Oh dear, another silly slanging match. I have no experience of the police and havent a clue which side is correct, but surely if a public service is spending this amount of money they should be properly audited and there should be an independent assessment of efficacy. How often does air support make the difference in achieving an arrest that otherwise would not have occurred? How often does air support find a missing person who would not have otherwise have been found in a reasonable time? What would be the saving if air support were only used for the really naughty people we apparently cant be told about? Does this data exist?
And how about a serious consideration of drones? No not toy quadricopters to take pictures of the royals but serious helicopter replacements like these which were so impressively presented recently at the RAeS?
https://medium.com/frontier-technolo...y-5a3c88abd96a