Small Sheriff's Departments Using Helicopters

On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 08:21:54 GMT, (Mr. MD500) wrote:

I didnt put any words in your mouth but from some of the comments the
implication is law enforcement is allowing unlicensed pilots to fly
PIC. That is simply not the case. Granted, some police pilots are cut
loose with not much experience past a commercial check ride & the
factory course in the aircraft they fly. This is perfectly legal. Just
like commercial aviation, law enforcement has good & not so good
pilots. The vast majority oin both arenas are highly competent.

I honestly don't know if they do. Very unwise, I would say. Who'd trust a
fella that ain't got a license? I sure wouldn't.
TM

--
Toadmonkey: "Now now. Brain popping and world crashing may be hazardous to ones perception of reality.
Very dangerous business that can lead to madness or something worse for some, truth."


Remove "3+4" from addy before replying


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On 22 Aug 2003 17:52:46 GMT, (Davdirect) wrote:

The police dept here had people flying for 2 years with only a private. I
still think it would be wiser to have professional pilots to worry about the
piloting and let the police worry about the policing. When the pilot starts
being too much of a cop and not enough of a pilot is when things will turn
bad. Here's an article praising the cops for finally getting their commercial
tickets:
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll...EWS16/10804009
1/-1/ARCHIVES30

Dave
(20hr student pilot)

One of the topics taught at airborne law enforcement seminars is
cockpit management. There is a strict division of duties between the
flight officer & the pilot. The pilots sole mission is the safe
operation of the aircraft.

Then why require the law enforcement training? Wouldn't it be wiser to have an
experienced pilot than to have an experienced cop who has minimal hours? Am I
not getting something?

Davdirect wrote:

Then why require the law enforcement training? Wouldn't it be wiser to have an
experienced pilot than to have an experienced cop who has minimal hours?

Yes that would be a good presumption.

However the politics of the situation come into play.

If you were a police officer in any city, what would your attitude be
if you knew that you could never be the chief of police, a dog handler,
a supervisor, a trainer, the head of the union, a dispatcher, or
even a helicopter pilot, in your own police department.

Some years ago in British Columbia ( Canada ) a fire department
hired a new chief from outside the department.

In this case I do believe he was the fire marshall for the Province
and his credentials were impeccible and beyod reproach.

But because he wasn't hired from within the department the
firemen and firewomen would not and did not support him
for many, many, many, many years.

Their attitude was.... why should we work our ass off for
ten fifteen years if - when - the job as chief comes up we
won't even be considered.

The chief got death threats, vandalism, his kids suffered, etc.

They made his life miserable.

Someone more familier with that situation can jump in at any time
and correct me on the details. I'm trying not to imbelish the story.

If you spent five years as a police officer for example and wanted to
be a dog handler and your police department would only hire people
who were interested IN BECOMING POLICE OFFICERS and who already
had extensive outside training and experience handling dogs, where
would that leave you.

Why you might have to quite the department, obtain extensive training
with dogs on your own, at your own expense, and then reapply and hoped
you got hired back in.

This actually happened with a police officer I knew some years ago.

He wanted to be a police helicopter pilot and with some years experience
as a police officer he had to quite the force, take his helicopter
training at his own expense, work in the industry for a couple of years
to get some hours under his belt and then reapply.

He was lucky..... They hired him back on as a helicopter pilot.

Davdirect wrote:

Then why require the law enforcement training? Wouldn't it be wiser to have an
experienced pilot than to have an experienced cop who has minimal hours?

If you were a police department what would you rather have.......

An experienced police officer who knew the lay of the land, had worked
the streets, understood exactly what was going on, and had been
trained to fly a helicopter as a police officer pilot.

OR...... An experienced helicopter pilot who had never made an arrest,
worked the streets, or knew what the boys and girls actually went
through down there on the ground...... but was now a sworn in police
officer with a gun at his hip.

What experience is more important to the police department.

If in their wisdom they were to hire YOU off the street and spend tens
of thousands of dollars and many hundreds of hours training YOU to be a
police officer and at the end actually give you a gun with all the
responsibility that it implies. then why wouldn't they take an
experienced police officer and spend tens of thousands of dollars and
hundreds of hours to train them to fly a helicopter with all the
responsibility that it implies.

On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:23:16 GMT, Other side of the COIN
wrote:

Davdirect wrote:

Then why require the law enforcement training? Wouldn't it be wiser to have an
experienced pilot than to have an experienced cop who has minimal hours?

If you were a police department what would you rather have.......

An experienced police officer who knew the lay of the land, had worked
the streets, understood exactly what was going on, and had been
trained to fly a helicopter as a police officer pilot.

OR...... An experienced helicopter pilot who had never made an arrest,
worked the streets, or knew what the boys and girls actually went
through down there on the ground...... but was now a sworn in police
officer with a gun at his hip.

What experience is more important to the police department.

If in their wisdom they were to hire YOU off the street and spend tens
of thousands of dollars and many hundreds of hours training YOU to be a
police officer and at the end actually give you a gun with all the
responsibility that it implies. then why wouldn't they take an
experienced police officer and spend tens of thousands of dollars and
hundreds of hours to train them to fly a helicopter with all the
responsibility that it implies.

I have found I can train a person to be a good safe pilot in much less
time I than I can teach them to be a police officer. If a person goes
to the trouble to go through the police training, work the streets &
go through the BS you have to go through to get in an air unit, it is
far less likely thy will leave a short time later.

In law enforcement I want both members of my flight crew to be cops.
That "low time pilot" flying PIC usually has a high time pilot riding
with him as the other crewmember for some time. He doesn't stay a low
time pilot for long. If you can land a gig as a police pilot, it's a
great job, thus the petty professional jealousy on the issue of
civilian vs. cops for pilots.

My department started its air unit in the 20's The helicopters showed
up in 1967. Since then we have only suffered 1 crash. The cause was
pilot error. The pilot had 20,000+ hours of military & civillian time.
The "low time" guys have never put a scratch on the ships.

Illinois State Police used to have a program called "Air-One". It was 2
Enstrom's roaming the state that were basically leased back to indiviadual
towns for a night or a week at a time. When not roaming a particular town, it
just roamed around the sky's looking for trouble.

The occupants of the aircraft were, one State Trooper and a civilian pilot. If
there was an individual town involved, that person would be flying the left
seat instead of the trooper.

This was a great program. Nabbed a lot of bad guys....then it was nixed by the
state.

I don't think anyone in Illinois uses helicopters anymore.

One side of the COIN wrote in message ...
Davdirect wrote:

Then why require the law enforcement training? Wouldn't it be wiser to have an
experienced pilot than to have an experienced cop who has minimal hours?

Yes that would be a good presumption.

However the politics of the situation come into play.

If you were a police officer in any city, what would your attitude be
if you knew that you could never be the chief of police, a dog handler,
a supervisor, a trainer, the head of the union, a dispatcher, or
even a helicopter pilot, in your own police department.

Some years ago in British Columbia ( Canada ) a fire department
hired a new chief from outside the department.

In this case I do believe he was the fire marshall for the Province
and his credentials were impeccible and beyod reproach.

But because he wasn't hired from within the department the
firemen and firewomen would not and did not support him
for many, many, many, many years.

Their attitude was.... why should we work our ass off for
ten fifteen years if - when - the job as chief comes up we
won't even be considered.

The chief got death threats, vandalism, his kids suffered, etc.

They made his life miserable.

Someone more familier with that situation can jump in at any time
and correct me on the details. I'm trying not to imbelish the story.

If you spent five years as a police officer for example and wanted to
be a dog handler and your police department would only hire people
who were interested IN BECOMING POLICE OFFICERS and who already
had extensive outside training and experience handling dogs, where
would that leave you.

Why you might have to quite the department, obtain extensive training
with dogs on your own, at your own expense, and then reapply and hoped
you got hired back in.

This actually happened with a police officer I knew some years ago.

He wanted to be a police helicopter pilot and with some years experience
as a police officer he had to quite the force, take his helicopter
training at his own expense, work in the industry for a couple of years
to get some hours under his belt and then reapply.

He was lucky..... They hired him back on as a helicopter pilot.

I was on a Sheriff's Department and no one gave a crap about what
experience you had as to flying helis. It was all politics. There
were heli-rated deputies that couldn't get the time of day from the
air unit. They'd take non-pilots that kissed enough ass or whose
buddies were already there and spend a fortune taking them from zero
time to pilot at monstrous expense, totally ignoring the guys that
already had heli ratings. One clown they pushed up the ladder was
found not to have sufficient training after he rolled a heli and
killed his partner. There were a few new openings in the air unit
after that one, especially for supervisors.

KJSDCAUSA

On 26 Aug 2003 22:56:39 -0700, (Ken Sandyeggo)
wrote:


I was on a Sheriff's Department and no one gave a crap about what
experience you had as to flying helis. It was all politics. There
were heli-rated deputies that couldn't get the time of day from the
air unit. They'd take non-pilots that kissed enough ass or whose
buddies were already there and spend a fortune taking them from zero
time to pilot at monstrous expense, totally ignoring the guys that
already had heli ratings. One clown they pushed up the ladder was
found not to have sufficient training after he rolled a heli and
killed his partner. There were a few new openings in the air unit
after that one, especially for supervisors.

KJSDCAUSA

Man, Ive seen that before. You hit the nail right on the head. When it
come to getting that police flying job, experience means zero. Butt
kissing is everything. There are some real qualified people running
police air units but there are some that have people with no aviation
background running things & they wonder why they have problems.

"One side of the COIN" wrote in message
...
Davdirect wrote:

Then why require the law enforcement training? Wouldn't it be wiser to
have an
experienced pilot than to have an experienced cop who has minimal hours?

Yes that would be a good presumption.

However the politics of the situation come into play.

If you were a police officer in any city, what would your attitude be
if you knew that you could never be the chief of police, a dog handler,
a supervisor, a trainer, the head of the union, a dispatcher, or
even a helicopter pilot, in your own police department.


Hiring experienced pilots off the street should not necessarily preclude
anyone from within the department from becoming pilots themselves and moving
into the aviation unit. Of those jobs listed (dog handler, dispatcher, etc),
how many require the level of training of a pilot? It's a bit of an apples
and oranges comparison.

On the issue of the responsibility of carrying a gun vs flying an aircraft:
I agree, both come with a lot of responsibility. However, the tone of some
of the posts here indicate that some consider it more important for a police
pilot to have experience carrying a gun than actually flying an aircraft. A
very myopic and dangerous view. I would ask the question, how many times do
the pilots in any given police air unit find themselves in need of their
weapon? For instance, I often see road signs stating "Speed Limit Enforced
By Aircraft", however, I have yet to see any police aircraft pull someone
over, land, shut down, police officer pilot get out, and write a ticket. I
can see possible scenarios where a pilot might land and let the observer get
out and make/assist with an arrest.

Flying with two pilots (vice a pilot and an observer) would allow for a less
experienced pilot to learn from those with more experience, and they may
find themselves in a situation where one might need a gun. However, for
those flying single pilot with an observer, a more experienced pilot is
going to make for a safer operation. Put yourself in an observer's shoes,
would you rather fly with pilot with maybe 250-300 hours who just got their
commerical rating, or a pilot with 2000 hours? Ask the taxpayers who they
want flying their aircraft.


"One side of the COIN" Later went on to say:

If you were a police department what would you rather have.......

An experienced police officer who knew the lay of the land, had worked
the streets, understood exactly what was going on, and had been
trained to fly a helicopter as a police officer pilot.

OR...... An experienced helicopter pilot who had never made an arrest,
worked the streets, or knew what the boys and girls actually went
through down there on the ground...... but was now a sworn in police
officer with a gun at his hip.

What experience is more important to the police department.


As has been stated in this thread, politics, more than anything, drives the
decision about who becomes a police pilot. Unfortunately, politics and
policies are often controlled by people with little to no knowledge of
aviation.

One law enforcement agency that hires people to be pilots is the US Customs
Service. Yes, you attend their academy (16 weeks, I think), become a sworn
officer, and carry a gun. Then you go straight to an aviation unit. There is
nothing that states that a Customs officer could not become a pilot, if they
meet the flight time minimums.

I think it could be argued effectively that an experienced pilot, especially
one with a military background (no slight intended toward civilian pilots),
could learn a patrolman's job faster than a patrolman could become a
pilot's. Some in this thread may disagree, but I'll stand by my statement.