Local board member in gun for comments on Eagle’s night-flying
An Auckland local board member has come under fire after suggestions the police Eagle helicopter was a “nuisance” flying over the Remuera area too often at night on its way to attend jobs in South Auckland.
He is calling for police to review the criteria for the chopper to fly at night, saying they should only be attending “higher level” incidents so residents’ sleep is less interrupted by the chopper going to incidents south of the posh suburb.
But police say no way — the helicopter will stay.
On Wednesday night a post appeared on the Remuera Residents Association Facebook page about “nuisance” night flights.
Locals were asked to email Ora¯kei ¯ local board member Troy Churton with their experiences.
One of the “primary areas of concern” raised in the post was the “proliferation of helicopter nuisance mostly from police between 9pm6am flying over Remuera to get to the 75 per cent of their attendances that are South Auckland located”.
The post was sent to the Herald by a number of people who described it as “arrogant”, “awful” and “extremely offensive”.
In September last year the Eagle helicopter began operating 24/7 to enable “essential support” to on-theground staff.
Churton said since then, he had “consistently” raised the “degree of nuisance factor” with the police.
Churton said from “personal observation based on audits I have been keeping” most of the flights over Remuera went to South Auckland.
“I totally endorse using choppers any time of the day or night if the level of incident was higher level — armed burglaries, riots, rapists on the run, drug-running and so on.” But he suggested a higher “threshold” when it came to night jobs.
Auckland Police operations and support manager Inspector Peter Gibson said the Eagle was a “vital and extremely effective police resource” that was used to not only assist in catching offenders, but also in responding to other critical events.
“These include countless rescues and searches to help locate missing individuals,” he said.
Gibson said Churton’s assertion about South Auckland crime was wrong.
“The figure quoted by this person is highly inaccurate, with around 43 per cent of jobs attended by Eagle since it moved to 24/7 being located in the Counties Manukau District.”