Const. Tom Bechthold likes to catch bad guys.
In the Edmonton Police Service, there are few better positions to do so than from the bucket seat of a police helicopter.
The department's two aircraft, only one of which is airborne at a given time, were involved in 297 arrests in 2010. They are on track for 360 this year because of more consistent flying weather. It's a rare shift that they don't help collar a criminal.
Bechthold is proud of those facts, but isn't sure Edmontonians are aware of them. The prime time for Air One and Air Two is the dead of night, when suspects flee into the dark and drunks slide behind the wheels of stolen cars.
"I don't think the public realizes the things we do at night when they're sleeping, the people we deal with at 3 a.m.," said the chief tactical flight officer. "I don't think people realize what we can do, that we can see five kilometres from our camera."
To increase public awareness and celebrate 10 years of the Flight Operations Unit, the choppers and crew members will be available to meet the public Saturday afternoon at Vallevand Kennels at 122nd Street and 124th Avenue.
Air One has been in service for 10 years, while Air Two was purchased in 2008. Both cost approximately $1.5 million. This year's budget for the entire unit is $1.95 million.
"Helicopters cost money, we don't argue that," Bechthold said. "I can quote positive stats all day, but it's the everyday things that matter. It might take a patrol officer 10 minutes to clear a field in the dark. We can do it in 10 seconds from the air and tell you how many rabbits are running around."
The choppers are also used to search for missing people, pursue vehicles from the safety of the air and function as eyes for officers on the ground.
If already airborne, the helicopter response time to any part of the city is an average of 73 seconds. Nothing beats that, Bechthold said. He remembers a day when the chopper landed in a field and crew members cut down a potential suicide victim who had hung himself from a goalpost. Patrols cars were too far away.
"How do you put a price on that?"
The department may soon have to think hard about that price tag, according to Michael Kempa, a criminology professor at Ottawa University. While helicopters may make sense for a city as spread out as Edmonton, it's hard to afford them forever, Kempa said.
"Policing budgets have grown astronomically over the last 10 years, across Canada; they've just dwarfed everything else. Nationally, they're growing by seven per cent a year. In, say, five years, that situation is going to be unsustainable."
In 2011, the EPS had a budget of $242 million. In 2010, it was $239 million.
When budget increases inevitably stop, Kempa said, police departments will have to make hard decisions about what gets kept based on the best evidence available. That evidence may not support helicopters.
"We haven't got enough true, assessment evidence that helicopters have any impact on safety and crime rates," Kempa said.
However, the Edmonton Police Commission, which approves the budget, is convinced.
"I think it's great value for our money," said chairwoman Arlene Yakeley. "The commission has kept a close eye on statistics for the past 10 years. This is a large amount of money to be spent, but absolutely, it's worth it."
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