Flight schools make PROFIT. A typical EC135 flying hour with all pilotage and engineering costs well under £2000 per hour. When other forces use us, we charge them under a grand.
When we see speeding motorists, we use the camera for a close up first, more than 75% of those stopped usually end up being done for more serious crimes. It is filtered by our experience, we assess manner of driving/car type/area/intel/time of day/is car insured/is car well away from home etc etc. If something is dodgy sounding, we get it stopped. This has netted large amounts of drugs/stolen property/wanted criminals/stolen ringer cars and firearms. Sometimes we stop innocent people, then people bleat about how bad and wasteful we are.
There are some very nasty people out there, I agree that is NO excuse to harass innocents. Our crews work day in day out to try and make YOUR lives safer. We have good success, instead of people bleating, for once I would just love someone to credit us with some positive comments. Bobbies get abuse that you wouldn't believe, the MAJORITY do a great job. The minority are seen acting up on the news and everyone is tarred with the same brush.
When we search for missing persons, we can clear a large open area in minutes, a ground patrol would take hours. So that frees officers for other important tasks.