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I think the repeaters would block out any of the mobile radios. So you could see the dispatchers easily, but the individual mobile operators (EMS, Fire, Police) would be hard to distinguish.

If the mesh was every Digital TV tuner inside a municipality, then maybe the mesh could triangulate position.

Outside of my area as well, but, IIRC Kevin Mitnick wrote about using a radio set to encrypted frequencies. When he was out and about, if he heard traffic on those frequencies, then he knew the FBI etc. must be nearby.

Often they are, yes. It’s relatively easy to use an USRP to generate alerts when someone is using TETRA nearby.

But sure, other agencies may generate false positivies.

You could look for the repeater uplink, maybe.

Keep in mind that these public radio systems are often used by firefighters and other agencies.

Finding police specifically would probably involve some sort of metadata leak in the radio signaling protocols.