’ll see the coiled tube running up from the collar on most uniformed officers. The ear speaker allows discreet listening without broadcasting dispatch audio to everyone nearby.