CK,
You can always improve performance by adding resources, but in the real world there will be a limit to what you can spend.
If we looked at a busy police helicopter unit, say covering a metropolitan area, it also has to make choices about how it deploys to tasks when 2 are offered up at the same time. There is nothing special in the combined HEMS/police unit about deployment decisions and priorities. That same met area could be covered by 2 police helicopters. This would reduce the number of times that conflicting tasks came up at the same time, but never entirely remove the possibility.
If you have a typical county police force that chooses not to provide enough funds for a police helicopter just for its own use, it has 2 choices:
- to combine ops with another service that operates in roughly the same area;
- to combine ops with another police force or forces in adjoining areas
You have ID'd some of the possible disadvantages of the former option. You ommitted one of its main advantages: that combined HEMS/police can operate during the night too.
However, there are significant disadvantages to the latter wide area pure police hele too. The main one relates to the increased distance and time that you will be away from tasks. Some police jobs are not time critical but lots of them are. Turning up 20 minutes later to a break in progress means that you probably wasted all the flying time. You did not fail to respond but the chances of getting a successful outcome was much reduced. The same applies to vehicle pursuits.
If you have 2 helicopters to cover 2 counties for police and HEMS, is it better to have a single police and a single HEMS helicopter covering BOTH counties or 2 combined police/HEMS helicopters covering both counties?
That is a real choice and IMHO an interesting question.