I have pulled up the archive No 158 June 2009 PAN and it says.
...
SURREY: After their Eurocopter EC135T2 G-SURY was vandalised last month the resultant reticence to announce the story led the International media to publish a range of spurious storylines as rumours and speculation ran rife.
After the attack during the evening of April 30 Surrey remained silent about the absence of their aircraft so as not to draw attention to the significant reduction in local air support capability.
After the single aircraft operation had been out of service for a week sections of the media picked up on rumours and this led to a variety of not totally inaccurate storylines reciting a war between the police unit and local caravan dwellers **. There was talk of an axe attack on the windows of the helicopter and of a stand-off between unarmed crewmen and the axe wielding interlopers said to dislike the police heli-copter watching over them..
Finally, and very reluctantly, the police released a version of the story.
‘Damage was caused to the Surrey Police helicopter during an incident at its base at Fai-roaks Airport, Chobham just before 10pm on Thursday 30 April. Five windows were smashed by unknown offenders and the value of the damage is being determined. The inci-dent is part of an ongoing investigation and security measures are being reviewed as part of this. Surrey Police is working with the maintenance contractor to ensure the aircraft is back on line as soon as possible. We continue to have access to air support through agreements with surrounding Forces.’
The meagre release led to even more speculation.
Sufficient to say that the attack led to thousands of pounds worth of unscheduled cost and effectively burst the bubble that it was safe this unit to park the EC135 out in the open at night. The grounding exceeded two weeks because of the extent of the work required to repair the damage. The aircraft returned to service 20 days later.
What made the attack worse was that this had been the second similar event in less than 7 months. In the first attack the damage had followed a similar pattern but was not quite so serious.
Surrey Air Support has been at Fairoaks for over a decade with little or no security in place and little reason to set it up. The police helicopter is kept on a concrete pad in front of the combined hangar and control room located on the edge of a public airport but is across an active perimeter taxi-way and easily far enough away to be totally immersed in the dark-ness. There are no additional physical security barriers – fences or blockades – to stop any-one on the airfield approaching the aircraft pad. It could not be secured without massive cost.
That long standing bubble of security is now burst for all time and something will have to be done.
Taking a purely financial viewpoint it is probable that the cost of setting up physical defensive measures at Fairoaks over the last decade would far outweigh the actual cost of the damage now suffered.
etc etc
It all seems to back up the general understanding that Surrey Police were simply reticent about announcing the incident t the time.
**I had to pull a few descriptive words from the original text in the fifth line as they might be deemed 'impolite' these days....
