Originally Posted by
Mike Flynn
Cost effective when it comes to missing persons and similar operations. A lot of high speed chases are also non productive using helicopters when you look at sentences given to car and drug crime criminals.
In my opinion police car pursuits are not worth the risk of collision with innocent parties.
Missing person searches are probably the least productive use of an expensive to run helicopter. Because the vast amount of time the aircaft is tasked with an inappropriate search, on an incident which isnt a "true" missing person, and is normally there to tick a box to say "area searched to no gain". (with the obvious exceptions of those jobs where its a genuine misper, there to be found,)
The loss of air support provision since NPAS has proliferated Police pursuits exponentialy over the last ten years.
Where once a protracted pursuit was very rare, it is now a daily occurance.
You cannot give criminals free reign over the road network in the knowledge they will not be pursued.
Banning pursuits was played with by various Forces (Notts and Humbs come to mind) with disastrous results.
Its the age old question of the kid pinching mars bars from the local shop.. the bean counters and politicians may say that its only a mars bar, vastly out of proportion to the costs of investigating, detaining and prosecuting.. which is fine until its your shop that hes in every day pinching from, and until you investigate it you dont know that he's pinching from fourteen other shops.
Sentencing criminals is not part of policing. It is independant for a reason. Once you join law enforcement a tough early lesson is to see past the policitics, get on with the job in hand, and do the best you can as an indiviudual with the tools you are given.