L@ser attacks on Aircraft

[michaeljpotter]

We can all say the laws need to be tougher, believe me, having seen both sides of this argument as a police officer previously and now flying I agree there needs to be tougher penalties.

The problems lie in the logistics, the force concerned, the officer, their attitude and the resourcing.
To give you an example - I cannot obviously divulge too much info with breaking various laws I still pertain to as an ex cop but if we were pushed for resources (i.e. the less than a dozen officers on shift on a friday night covering almost a quarter of a county within 15 minutes of LHR dealing with domestics which are complete nonsense (like my sister broke my door down is considered a domestic,if anyone cares to look up the amount of domestic reports police go to in the u.k you'll be amazed at how much time is wasted, I do not agree with the way domestics are dealt with in the u.k)) we are just not able to respond to a job like this. We physically didnt have the resources, it sounds bad but thats the way it is. The police forces in the U.K are pushed to there limits with resourcing (im sure some of you have dealt with the police and had good or bad experiences).
Its not unheard of for a 999 call to go un-resourced or have a traffic officer or AFO turn up to a domestic because of the lack of resourcing available.
Central London (METPOL) has a massive budget in comparison to the 2nd biggest U.K force for example.
If your then able to respond to the job or have the time, how do you find them?
I always had an interest in aviation, so I made a point to go looking for them and find these little fiends (usually they are little) to make sure they knew what they had done.
I knew the section of the law that they could be charged under, that sort of specific law is not in police basic training. That would need a referral from a specialist unit and sometimes the time and effort sadly this requires deems an arrest void because the time can be better spent dealing with other things.
I apologise if this sounds like i'm beating a dead horse. But its really a hard thing to tackle.
What would I do? I'd increase the policing amounts on the ground, I'd get the communications from ATC to police officers in cases like this more of a direct link as opposed to 2 or 3 intermediaries.
Give F/D crew a way of actually having the ability to pinpoint the area and location at a quick glance then gps co-ordinates which take time to pass on and then mirror into an actual address.
Police go on street addresses not IRS systems.
At biocyber - in your instance, if god forbid something like that happened it would be a tough push but you might be able to get Involuntary Manslaughter to stick, but i'm not a lawyer and dont confess to be one so thats really something that the CPS would decide. I feel they have a lot to answer for.