At least the amount of energy appearing in the eye aboard an aircraft that's at least 100s of meters from a mW laser is not likely to permanently damage vision.
It can certainly distract and dazzle, which remains a very serious matter.
"Looking away" isn't as easy as it sounds, as the eye can track to point at bright lights by reflex.
At least the sort of nice imaging turrets on police helicopters should be good for
providing very clear evidence against the perpetrators. I understand a handheld spectrograph can be used for additional confirmation that the pointer confiscated matches the one pointed at the aircraft (I left a note to that on the other thread on lasers).