Residents, council question cost of police helicopters
Only 10 weeks ago, the Columbus Division of Police helicopter unit was flying high into a bright future, with officials planning for its sixth decade of operation by phasing in a new chopper model later this year.
But after the George Floyd protests erupted in late May, putting new scrutiny on the militarization and funding of police departments across the nation, the unit is suddenly under a microscope. Some community members are demanding the expensive operation simply fly off into the sunset.
Of the 906 written comments submitted by the public during hearings last month into the division’s operations, 207 of them, or 23%, involved helicopters. Some people say they largely don’t like the noise, the feeling of police surveillance and military operations. But most said they don’t like the high cost — money that could be put toward social programs.
“It definitely feels like the helicopter is omnipresent on the South Side,” said Stephen David, 32, a social worker who moved into Merion Village in 2016 from
Clintonville and immediately noticed the increased amount of time the chopper was circling over his neighborhood.
On his mom’s first visit to his new house, David said she commented: “It sounds like a war zone down here.”
But more than the noise, it’s the money and the lack of a clear police accountability system for such a unique tool that concerns David.
“The real issue is that we’re spending our money on things that are actually not going to get at the heart of the issues that we’re trying to address,” David said. “I’m distrustful of how the city Division of Police uses our tax dollars.”
Where does the money go?
Columbus has made a major financial investment in the helicopter unit, which until recently was at six aircraft, with only sporadic public debate over the benefit. But now one city council member, Elizabeth Brown, has drafted an ordinance that would force the division to sell one of its choppers, bringing the fleet down to four.
The current fivechopper operation, with a brand-new replacement chopper set to arrive this fall, costs taxpayers $6.55 million a year, including the annual cost of rotating in one new $3.5 million helicopter every two years while selling a used one. The unit’s total cost is equivalent to the base salaries of 70 police officers at the top of the nine-year union step schedule of $92,934 a year.
But the division points to a record of airborne crime-solving that has benefited community safety by quickly leading ground officers to shooters and car thieves while eliminating dangerous high-speed car pursuits.
A police helicopter is routinely first on the scene of serious crimes, with an average response time of just over a minute. The choppers can travel across Ohio’s largest city at speeds reaching 150 mph and zoom across Franklin County end-to-end in about nine minutes.
Asked why Columbus police use helicopters, Lt. Jack Harris, the unit’s commander, responded that they are used to “apprehend serious criminals.”
“That’s our mission,” Harris said. “To make the community safer by putting that asset in the air with a trained crew, with the technology to apprehend criminals.”
The helicopters are typically in the air seven days a week from noon until 4 a.m., Harris said, but can be called into service in about 10 to 15 minutes during down times if needed.
On July 5 alone, the unit — flying in the early morning over bursting fireworks from Independence
Day revelers below — was responsible for the arrest of three people in a stolen car who fled from officers trying to pull them over on the Hilltop. The chopper simply followed them to a house, watched them run in the back door and then gave officers the address.
Later that day, another helicopter crew flew to the scene of the fatal shooting of 17-yearold Daimar Bowden in Franklinton. The crew spotted an 18-year-old man calmly walking away from the scene and tracked him until police on the ground arrested Ahmere Little, who is charged with murder. He has pleaded not guilty and is in jail on $1.5 million bond.
Police helicopter video of those July 5 incidents can be found at https:// youtu.be/hjsj8ury7q8 and at https://youtu.be/ YGGKTUNRBUQ.
“The tactical advantage is immeasurable,” Harris said. “We can look at a wide range in a very short amount of time . ... That adds a layer of safety for those (officers) on the ground — everyone on the ground.”
Sometimes, just the arrival of the helicopter is enough to help. A 63-year-old Uber driver thanked the helicopter unit for being there when an angry group of protesters swarmed his car, smashed the windows, dragged him from the vehicle and beat him during a protest Downtown in June. When the helicopter showed up, things settled down.
“The helicopter helped because it stayed hovering right around the scene, and then the police came and people started scattering,” Uber driver Lewis Mcclendon, a cancer survivor, told ABC6 News.
The tiny choppers are about the size of a VW Beetle with rotors, and Harris said the old piston-engine model choppers used in the 1970s even sounded like a Beetle when they started up. Pilots work two two-hour flights a day crammed into them, spending their down time on administrative reports and training.
Under Harris are 20 other pilots, all sworn officers, including three sergeants, whose salaries and benefits make up about 70% of the total annual cost of the helicopter unit. They operate out of a state-of-the-art heliport on the Hilltop that includes 20,000 square feet of hangar space that Harris calls “the sick bay,” where repairs happen.
The helicopters require constant maintenance, which is why the department has five, Harris said.
“Whenever you have five, on a great day you have four,” because one chopper always is out of service for something, including required inspections every 100 hours of flight time, Harris said.
The hangar also has 9,056 square feet of administrative offices and classrooms, including a flight simulator to save on training costs.
The helicopters typically fly at 700 to 900 feet off the ground but must come lower — to around 600 feet — during priority calls, causing more ground noise. But pilots would always prefer to be higher, Harris said, because they are at more risk the lower they go.
“If we do have an engine failure, altitude is your friend in an aircraft,” Harris said, noting photos of forced landings, including one into the Scioto River in 2007 in which both pilots walked away unhurt, are on the walls of the heliport complex. “We want to be as high as we can be and still useful.”
While helicopters weren’t included in a list of banned military-type equipment passed by the City Council last week, Brown’s proposal to limit the number of choppers to four is expected to go before the council next month.
“Four is more than enough in my estimation,” Brown said, noting that the unit should be preserved but that there shouldn’t be an overinvestment “in very expensive equipment” that might be serving to alienate the community it serves.
“Let’s put guardrails in place so we don’t have that antagonistic relationship,” she said.
Four choppers translates into less airtime and longer response times, said Commander Robert Sagle, Harris’ boss.
“We will have to drastically reduce our mission, as four helicopters cannot support our current flight schedule,” Sagle said in an email.
There are times when one chopper is waiting for parts, others are going in for routine inspections and then something breaks on another, and having four would mean more times when all the choppers are grounded at once, Sagle said.
“The rotation not only ensures helicopter availability, but it makes maintenance more predictable and less costly,” Sagle said, urging the city to not rush into this decision. bbush@dispatch.com @Reporterbush