The quote for the price of operating the R-44 was one that was given to me - it is probably 20% of the total cost for the operation, but that is all that was paid by that one, small community.
This gives that group of communities one R-44 airborne from 6pm to 3am Monday through Wednesday, and two R-44s airborne during the same time frame from Thursday through Sunday evenings. They are there to support the ground units, and don't do air ambulance, or SWAT stuff.
They fly in some pretty crappy weather, and get 100 hour maintenance done on a pretty regular (try nearly every two weeks) basis.
Do they do things differently? I was convinced having flown with them that it's easier to teach a policeman to fly than to teach a helicopter pilot how to be a policeman, but then again maybe it's old age creeping up on me.
As far as the main theme of this thread- Public Safety or Flight Safety - these guys have got both of 'em with no apparent compromise. And it's being done pretty cheaply.
Evidently in the USA, all the piston engine power police departments are having no trouble meeting or staying under their budgets, and all the turbine powered ones are having trouble. As there won't be any pistons in the UK police, we'll never know if the first part of this is true, but we certainly know the second part is.