Dear paarmo,
Looking out of the window of the aircraft - not out of the office. Once we are on scene it is us that feeds the computer, not the other way round. Our office has 8 radios tuned to various nets in the area and by doing so we hear what is going on around us and pick up on what is "bubbling" before we get asked.
I'm glad that you now pick up on the point about experience. The police don't put anyone into any specialist department, dogs, firearms, trafffic, CID, underwater search, etc, until they have completed 2 year probationary term of service and air support is no different. Once past their probationary period in the job, air observers tend to stay a minimum of 3 years but usually longer. Any less does not justify the expense of training them. Our one and only attempt at recruiting a civilian observer resulted in 96 applicants of which only 2 met all the required criteria - but we still had to pay all the expense of sifting and testing them all - which increased the "on cost" to the point where a police officer would have been cheaper. Our HR department would have loved to have picked a "Playstation generation" youth from the job centre and we would have been stuck with a liability - it's not just a case of pointing the camera in the right direction. As for landing on to make an arrest, would you really want said civilian to be in a situation where they find themselves facing some axe wielding nutter? Think it can't happen? Think again - it already has.
Your point about ex forces people, depends on what their disability is. Remember, they still have to be able to get in and out of the aircraft in a hurry where the situation demands it. One of our police observers is ex SAR crew who joined the police after leaving the forces and was, therefore, quite happy in the back of the aircraft and simply had some new kit to learn, being already capable of map reading/navigation etc. As has been previously stated on this thread, it's about what they can bring to the party.