Criteria For Responding to Police Requests

[OWAP]

As an Observer at a Police Air Support Unit I was curious as to other Units criteria for responding to Police Communications requests when the helicopter is at base. Do you have criteria? E.g. how old the job is, type of offence committed. Who decides on what you respond to? E.g. permanent operations manager or observer/crewperson.

Currently we don’t operate with any criteria and we constantly receive criticism from ground units for not making ourselves available, even though the response on these occasions would be just a token gesture on our part.

We are unable to operate 24 hours in the air due to cost but are only partially restricted (distance from base) when on the ground to respond to requests.

[Thomas coupling]

OWAP: can I suggest you direct these relatively sensitive queries to other police forces via e-mail, or PM those who you know are police on this forum. I suspect some may not want to divulge company policy in public. It's not secret or anything, but I beleive you'd get a more comprehensive response privately.
PM me if you want further info...

[OWAP]

I understand what you are saying and have stewed over placing this post. I would like to know if generally if responses are criteria based. No one has to tell me where he or she is from.

I could e-mail people around the world but that would have the same effect of who I am, since our department does not trust us with e-mail or the internet.

If possible a general yes or no answer, and if any person is willing to expand it would be appreciated. If not I will try other means.

Thanks

[Droopy]

Not to be too brusque about it, but if you need to rely on criteria rather than judgement and experience then it sounds as if your force has a selection/training problem. Your third paragraph sums up most of the life on any air support unit - a constant battle to balance the utilisation of the resource against the validity of the requests.

[B Sousa]

Thomas Coupling. You make the statement sound like things that the Police do are really secret. Remember one of the biggest Oxymorons in the world is "Police Intelligence"
As I have mentioned before, a good site for Law Enforcement to pose these questions is via www.alea.org If you are an official respresentative of the Police you will be allowed to join and can enter into a wealth of information. Many from the UK are involved.
Good Luck

[Shawn Coyle]

B Sousa:
I have to respectfully disagree with you. There are a number of things that may appear to be an attempt at secrecy, but are really a desire not to give the game away to those who are less than scrupulous.
Banks don't tell you all the ways they make sure that cheques (or checks depending on your spelling preference) are genuine, nor do they tell you all the ways they have of stopping bank robbers.
The police are no different - not from a desire to be secretive, but from a desire to not make their difficult job more difficult.
And most of them are pretty intelligent - sometimes senior rank involves a lobotomy, but that's the same in any big organization.

[HeliMark]

OWAP, there is no set answer to your question. You have to take what hours you are allowed to fly and attempt to use it on the incidents where you can be of most use. You have to use your experiance to know which to ones they would be.

You will never satisfy the ground guys all the time. I fly five to six hours a shift and still get the ground guys complaining that we are not available. Or that there is not another ship to help, or why should you have time to eat, or leave when it is a mess on the ground just because you do not have any fuel on board and no second ship to relieve you. The list goes on and on.

Remember, it may be a "token gesture" to the ground guys, but the crooks see it as one reason not to do anything in that area as it will be more difficult to get away. Showing the "flag" has a lot of psycological effect on them.

[SASless]

Crikey....five or six hours per shift.....sooth....how do you get yer Uckers played with all that commotion going on? Why that would cut into one's tea breaks.....why the stickys would get hard and stale. Don't tell me they refuse to let yer have yer kips too? Now then, I would be filing me a grievance I would! Why heavens....missing both daily episodes of Jerry Springer....that is grounds for a work action in my view!

Better go back to offshore flying mate.....the routine is better!

[B Sousa]

Shawn
Disagree is good, but 27 years in the game and I can tell you anyone with more than an 80 IQ knows the game and the fact that the COPS have rules and the Bad guys dont... Its why we have things called "Repeat Offenders"
Most of Law Enforcement involvement is "after the fact" versus planning ahead. I have put more than one resident in that place to the west of you....Tehachapi.
If something was seriously a secret and was being discussed on this forum by Law Enforcement folks, it would be grounds for dismissal and/or prosecution.
Bert
(As Acknowledged in "The Tin Man" by Dale Brown)

[OWAP]

HliMark,

Thanks for the reply. I understand what you are saying. Unfortunately we have a 4 million population and 900,000 sq kilometers of state to play with. Our metropolitan area to cover is one of the largest in the world with over 3 million people. We don’t run a dedicated 24 hours Police coverage, but have access to a helicopter which can respond.

My concern with a response that is unable to attend within an appropriate time, observers and pilots can become 'bored' knowing we are just a token gesture. If that’s what we are constantly doing the operation will become inefficient.

I know what the next bright spark will comment. Well if your bored move out of that area. Not that simple. Training is a large slice of any operation. The higher the turn over the larger the training budget. To adequately train any observer to full profiency takes anywhere between 15 months to two years. The pilots it can take up to one year to train and recruit.

I am trying to think of some sort of balance. Something where members know where they stand. We sat down in our office the other day trying to think of another squad within our department that does not have some form of 'criteria'. We believe we are the only ones who don’t. Any person in any walk of life wants to know here they stand.

Would other police aviation units be surprised that the man on the street can call for our unit to attend an offender decamped (nothing stolen) that would take us 20 minutes to be overhead. This is when we are on the ground. Is this the norm? I know for Australia we would be the only state that has this response (maybe one other may be heading down this path)

I may be completely wrong with what I have asked. That’s why I asked the question. I understand it is not that simple to answer without all the information on our operation. A simple yes or know would help. If anyone could elaborate slightly this would be better.

To some point it is a training/selection but there are other complications how you explain lowest safe altitudes and its legislation, holding fuel for alternates and even the limitation of some equipment to almost 10,000 police members. We have a hard enough time explaining this information to some of our commanders. Street members have more important information to learn for day to day operations.

For those of you that have commented on secrecy to let you know nothing I have commented about is not on the public record or with a slight amount of investigating could not be found out.

[HeliMark]

OWAP, a good way of maybe answering your question is to go to www.alea.org. They have several operation manuals from different departments. That may help you.

What you are talking about is what I complain about, and have heard numerous times from pilots/observers from other police departments. Unfortunately it is not new, and is an ongoing battle for all of us.

If you want a more detailed answer to your last posting, you can pm me and I would be happy to respond.