A half mile from a lighted area of mixed businesses and dwellings.....over flat. ground.....and a lit tower (supposedly anyway) with a major highway running through the scene.....perhaps it was something just as simple as an engine failure that got them
At 0230 how much of that lighting would be on and how many cars on the highway?
All this about how the UK does it has nothing to do with the Baton Rouge operation or the accident in question.
It's not about how things are done in UK, it's about how two guys lost their lives.
It may have been an engine failure (better placed in a twin then) or some other malfunction but it may well have been spatial disorientation through trying to do too much without the right equipment.
We don't seem to know if they were NVD equipped and a FLIR screen is nowhere near the same thing.
Did their R44 have a rad alt fitted and if so did it have audio and visual alerts and an SOP for bug setting?
I am with Sasless in that I wouldn't go night flying without NVD but did some pretty scary stuff for several years before converting in the 90s.
If your budget doesn't run to having the right equipment for the task, then don't accept the task - it's not rocket science.
If you want to do police ops at night without NVD then at least give the pilots a fighting chance and have a basic SAS and stick trim system.