T. Coupling says :
"I would hesitate to suggest they take a cold hard look at the quality of work they are pushing out whilst airborne 'waiting for the next job'...what an inefficient waste of taxpayers money"
Bong! Wrong! Take off all your clothes.
The waiting around, as stated above, is a factor in criminal control in itself. It is difficult (if not impossible) to show how many crimes didn't get committed, simply because the baddy saw the Polair machine and thought we were watching him. But interviews with villains were full of statements like that, when they had delayed their actions for a few days out of paranoia.
Add to that the number of stolen and dumped cars in bush areas we reported, the sly marijuana plots, the number of cars behaving in a suspicious manner that we organised to be pulled over, the times we were right overhead when something broke out, the car chases we intercepted and took over, the rescues we got involved in just by listening to the radio.
All these were while we wasted the taxpayer's money, waiting for the next Official Job. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Sitting on the ground 30 miles away, waiting for a Scramble, and getting there 20 minutes later, isn't my measure of efficiency.