UK NPAS discussion thread: Mk 4

[G0ULI]

ShyTorque
I can only speak from experience in the Met, but helicopters were routinely tasked to monitor marches, football match crowds, the Notting Hill Carnival, civil disturbance, car pursuits, searches of woodland and scheduled tasking for aerial mapping and other purposes. Since it was London, these were all pretty much daily occurences. As to hovering over housing estates at night, if the helicopter was airborne and available, they would frequently assist ground units in the pursuit of suspects through housing estates and this often entailed hovering over or circling a fixed point on the ground until the suspects were apprehended or lost, which might be half an hour or more. The residents of the posher parts frequently rang to complain and were told to address their complaints to the CAA. The CAA would refer the complainants back to the police and so it went round and round. Admittedly this was a good few years ago and helicopters have generally become a lot quieter and can operate at greater distances from the ground. London is a difficult zone for helicopter ops generally because of the control zone height restrictions for all the local airports. I doubt that things have changed a great deal over the years. There have been comments elsewhere in the thread by others that suggest that flying police helicopters is a way of "showing the flag" to residents of certain areas. As to whether those comments are true, or in any way an official policy, I haven't any knowledge.

Thinking about this a bit further, the pattern of criminal activity across any city would tend to result in police helicopters returning more frequently to particular areas. This may well give the residents of those areas the impression that they were being deliberately singled out for harrassment by police helicopters. Just a thought.