As the complexity increases, the utility decreases. I know brain surgeons. They have trouble keeping up with brain surgery. The people who operate and maintain these radio systems are not brain surgeons. Nevertheless, I have digital scanners and use them to keep track of what's going on in the LA area, particularly my neighborhood. I just take everything I hear with a grain of salt. Mostly what you hear are a bunch of meaningless numbers, or messages, or things like "The 'package' is on the way....the 'package' is over Encino.....the 'package' has arrived." They called Michael Jackson's casket the "package" during his memorial services over at The Staples Center. Interestingly, you also heard people saying they weren't allowing Staples employees into the facility that day because no one had arranged for them to have security clearance.

Or, and this is the number one thing you generally hear on the scanner, "You have an open mic!" This is about the only time you actually hear something meaningful, when you hear part of a real-live conversation between the cop and his/her partner cuz his/her mic is open and he/she doesn't know it.

Oh, and in an area like LA, where you'll have hundreds of frequencies loaded on your scanner, even if you do catch something of interest, you'll rarely catch the follow-up messages because the scanner will have moved on to scanning the other frequencies, unless you have a certain frequency (such as for your local cops or fire department) set as a "Priority" channel, in which case then it will go to that channel whenever there's any activity on it, AND you'll then be missing out on any activity of potential interest on other channels programmed into the scanner.

Finally, by far the most interesting thing I've heard on my scanner, besides perhaps a lot of coordinated activity during the Malibu fires several years ago, was a sting operation at some Thai massage parlor in my area, perhaps the one just a few yards from my house. They were trying to pinch people involved in getting/giving special "massages" apparently. By the way, from my roof deck, I have observed that the female Thai masseuses drive by far the nicest cars in my part of town. They all have BMWs, Mercedes, Lexuses, etc etc and park them in front of my house. I guess business is always good.