It was always obvious to those of us actively involved in police aviation that long term searches (such as some, but not all, ”MISPERS” etc, or pre planned crowd monitoring such as post football matches) were largely a waste of helicopter hours (the latter being my least favourite task of anything we were tasked with) and these days can be far better achieved by a far less expensive drone.
But the best machine for reactive tasks is still, in most cases, a locally based helicopter.
There is nothing more frustrating as an ex police helicopter pilot than to watch these police documentaries where a dangerous pursuit fails and knowing that a helicopter on scene would have made it safer and successful.