Sky Cops : Hovering at 500 Feet, Searchlights Glaring, Airborne Lawmen Have Their Own Perspective on Crime

THE RADIO IN helicopter Air Unit 22 crackles again. She’s Deputy George Collins grimaces as the static-riddled dis patch slams through his earphones. A paper-company warehouse door is reported ajar in Carson. Pilot Dave Wyse banks the noisy craft off to the right at 130 m.p.h., rotor blades thumping the Friday-night sky over the Los Angeles basin. Collins draws heavily on a Salem, slides his half-glasses down his nose, and studies a Thomas Bros. map spread across his knees.

“135th Street,” he directs. “It’s the one over there, with the loading docks.” He points through the helicopter’s generous windshield, and Wyse swings over the enormous property as police ground units arrive. Collins fingers the searchlight, and suddenly a 30-foot circle of intensely white light flushes out the cover of night--and anything trying to hide in it. Wyse pulls into a 500-foot-high hover, thrusting the nose down to pivot on the cone of light. Collins sweeps the periphery with the searchlight, then trains it on the roof. Everything is clean.

It could be a false alarm, or a burglar could be lurking within. In this part of town, at this time of night, much worse things have happened. Collins discusses options with the ground-unit sergeant. The size of the warehouse makes a foot search unwise, and the deputies decide to call for a Compton Police Department K-9 backup to investigate the premises within.

“We got a poochie coming,” Collins radios down. “We’ll stay here until they’ve finished, or until we get called away.” Wyse holds the helicopter in its tight, unnatural pitch. It feels like a loop-de-loop ride stuck at the apex of its orbit. In the black night sky physical orientation is elusive, and airsickness comes with the territory. Halfway through the K-9 search, the property otherwise secure, Collins deciphers another noisy radio dispatch, and the helicopter’s services are wrenched from Carson to Rosecrans and Matthisen avenues in Compton, where an officer is in foot pursuit of a street-robbery suspect.

For the Los Angeles County Sheriff ‘s Aero Bureau, this night’s shift began quietly, just as the previous two Friday nights had. As George Collins packed his rotund frame into a rumpled jump suit, he remembered that this was Friday the 13th. Squashing the last of his pre-flight cigarette into the Tarmac, he ducked under the whirring rotor blades of Air Unit 22. Strapping himself into place beside Deputy Dave Wyse, the Aero Bureau’s most senior helicopter-patrol observer hoped that business would pick up.

“Our purpose up here is to be a second set of eyes,” Collins says, as the crew swings northward out of Long Beach, where the Aero Bureau is based. “And we are good at it because our perspective is so much better. We are cops first, aviation specialists second.” Affable and cheerful, Collins peppers his conversation with laughter.

“As many times as we become involved in a pursuit, or contain a burglary suspect, our mere presence is a deterrent to crime,” he lectures. He fiddles with the radio, which is equipped with a 20-agency scanner, and receives a heavy dose of static. “This is the worst radio I’ve ever seen.”

Wyse nods. By nature and the demands of his job, he is the quieter partner, serious and methodical. Concentration is critical to finding the haphazard flight patterns he must follow. His aircraft is not monitored by the FAA and is required to fly under the see-and-be-seen rule of the air. He monitors air-traffic-control frequencies and scans the cloudless skies for traffic.

Near Los Angeles International Airport, this aerial freeway fills with weekend commuter traffic. On its landing approach, one Korean Air Lines 747 flies so close that we can see the windows along its powder-blue fuselage. Downtown helicopter patrols must navigate around skyscraping monuments whose mirrored facades reflect the aircraft’s startling proximity. If people are working late in their offices, they’d better have nothing to hide. Private helicopters flying at about the same altitude (1,000 feet) wear out the flight path between downtown helipads and the airport, ferrying bank checks for overnight delivery to the East Coast. Add to the traffic numerous private fixed-wing craft and a few thousand electrical pylons, and Wyse can be excused from casual patter.

In the Carson-Lynwood corridor, low-income neighborhoods are sandwiched between expanses of industrial development that lie at the bottom of the bowl of oil-refinery soup. This is hard urban country. Something about the predictably dark presence of a cemetery below, and adjacent nursery, grabs Collins’ attention. “Let’s go down for a look,” he suggests, and Wyse drops to a 500-foot hover. A car parked along the road separating the lots is dimly visible. The searchlight blasts away the shadows. A man standing with his back to the car, facing the empty black landscape, looks around sheepishly. Collins snuffs the light.

“This is a popular place to drag race. Car thieves sometimes bring vehicles here for stripping,” he explains. “But that guy was only relieving himself.”

An untrained eye would never even have perceived a car down there; from the helicopter’s perspective, the terrain and everything on it looks bogus, like an architectural scale model. But Collins, with 12 years as a professional voyeur, can tell in a glance if someone is answering a call to crime or to nature. His ability to figure, airborne, street coordinates from a road map, to interpret the behavior of individuals moving in the dark several hundred feet below, and, when necessary, to direct dozens of ground units simultaneously, is wrought from years as a student of human attitudes and topography.

There’s no substitute for experience, Collins promises. It’s what enables one helicopter on routine patrol (as opposed to search-and-rescue missions) to support the call-for-services activities of dozens of ground units over an eight-hour shift.

“If we’re providing support for a ground unit,” Collins says, “when the cop stops his car, I can tell if he’s feeling uneasy about the situation by just reading his body language.” Part of that is having shared the experience. All airborne units require flight personnel to have had experience as ground-patrol officers before their applications to fly are considered. Collins’ interest in helicopter patrol was aroused “when they got my butt out of a jam in Pico Rivera. A couple of gang bangers had moved between me and my car, and it wasn’t looking good. The helicopter landed right in the street and dispersed the crowd. Soon after, I put in my request for transfer to this division.”

Only in extreme circumstances does a police helicopter land in the line of duty. One such situation presented itself to the LAPD a year and a half ago, when the observer spotted obvious distress inside a car parked on Mulholland Drive. The officers interrupted a rape in progress and made the arrest.

Universal among cops who fly, apart from a reverential belief in the effectiveness of their craft, is a loyalty to the airborne force that goes beyond the usual professional bonding within cop society. Pushing a helicopter to its limits takes skill and sometimes guts. The ability to meet the psychological demands of the job is a tricky formula that engenders a special interdependence among those who can decipher it. Think of combat troops. Notes one air unit commander: “They fill in each other’s sentences when they describe a pursuit, or how they maneuvered a containment.”

Competition for airborne law-enforcement jobs also elevates the winners into an artificially closed club. In 1986, 20 people within the LAPD, all of whom had pilot’s licenses, applied for membership in the Air Support Division (ASD), which numbers 74 police officers. There were no openings. Only one observer out of 60 applicants was chosen to join the ranks. Most units require pilot applicants to come equipped with licenses but subject them to additional training, as they do observers.

When Air Unit 22 is called away from the possible paper-company break-in, it finds an even bigger incident at Rosecrans and Matthisen. Nine police cars, four of them unmarked, have converged on a possible “duster,” a robbery suspect who had been observed tossing what looked like PCP into the bushes. The helicopter assumes its nose-down, circling surveillance. Collins hunkers forward, peering through the windshield. Awash in light, a man is face down on the sidewalk, hands cuffed behind him. The ground units, having disarmed the suspect, aren’t sure if there is an accomplice. They request that the helicopter remain, its lights ablaze, until the immediate neighborhood has been thoroughly searched.

Collins opens up the loudspeaker. His voice bellows down threateningly: “We have dogs looking for you. Come out now. The dogs will find you. The dogs will bite you.”

No response. Collins, who recognizes individual dogs by the method of their search, directs the blast of light to the more experienced hound, who is digging through a pile of rubbish at the side of a house.

The helicopter spins above, its tremendous blade slap and intrusive searchlight keeping area residents indoors. After 30 minutes of this--and without spotlighting an accomplice--Collins and Wyse are suddenly dispatched to Firestone Park, where a sheriff ‘s unit making a routine bar check has seen something in the back that looks suspiciously like a narcotics deal.

But there’s no action. All is well, and the helicopter is released. Wyse murmurs into his mike to an unseen controller and lifts off to check out reported prowlers on Hope Street in Huntington Park.

It’s quiet there too. Collins picks a path for Wyse, the searchlight sweeping out patches of lawn. A helicopter’s superior position aloft enables it to track someone’s progress by following impressions made on grass--a set of fresh footprints is visible from the air for 30 or 40 minutes. From the ground, such a depression is indistinct--it can be a footprint, or it can be an impression left by a napping cat.

“You can tell suspects who have been chased by a helicopter before,” Collins says. “They stick to the pavement, or to dirt. And they always turn right. I wonder why they do that?” He laughs, nudging Wyse. They shrug in tandem.

Tonight, Collins and Wyse set down at Compton Airport for a quick break. They have radioed ahead to a Compton Police Department sergeant, who meets them at the closed landing strip, bearing sweet rolls. Conversation about the imminent delivery of Compton’s first helicopter ensues. The department is on the brink of joining the ranks of the airborne.

But sky cops don’t talk numbers; they talk shop. “We’re just a bunch of technicians who all know each other,” says San Bernardino County’s Deputy Chief Terry Jagerson. They trade ideas about where to get rotor blades for less than $18,000 a pop; about how to cope with wind and the disorientation of night flying. Says Jagerson: “Hangar talk is important, because we all share the same sky. We’re just like pilots at TWA.”

Twenty-one years ago, the Los Angeles County Sheriff ‘s Department, whose jurisdiction covers the county’s unincorporated areas, was the first police agency in Southern California to deploy helicopters in routine patrol. Today, two-thirds of the 63 law-enforcement agencies in California with airborne divisions call Southern California home.

Wyse, with an affinity for the technical, wants to talk about Huntington Beach’s state-of-the-art, $500,000 McDonnell Douglas 500-E turbine craft, a “flying Porsche.” Its four-blade tail rotor reduces not only the volume of noise generated but also its character. The relatively few complaints airborne law-enforcement departments receive generally relate to helicopter noise. The McDonnell Douglas 500-E, Wyse notes with some envy, hums, a sound that dissipates faster than the “whapping” of traditional blades, whose rotation actually creates mini-sonic booms. Huntington Beach--considered by Wyse and Collins the most technologically advanced Air Unit in Southern California--has equipped its deluxe model with gyro-stabilized binoculars and a Forward Looking Infrared system that enhances night vision (see Page 27).

It’s not important now that the Sheriff ‘s Department was the first to employ the infrared system--its unit is down for repair. Competition among airborne agencies is a more subliminal element of the bon vivance that comes with membership in this fraternity. Without conceding a crime-fighting edge to the flashy hardware set, techno-crazed cops still envy their budget-blessed brethren. “Sometimes we feel like the junior varsity with our antiquated equipment,” says Sheriff ‘s Aero Bureau Sgt. Doug Travis. “But we have comparable arrest records.”

Wyse ingeniously assembled the effectively powerful searchlight on Air Unit 22 from four ordinary floodlight bulbs and a supply of spare parts. It delivers 1 million candlepower--300 times more light than a halogen automobile headlight. The LAPD can’t complain about its single-bulb Nightsun, which produces a whopping 30 million candlepower. But it would sure like to have more than the two new helicopters it has been authorized to buy this year. Collins and Wyse have a hard time feeling sorry for the LAPD; tonight this crew would be happy with a radio that works properly.

Emerging technology provides helicopters with sophisticated navigational systems and mobile digital terminals currently in use in ground-patrol vehicles--coveted objects in airborne law enforcement. Tonight, Collins and Wyse are flying a much older version of the San Bernardino County Sheriff ‘s Department’s new Hughes 500. They are flying the oldest ship in the fleet, the oldest of its type still flying anywhere. Like all flyboys, they harbor a fondness for the latest gadgetry, but what strikes an outsider is not the tool, but the use of it.

Fear is not a common currency in these conversations. Crowded skies, ground hazards and the criminal element come with the badge, but only one fatal accident has ever been notched into the ranks of routine helicopter patrols. Last March two Costa Mesa officers and a civilian were killed in a midair collision as one agency was handing over the pursuit of an allegedly stolen vehicle to another. There have been other fatalities in helicopters, but they were caused by equipment failure or weather conditions. Danger, or the illusion of it, is a durable glue that holds these cops together. Nearly every cop has a story.

Collins’ developed at 600 feet when the engine failed. “It messed me up psychologically for a while, but you can get hurt or killed doing just about anything.”

Some situations are beyond the reach of the law. In April a beer bottle pierced the aluminum “skin” on the door of an LAPD Jet Ranger hovering above a street party in Montecito Heights. Collins and Wyse have been fired at from the ground a number of times but have never been seriously injured. “It’s difficult to hit a moving craft,” Collins explains, chuckling, “and they are notoriously bad shots.”

Collins and Wyse pitch their plastic foam cups into the wastebasket and head back into the night. On a pass over Ham Memorial Park, a favorite of Lynwood-area gangs, Collins waves the cigarette smoke from his face and squints out the window. “Can you bring it down?” he asks Wyse. “I think that’s Strawberry. Let’s light him up and get him off my street.” Wyse maneuvers into position. “Good boy, pumpkin,” Collins says. But the radio is buzzing; Air 22 hasn’t time to flirt with a transvestite prostitute whom Collins has, unbelievably, recognized by his frizzy red wig.

Collins and Wyse are asked to track an erratically moving car, but by the time they are able to identify him as a “deuce,” the possibly drunk driver has stopped at the side of a residential street. Collins watches him toss a paper bag into an adjacent yard and walk away just as a patrol car pulls up. He relays the information to the cops below, who will probably cite the driver for having an open container. Wyse swings the helicopter back to Long Beach to refuel.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff ‘s Aero Bureau is nearly empty at midnight. Wyse heads for the maintenance hangar, and Collins lumbers into the kitchen to brew some coffee and catch up on his logs. Several other pilots and observers from Air Units 20 and 21 drift in and out of the lounge, pausing to slam numbered balls against the cushions of a pool table set center stage.

“We’re like an old flying club,” Collins says. “Different, I understand, from how things go at LAPD.”

True enough. The ASD in downtown Los Angeles is a spit-and-polish outfit. An electric shoe shiner sits in the corner of the briefing room. You can see your face in the pilots’ high-gloss boots. Electronically wired flight helmets are carried in special bags, like bowling balls. A sign on the wall of a lieutenant’s office reads, “Join the Marine Corps! Become a Pilot! Travel to exotic places! Meet interesting and exciting people: and kill them!”

The Los Angeles Police Department’s huge ASD dispatches helicopters on 40,000 calls a year and patrols 19 hours a day (they’re off from about 5 a.m. to 9 a.m.; the Sheriff ‘s Department patrols from about 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., restricted to a night watch by budget considerations). The LAPD officers are a guarded group around outsiders. They don’t talk much, don’t exude the same sense of adventure as these two sheriffs, who are older and a good deal frumpier. Where the sheriffs are forthcoming, the LAPD is cautious. When asked about previous experience, one ASD pilot indicated he had flown for “another government agency.” When pressed, he admitted it was the Drug Enforcement Agency, quickly adding, “but that was another time and not important now.”

“I guess LAPD has the reputation of being a more militaristic outfit than us.” Collins shrugs, sipping his coffee and attending to his paper work. He rubs his eyes, grateful that today is now Saturday, that he may drive home to Norco, to sleep, when the shift ends at 4 a.m. With his jump suit unzipped halfway down his chest, glasses perched studiously on his nose, Collins is an avuncular presence who looks not so much a crime fighter as a soft touch whose children get away with murder. After work most days, in fact, he beats the sun to West Covina, where he moonlights as a skating-arena attendant, trading hours for his gifted daughter’s ice time.

Sixteen-year department veteran Dave Wyse pulls on his helmet for the second hop. A shortish, squat man, he stretches and rubs the small of his back. “Everybody who flies helicopters has back problems,” he says. The cockpit of a helicopter, especially one as old as Air Unit 22, is something less than ergonomically sound. Its unforgiving confinement, incessant vibration and suffusing noise are simply occupational hazards.

Wyse echoes the refrain: “But this is the only way to fight crime. I’d rather be doing this than anything else.”

He heads into the still night and cranks up the Hughes. Collins gathers his notes, helmet, glasses and cigarettes. He follows, ready again to track bad guys from above.