This has nothing to do with money in theory.It is horses for courses.Why take a highly trained Police Officer from the steets and put him in a helicopter when you can train a person in 2 weeks to do the same job. This spurious argument that you need to have a Police background to be an observer does not carry much weight nowadays.
The only reason that Police Officers fight against the obvious is because of the kudos of wearing flight overalls and posing in the passenger terminal talking to P.C.'s Heckler and Koch.
Good job you don't know where I live isn't it ?