Sky Patrol : Arm of the Law Goes to New Heights Through Helicopter Units in LAPD’s Air Support Division

The white sedan swerved suddenly to the right, sped down a Santa Monica Freeway off-ramp, made a hard right turn and pulled abruptly to the curb. The three unmarked Los Angeles police cars that had been following discreetly coasted to a stop at the top of the off-ramp.

“He’s tail conscious,” pilot Dave Gomez said over the helicopter intercom. “But he won’t see them because they’ve stopped, and he won’t see us because he isn’t looking up here.”

“Up here” was 1,000 feet overhead, positioned at an altitude and viewing angle that made it highly improbable that the suspected drug dealer would either see or hear the orbiting LAPD helicopter.

The white sedan began to move again, and for the next 10 minutes, Air Eight gave surreptitious chase, keeping the suspect in view while reporting the sedan’s erratic progress to the pursuing police cars.

Twice, the suspect looped around the block in an effort to see whether anyone was behind him. Each time, Air Eight warned the police cars so they could keep out of sight. The white sedan’s zig-zag route finally led to a house on the Westside. Air Eight reported the location to the ground units.

‘He’s Gone Home’

“He’s gone home,” a detective in one of the unmarked cars radioed back. “Thanks for your help.”

This surveillance--some details were changed because the case is still under investigation--was a typical job for Air Eight, one of three helicopter units the LAPD keeps in the air 18 hours a day seven days a week to “help the good guys catch the bad guys,” in the words of the Air Support Division commander, Capt. Robert O. Woods.

“We’re up there because we can see the suspects, the victims, the witnesses,” Woods said. “We can see everything.”

And everything--in a city with the size and diversity of Los Angeles--covers a lot. The two-man helicopter crews--pilot and observer--see dozens of crimes being committed or situations in which crimes appear about to be committed as they fly their 2-hour shifts over the city.

There are car thieves working feverishly in alleys, stripping purloined Porsches down to their frames. There are gang members loitering in parks, waiting for drug deals to jell. There are attacks on street corners, robberies in parking lots, rapes in the isolated canyons of Griffith Park.

The helicopter units, equipped with 33-million candlepower “Night Sun” spotlights that can trap a furtive nighttime suspect in a dazzling pool of light, are manned by veterans of at least three years of street patrol--officers who have become astute observers of human behavior.

Distinguishing Traits

They have noted that people in stolen cars, for example, tend to drive fast, run red lights and otherwise distinguish themselves from other, more innocent motorists.

“Most drivers aren’t bothered if they see us,” said Bob Baker, one of the pilots. “But if a car thief thinks we’re watching him, he may just pull over to the curb, get out and start walking. One thing, he won’t bother to lock the car before he leaves. Another thing, he won’t walk to the closest house or the one next to it. He’ll just keep on walking.”

Their aerial perch also gives the crews a rare view of some of the more pleasant aspects of the Los Angeles Basin, many of them largely invisible to the earthbound observer.

There’s movie mogul Steven Spielberg’s immense mansion under construction behind a Westside golf course and the busy excavation shaft for the Metro Rail subway behind buildings in the Wilshire District. There are the encampments of the homeless in overgrown parks and freeway greenswards, and the wild goats that roam the brushy mountainside behind the Hollywood sign.

And there are the sunbathers--a considerable disappointment to those expecting a titillating glimpse of nudity. “We’re up so high you usually can’t even tell what sex they are,” Woods said.

The 15 helicopters and 75 officers of the LAPD Air Support Division--the largest airborne municipal law enforcement system in the world--are based atop the city’s C. Erwin Piper Technical Center, a great jumble of masonry on the north side of the Hollywood Freeway, just west of the Los Angeles River.

Roof Heliport

The flat roof of the building is a heliport, surmounted by a squat control tower. Tucked away inside is a comfortable squad room, replete with airplane seats, aerial photos and aviation plaques that make it reminiscent of a World War II bomber group briefing room.

The rumpled coveralls and light banter of the flight crews lend a casual atmosphere, but the side arms in shoulder holsters remind a visitor that the work can be deadly serious.

Although gunfire is never directed from the helicopters, the crews must occasionally swoop down to make arrests on the ground or deposit special weapons and tactics teams at the site of a police siege.

And while gunfire is not directed from

the helicopters, it frequently is directed at them.

“We’ve been shot at hundreds of times,” Woods said. “A lot of people get p.o.’d at a lot of things, and they just start shooting. Fortunately, we’re a pretty tough target to hit.”

In April, 1985, however, a distraught aerospace engineer with an 8-millimeter rifle finally scored the first hits, over Pacific Palisades. One bullet passed through the engine cowling without causing damage. The other hit a critical component.

“The tail rotor shaft, which is hollow, no thicker than your thumb, is spinning at 6,000 r.p.m. and a bullet went right through the middle of it,” Woods said. “A little to either side, and the shaft would have broken. But it didn’t break, and they got down fine.”

Later Suicide

The man with the gun later committed suicide.

More than guns, the air crews fear power lines, which are so difficult to spot from aloft that the airmen have memorized their locations. Most of the lines top out below 300 feet, well under the usual patrol altitude of between 500 and 1,200 feet.

“When you are low, you look for the poles, which you can see,” Woods said. “You never fly between the poles because that’s where the wires are, which you can’t see.”

In March, 1983, a helicopter taking off from a field command post in the South-Central area struck a power line and crashed. While no one died in the crash, a reserve officer was killed by the rotor blade as he went to the aid of an injured companion.

Woods said that was one of five fatal accidents the Air Support Division has suffered since its inception. And while five is far too many, he said, the LAPD’s overall helicopter accident rate still works out to only about .6 mishaps per 100,000 flying hours--far below the worldwide average of about 12 per 100,000--since the force first took to the air in 1956. That was the year a couple of LAPD motorcycle officers who knew how to fly the thing started going aloft in a city helicopter during rush hours to monitor traffic. Four years later, police began to use the craft as a general observation post.

“Then, in 1968, the city contracted with NASA for a study on the use of helicopters in the urban environment,” Woods said.

NASA found that when the helicopters were aloft, providing observation and guidance for the LAPD officers on the ground, there was a significant decrease--10% to 20%--in such crimes as burglary, robbery and auto theft.

“They also found that it doubled the opportunity of a radio car to make a felony arrest,” Woods said.

Pleased with the results of the study, the City Council expanded the Air Support Division to its present strength--one fixed-wing Cessna 210 for long transportation flights, one Bell UH-1 (Huey) helicopter for utility work and 14 Bell Jet Ranger 206-Bs, the 400-horsepower, turbine-powered helicopters used for the daily patrol work.

Woods said the unit is close to optimum size; he would like to keep four helicopters aloft at a time, rather than three. But costs--a fully equipped Jet Ranger comes in at about $825,000--are liable to keep the Air Support Division at current strength, at least for a while.

Typically, the Air Support Division keeps three Jet Rangers aloft--one over the San Fernando Valley, one over the Central City and Westside north of the Santa Monica Freeway and one over the South-Central and Harbor areas. The 2-hour patrol shifts overlap slightly, with each two-man crew usually working two shifts a day, with a one-shift break in between.

Over Wilshire District

Air Eight lifted off from the Piper Center on routine patrol at about 9 o’clock one recent morning, swinging around the skyscrapers near the Civic Center before heading west over the Wilshire District.

Reacting to the calls dispatched to the patrol cars below them, they zoomed in from above at up to 120 m.p.h.--directing the cars to possible suspects behind buildings, fences and shrubbery, checking license plates with binoculars on possibly stolen cars and warning officers approaching from different directions to avoid each others’ lines of fire.

When the radio chatter on the ground quieted, pilot Jim Heintzman and Gomez, who was flying as an observer this time, turned to what may well be their forte--watching the ground for things that look out of the ordinary, alerting patrol cars when they spotted something suspicious.

“We watch for people running, that is, people who aren’t dressed as joggers,” Gomez said. “We try to figure out what they’re running from, while keeping track of them. . . . A suspect running away from something may change his clothes, but he’ll never change his shoes. So we check the shoes. . . .

“We watch for, maybe, a guy standing by the curb, with a lot of people driving up to talk to him. That could be drugs. . . .

“One time there was a guy walking down the street with a bag in his hand. When he saw us, he set down the bag and walked away. Why would he do that? Because it was full of stolen radios, that’s why.”

Misfit Cars Spotted

In addition to speeders and drivers running red lights, the helicopter crews watch for cars that simply do not fit--”too good for the neighborhood or too bad”--or cars that are being driven erratically.

One green sedan attracted attention by circling a block slowly, pulling in and out of parking lots while avoiding available parking spaces. Air Eight called in a patrol car to check the situation. The green sedan turned out to be an undercover car from a federal law enforcement agency.

The rest of the day, except for the drug suspect surveillance, was relatively uneventful, but by nightfall--it was Saturday night and the Santa Ana winds were blowing--things began to heat up.

The baleful stare of the powerful spotlight caught a group of boys vandalizing a park swimming pool area. The youths scambled for cover--over fences, across rooftops, through the maze of a roofless dressing room complex, even attempting to hide in some foliage--all to no avail. The helicopter crew sent patrol cars to intercept them, and the boys were soon getting a stern dressing down.

For some of the innocent on the ground, the “popping” racket of the low-flying helicopter and the glare of its spotlight are an undeniable nuisance, the officers concede. But they said they also get calls from citizens in high-crime areas who recognize that the presence of the helicopter can often serve as a deterrent to those who might otherwise break the law.

Gang Members Disperse

Groups of gang members elected to disperse rather than remain under the all-seeing eye. Speeders, suddenly illuminated, decided to slow to a legal pace. Some men lurking near a shopping center--perhaps with robbery in mind--elected to move on under the glare.

At about 10:45 p.m., some officers in a patrol car saw suspected drug activity near a white Chevrolet pickup. A check of the license plate showed the vehicle was a Code 37--stolen--and Air Eight was called in to keep the truck under observation.

Moments later, as the patrol units pulled the truck to the curb in the 5500 block of Blackwelder Street, two passengers in the pickup jumped out and ran.

Spreading the beam of light to a wider angle, Air Eight kept the fleeing suspects in sight until they could be stopped for questioning. Then, narrowing the beam once more, they spotlighted the arrest of the spread-eagled driver as a patrol officer covered him with a service revolver from a nearby yard.

Half an hour later the shift was over, and the pilots, the observers and their commander were back in the squad room, talking about their jobs.

“It gives us a great perspective on everything that’s going on,” Gomez said. “I love it.”

“It’s clean work--exciting and productive--and there’s the charisma,” Woods said. “And you can’t hear the people calling you names. . . . “