Cuts
I really fear for the future of UK Police Aviation.
By 2004 it could be argued that we led the world in the efficient use of Police Aircraft. 32 Helicopters and 3 fixed wing all operating from 27 bases. The entire fleet comprising modern twin engined machines all less than 10 years old. Flown by professional pilots and crewed by experienced dedicated & well motivated Police observers.
Co-operation between units was first class with units covering for each other when maintenance was required and sharing intelligence etc etc.
Vehicle pursuits became much shorter as the criminal realised that once the a/c was overhead, escape was almost impossible.
Ram Raiding the scourge of the 80's and early 90's became a thing of the past.
But by 2007 our Senior Police Officers were usually men & women who had never experienced the frustration of trying to catch mobile criminals without the assistance of air support. So when the Politicians and bean counters started to worry about saving money Air Support featured highly.
The bean counter and the Chief Officer tasked with saving money had never heard of the 15-20 minute rule! That rule that we learned in the early days which showed that unless you could get the a/c overhead the incident within 15-20 minutes of its commencement its effectiveness was limited.
The same bean counter and Chief Officer thinks that the countryside, like his map is always flat, never suffers from cloud or bad weather over high ground, and so the drawing of range circles on the map to indicate that you can save on the numbers of a/c might just be badly flawed.
The same bean counter and Chief Officer does not understand that both helicopters and fixed wiing aircraft need maintenance, - quite a lot of it!
So if your circles show that you can make 3 aircraft cover a large region, in reality most of the time you will be struggling with two!
Neither do the clowns realise that in the North West for example where there appear to be several machines in a cluster, there is actually quite a lot of crime up there!
Rural areas,- where the Police helicopter is very often the first resource on the scene, have in the past seen incidents where the aircraft has landed and effected arrests which otherwise would have gone undetected. What now if distances are to be increased?
The real danger is this. There will inevitably be more and more occasions when the a/c is late on scene - because it has had further to come. Because it is late it will be none effective,- the criminal has long gone. How long then before some bright spark starts to say "Air Support is a waste of time, lets save more money & do away with it all together".
Recent events have shown that the criminal now has a healthy respect for the Police Helicopter. Several attacks have been carried out in order to remove the threat. Ironic isn't it that the Bean Counter, the Politician and the green Police Chief might do the job for them!
How long before the poor oppressed criminal of today realises that his tormentor has had its teeth pulled? Whoopee! Open House! -Back to the 80's and 90's again!
Some of the proposals however are very good. Regional Groupings will save money on the need for several UEO's. One PAOC instead of 3 or 4, will save even more. Economies of scale should make fuel and maintenence contracts cheaper. But please,please, - for the reasons above do not reduce the numbers of aircraft. Why not use the less busy ones as Regional spares to lessen down time?
There is one area though that I would argue we need to re-visit and that is the use of Single engined machines.
The single turbine is now far more reliable than in years gone by. Why cannot we use such a machine for Rural areas? The checking of vulnerable but key strategic locations? Photographic work etc etc.
I DO NOT advocate abandoning our twin engined policy for the majority of our work, certainly never for the urban and night time conditions which comprise the majority of our time. BUT there are significant savings to be made on some tasks by a single turbine machine.
Tigerfish
(Old grumpy is getting even grumpier )
Last edited by tigerfish; 4th Dec 2009 at 14:20.
Reason: Grammer!