Sid, It appears that you haven't read the previous posts properly and find confrontation where there is none. I commented because someone else on that thread objected to the thought of tax payers' money being wasted by airborne "patrolling". This was always an extremely contentious issue at the unit I flew for. My experience was that we did not ever fly patrols, we were required (for financial reasons) to respond to specific tasks only. The tasks quoted by that person did not come under the description of "patrols, but were examples of more specific reasons to be airborne. Then you jumped in....
Working for the police authority as a contracted pilot (actually, two authorities, ours was a joint ASU), I had absolutely no authority to decide which task to take, or decline, except for safety related reasons. The unit aircraft was flown in accordance with the requirements of the PAOC holder's financial guidelines and after the first year, we (I mean the unit police staff, not the pilots) were told to be very careful with the hours flown towards the end of the financial year, because we were likely to overfly the costed hours. We were told by the PAOC holder himself (the CC) that the unit was being run only on probationary terms.
The unit was usually very busy. In addition to our two counties, we also provided limited tasking for two more adjacent ones (who had no air support of their own at that time), so we covered four counties in all. If we had also flown routine patrols we would have gone way over budget, totally against the wishes of the big boss, the CC!
Your unit was/is obviously running on different terms to the one I worked at. As I hoped you might gather from my response on the other thread (see my comment: "horse for courses"), I have no personal preference or argument over whatever policy the unit worked under, but if it helps you understand my personal viewpoint, I'm quite prepared to fly all day, rather than sit in a boring crewroom.