It was an interesting flight, and served to show several examples of why the 'continuous patrol' was, for this operation, a good thing.
Immediately after takeoff, we were tasked to look for a gun that may have been thrown onto a roof during a routine stop by a ground unit.
Shortly after that, we were cruising along, and the observer gave an 'Orbit left' command. I thought I'd missed a radio call, and after a couple of orbits, asked if I had missed something. The observer said- no, there were no radio calls, but the area we had just flown over had a bad history of drive by shootings, and there were some cars down there he didn't like the look of, and so we orbitted there.
And they were never more than 5-7 minutes away from anywhere in their operations area, and were monitoring at least 5 different police agency frequncies. I couldn't keep up with the radios, but they could filter the stuff very nicely.
So, it may appear to be 'wasted time', but they don't think so, and neither do the people who pay to keep them up there.
As for DOCs, surely the insurance and interest payments for a twin are an order of magnitude more than an R-44.
And the police officers on the street feel a lot happier just knowing they have some top cover quickly if they need it.
There is no filtering of the request from a centralized ground station to make a launch decision (would they do that for a ground unit???)
It was a very professionally run operation and obviously supported enthusiastically by the policitians who had to approve the budgets.