Idled Oceanside Police Copters Still Cost City Taxpayers Plenty

Eighteen months after a majority of the Oceanside City Council voted to permanently ground police helicopters to save money, the aircraft are still costing the cash-starved city more than $12,000 a month.

The reason: Despite a continuing nationwide search, there are no buyers for the two $230,000 helicopters, said Capt. Mike Poehlman of the Oceanside Police Department.

The city has tried everything to unload the two-seat Enstrom helicopters, which are equipped with everything from searchlights and radios to infrared scanners that can spot the body heat of a mugger or burglar behind a fence or bush, Poehlman said.

“We’ve sent notifications out by Teletype to all law-enforcement agencies in the country,” Poehlman said. A Los Angeles-based helicopter broker has put ads in trade journals that are distributed across the nation.

But, with police agencies across the country short of cash, the choppers have sat since early 1991 at broker Nick Agosta’s headquarters at Brackett Airport in Los Angeles County.

Agosta spent 25 years in the Pasadena Police Department and founded that city’s helicopter program in 1968.

“Nobody’s got the money,” said Agosta, though the slightly used Oceanside helicopters would cost a buyer $170,000 to $210,000 less than new ones. “We had people fighting over them a while ago, but nobody could come up with the money.”

While they sit on the ground, they cost Oceanside $700 per month for storage and maintenance, Poehlman said. The choppers have to be flown every week to keep equipment from deteriorating. Then there’s the $69,629 lease-purchase payment that’s due every six months. The five-year lease has three years to run, and the city dares not drop it, Poehlman and others said, or it could hurt the city’s credit rating.

The situation is ridiculous, say helicopter backers who assert that the choppers are desperately needed to back up police patrols on the ground. They also say the police eye-in-the-sky is the only thing that will curb gang violence near Oceanside High School that has left at least four youths wounded and one 15-year-old boy dead in the past three months.

Statistics from other police agencies, said Mayor Larry Bagley and other backers of the helicopter patrol, show that one helicopter, which can pounce on a crime scene within seconds, is equivalent to 15 patrol cars.

“They (police) ought to be using them,” Bagley said. Even while up for sale, the choppers could still be in the air and protecting Oceanside, he said.

“The only reason they are not being used is politics,” he said.

Bagley and Councilman Sam Williamson Sr. opposed eliminating the helicopter program but were outvoted by the majority, consisting of Melba Bishop, Nancy York and Don Rodee. The helicopters were an issue in the 1990 election that put York and Rodee into office.

“They are selling us out to the gangs in this town,” said Bagley, who has announced that he will not run for reelection in November after 12 years in office.

“This is nonsense,” counters opponent York, “that one helicopter equals so many policemen. It’s just nonsense.”

York said the city can’t afford to fly the helicopters while they are up for sale because of the expense. It costs $80 per hour to fly them, plus the salary of pilots and observers.

York also challenged the effectiveness of the helicopter program, which was killed by the new council majority within eight months of the first flight.

“My (Stagecoach Way) condominium was burglarized while the helicopter was overhead,” York said. “Even when two helicopters were flying, you didn’t have that many hours in the air. The coverage was not that significant.”

The helicopters were bought, with the only opposition coming from Melba Bishop, at the suggestion of former Police Chief Lee Drummond. Drummond, now city manager of Sanger, quit within hours of the November, 1990, election of Bishop allies York and Rodee.

Oceanside is also facing legal action over the helicopters. The city is being sued by an Oceanside resident who was arrested after he aimed a hand-held spotlight at a chopper because it was noisy. Police say the light blinded both the pilot and observer and could have caused a crash.

Police Chief Bruce Dunne, who replaced Drummond, and Poehlman defend scrapping the program because of the cost--even though the city had already spent more than $521,000 on pilot training, fuel, oil and maintenance by the time it was canceled.

Costs since then total more than $221,000, which could be recovered if the helicopters are sold.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with the effectiveness (of helicopters),” said Dunne. “It has to do with the money to operate them.

“There has never been a question of whether helicopters are an effective tool of law enforcement. The issue is does the city . . . have the money to operate a helicopter program and the personnel to fly them, and the answer is no.”

Helicopters would only make a difference, said Poehlman, “if we had enough people to do the rest of the work.”

“If we don’t have enough people on the streets,” said Poehlman, who has about 160 officers to cover the 44-square-mile city with 138,000 residents, “how can I afford to man the helicopters?”

But some community leaders are dismayed that the copters are grounded.

Donna McGinty, former director of the city’s Neighborhood Watch program, who quit to join an unsuccessful recall campaign against Bishop after the helicopter program was killed, said gang members hate the helicopters.

“Why should (the council) not use (the helicopters) while they are still paying?” she said. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be flying them now.”

“I definitely support the helicopter system in Oceanside,” said Steve Jimenez, chairman of the volunteer anti-gang Barrio Arte Program. “You can cover a territory 10 times faster.

“The way things are going right now, it’s becoming a time bomb. We look the other way. We better start looking straight.”