Just Ahead of the Bad Guys

While demonstrators swarmed and chanted, a state-of-the-art helicopter owned by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department whirred hundreds of feet above a Westminster video store, nearly unnoticed as it monitored the protest.

Helping officers keep the peace during recent anti-Communist protests in Little Saigon is the latest use for high-tech helicopters equipped with satellite-guided computer mapping systems, video cameras, night-vision scopes and other trappings of a James Bond movie. Far from the noisy, clunky choppers of a decade ago, they are transforming county law enforcement.

Police agencies in Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa and Newport Beach have joined the Sheriff’s Department in daily use of Notar helicopters, a brand name derived from the term “no tail rotor.”

Without the tail rotor, the aircraft is about half as loud. The advanced surveillance equipment allows officers to better track the movement of those on the ground.

“Obviously, they’re more mobile, faster pieces of equipment,” Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo said. “Everything is being done to make them as unintrusive as possible.”

As technology advances, criminals will have a tougher time in Orange County, said Sgt. Bob Oakley, who directs helicopter operations for Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. About 60 arrests a month result from the use of helicopter patrols in those cities, he said.

“The technology we use gives our officers an advantage the criminal element doesn’t have,” Oakley said. “These type of technologies break new ground in the way we do our jobs.”

Last month, for example, officers in the Anaheim copter needed only three minutes using infra-red technology to spot a suspect hiding in a residential area after fleeing Cypress police and jumping from a car, said Clint Melber, a police pilot for the Anaheim air division.

But civil-rights advocates warn that the technology could be misused to invade the privacy of average citizens. They worry that police agencies are using helicopters more as airborne patrol cruisers than as a response vehicle.

“There is an increasing conflict between the right of privacy and the right of law enforcement to apprehend people breaking the law,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

“What’s scary is that helicopters can do all of these intrusive things and there are no rules,” she said. “The technology has been developed before the guidelines about when to use it.”

For example, a bored officer might decide to train the cameras on someone’s bedroom or living room, she said. “There are a lot of voyeurs out there, and I’m sure some of them could be police officers,” she said.

Officials with several police agencies acknowledged that they have no guidelines for when the infra-red cameras and surveillance equipment may be used.

In Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, for example, using the infra-red camera is up to the discretion of the officer on board, Oakley said. Anaheim pilot Officer Bob Elrod said that city’s infra-red scopes aren’t hooked up to a camera but that the scope is on continuously during night patrols.

However, the scopes can’t see through curtains or drapes or walls, Elrod said.

“There are those who are paranoid about ‘Big Brother,’ but most people in the community benefit from the increased law enforcement,” Oakley said. “The general public is supportive.”

The three helicopters used to patrol Costa Mesa and Newport Beach are airborne for 10-hour shifts to support ground patrols. The agencies’ one Notar helicopter, which travels at an average altitude of 800 feet and at an average of 75 mph but can reach speeds of 140 to 150 mph, is used extensively in surveillance missions, where quietness is a bonus, as well as during high-speed pursuits.

The two cities bought the special aircraft in 1997 for $850,000. The annual operating cost hovers around $1.8 million.

More police agencies in Southern California are buying the quieter craft and new technologies such as computer-mapping systems, said Gary Petrowski, a co-owner of AeroComputers, an Oxnard-based company that developed the UltiChart mapping system.

The company sold two computer-mapping devices to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department last year and delivered two more units to the Costa Mesa-Newport helicopter division this week. The units cost from $30,000 to $40,000, and are customized for each department’s helicopter.

The system allows officers to type an address or intersection into a computer; the information is fed to a digitized version of the Thomas Bros. map pages. The system produces a map to show where the helicopter is located, a route to the desired location and calculates the speed and time of arrival, Petrowksi said.

“If you can help get to the scene of an accident or incident a little faster, that makes a difference,” he said.