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LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

lapdhelicoptertracker.com

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Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#81

Post by rootusrootus »

Aurornis wrote: post #40
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #21

I find it interesting that the question is "why don't they use drones". My question is: why so much air surveillance? I live in Germany. The only times I hear a helicopter is if someone is being rescued or if someones missing. I rarely see them at all.

> I live in Germany. The only times I hear a helicopter is if someone is being rescued or if someones missing. I rarely see them at all. Same for me, but I live in America. The specific location matters a lot. The LA area is more population dense and bigger than might be obvious. To put it in perspective, the GDP of the LA area is about 1/4 as much as the GDP of your entire country.

> bigger than might be obvious

That's underselling it a bit, IMO. You can look at an aerial map and observe that it's pretty big, but experiencing it in person ... it's enormous. It just goes, and goes, and goes, and goes ...

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#82

Post by potato3732842 »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #21

I find it interesting that the question is "why don't they use drones". My question is: why so much air surveillance? I live in Germany. The only times I hear a helicopter is if someone is being rescued or if someones missing. I rarely see them at all.

It's not about results per dollar. It's about sending a message.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#83

Post by scottyah »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #20
tcdent wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about technology that's only become realistic in the last couple years. Even then, there's probably nothing off-the-shelf that would serve the current need. LAPD has been patrolling with helicopters for decades . I have yet to see a drone follow a car in high speed pursuit down the 5 at 100+ MPH.

The MQ-8 would be cheaper to operate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_MQ-8_Fire_Sco...

In what way would that be cheaper to operate? You'd just replace a pilot with a few pilots and a few teams of software engineers. Maybe fuel savings?

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#84

Post by rootusrootus »

Semaphor wrote: post #46
embedding-shape wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in Germany though? Helicopters tend to be more popular to use for various purposes in very densely populated places, like Hong Kong or New York City, but you don't really see them much in rural areas except for emergencies.

I live in a pop 200k city, hospital copters are a daily occurrence. Police? Never seen one, Hamburg, one of our biggest cities, apparently has 3.

Same for me. I live in a pop 1M city in America. Hospital choppers are fairly common. Police choppers rare.

Also, according to the tracker, there's only one airborne in LA right now, and it is a pretty large city. It's close to 100x bigger than a 200k city.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#85

Post by h14h »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #21

I find it interesting that the question is "why don't they use drones". My question is: why so much air surveillance? I live in Germany. The only times I hear a helicopter is if someone is being rescued or if someones missing. I rarely see them at all.

I suspect it has something to do with LA's large footprint. Comparing to where I'm from in Chicago, LA county is over 4x the land area with less than 2x the population:

https://www.comparea.org/r122576+r396479

Don't know how the math works out exactly, but if they don't have the workforce to cover their patrol area with squad cars, there's probably an argument to be made for covering gaps with areal support. Given that Chicago struggles with workforce shortages, I can only imagine how much worse it'd be if you had to cover 4x the area with half the tax base.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#86

Post by phantasmish »

tcdent wrote: post #42
digdugdirk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I have seen drones chase down F1 cars at 100+ MPH... Realistically though, I agree with your sentiment. Solving this would drones would require a constant flock of something more akin to Predator drones. The better question is - why do we allow high speed pursuit chases in the first place?

> why do we allow high speed pursuit chases in the first place? AFAIK they've changed their tactics in recent years, but growing up around LA these we're like sporting events on TV. It's a guilty pleasure, but almost everyone I know tuned-in and watched the chase.

Their popularity for viewers (even more so now with YouTube, but they’re long been a staple of live news and late night tv) and the fact that police like any excuse to do “badass” things are big parts of why they still happen. They’re a pretty bad idea. Endangering lives (including bystanders) over mostly relatively-minor crimes.

But people love ‘em, and if you point out what a bad idea they are people label you “soft on crime” (as happens with a lot of plainly good policy)

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#88

Post by brian-armstrong »

hollerith wrote: post #78
mapt wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot more aluminum than steel on car exteriors these days.

This got me curious so I went out on the street and held a magnet to the front passenger door of the first 6 parked cars I came across. The magnet stuck to 4 of them. The ones it did not stick to are a Nissan Rogue and a Jeep Sahara 4xe.

Decided to scratch up some peoples' clear coats for a little science experiment?

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#89

Post by scottyah »

rimbo789 wrote: post #4

This is the kind of government waste that needs to be highlighted. Police forces consume a massively disproportionate amount of resources from our cities.

Lawsuits are most of the money in LA. Juries love to think they're sticking it to the police, but it just comes from a different fund that extracts from a lot of other departments. The LA City Controller is making great attempts at outreach: https://controller.lacity.gov/data

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#90

Post by rootusrootus »

ninininino wrote: post #72
polalavik wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no it doesnt. this data is public all over the place. most notably https://www.flightaware.com/

Cool. And yours is simpler and doesn't require looking up what the identifiers are for LAPD in particular. Just own it.

I found the list of identifiers with a single google search. For any criminal who cares, it is a tiny amount of additional effort.
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