The Fight Against Crime: Notes From The Front : Keeping Skies Safe for News, Police Copters

Whenever a police pursuit, river rescue or fire erupts in the San Fernando Valley, the whup-whup-whup of an approaching helicopter is never far behind.

But as most Valley residents have noticed, it isn’t just the police helicopter hovering above anymore.

As many as 10 helicopters can be found clustering above a breaking news event now that every major television station in town sends its own helicopter to vie for that perfect shot.

While the live action of felons fleeing on the freeways engrosses the public, the proliferation of news media helicopters crowded into a confined area creates a big safety concern.

There hasn’t been a collision in the skies above Los Angeles like the 1987 fiery crash over Irvine when two police helicopters tracking a high-speed chase smashed into one another and both pilots and a passenger died.

But there have been several close calls.

Once a news pilot, first to arrive at a steep cliff where a man had fallen, climbed rapidly upward from a low altitude, just missing a police chopper diving down to perform the rescue.

There also was the time that a news media pilot inadvertently aimed his helicopter’s powerful lights into the eyes of a police pilot, momentarily blinding him.

“For years we had difficulties with (news media pilots). At times they would fly below us and cause a great hazard,” said Cmdr. Tim McBride, who recently left his post as captain of LAPD’s Air Support Division. “But the last few years haven’t been too awful because of the association.”

He was referring to the Professional Helicopter Pilots Assn., which has about 400 members in Los Angeles, and elsewhere in Southern California and meets bimonthly to provide a forum for law enforcement, news media and commercial pilots to discuss safety and communication issues.

“Now we have a good working relationship with about 99.9% of the news helicopter pilots,” said Officer John Harrell, a pilot with the Air Support Division. “The only time they interfere with our job is when they are overzealous.”

For example? “In a SWAT operation, the police don’t want news media to broadcast a picture of how they are set up around the area so if the bad guy is watching television from the house, they can see what they are doing.”

Bob Petty, a news pilot since 1976 and currently working for KNBC, helped establish guidelines as president of the association after he saw his competition in the sky double.

“By early 1990, all the stations had helicopters but there was no form of communication between us,” said Petty. “We needed that comfort zone.”

Through the association, news media pilots agreed to keep their aircraft 500 feet away from police helicopters above an incident and tune to a common radio frequency to keep contact.

Better technology has also helped the news-police pilot relationship, such as powerful lenses that give cameras a long-range reach, reducing the pressure on pilots to fly right into the scene. “Getting close to a scene is irrelevant now,” said Bob Tur, the KCBS pilot.

His copter is now equipped with a $300,000 lens that can bring a scene 72 times closer. Older cameras could bring it only 28 times closer. “We can fly at a higher altitude because of the new technology.”

For any problems they may cause, news pilots also do good deeds, as Tur and others are eager to point out.

“I have air-rescued 67 people, found eight missing aircraft, and helped save a dog,” Tur said proudly.

Others point out that they helped trail fleeing suspects when police lost sight of them or helped track groups of suspects scattering from a crime scene.

In the end, it is the police who hold the strong hand; if news pilots don’t cooperate, they can be reported to their station bosses, to the Federal Aviation Administration, or, as a last resort, arrested for interfering with a police investigation.

“They understand that not only do we not want them in certain places, but we also have the tools to stop them from being there,” Harrell said. “It is a safety issue for us, for them, or for the people who are eating their cornflakes below us.”