LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

by polalavik • 8 months ago

241 303 8 months ago

Ad in the bottom left covers the UI when expanding the menu out.

I'm sure it depends on screen resolution etc but I'd love to be able to click links to the data sources.

Overall an interesting idea. I'd love to know the data source for the cost of the operation of the aircraft. Would be really interesting to connect a database of all aircraft types then present the ability to watch the cost of like "all American Airlines flights currently flying" or "all US military aircraft".

polalavik3• 8 months ago

sorry probably got covered by the ad - data source is the hourly from the city controller https://controller.lacity.gov/landings/lapd-helicopters which says $2,916 per flight hour

ripberge2• 8 months ago

As someone who lives in central LA and has them circle my neighborhood frequently, actually shaking my house, I think this is awesome.

These needs should be filled by drones. Way less noisy, dangerous and expensive.

polalavik3• 8 months ago

why LA is spending thousands/hour when drones exist is crazy.

tcdent2• 8 months ago

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.

monkaiju• 8 months ago

Idk, having a bunch of government surveillance drones doesn't really sound great... Maybe we just don't need this level of surveillance at all?

autoexec3• 8 months ago

It's absolutely worth looking at the ROI on these flights and weighing that against the intrusion on our privacy/freedom. No doubt they'll always need drones and helicopters but I'd be surprised if there was any real need for them to be in the air that often. I think that's a question that should be asked everywhere but the LAPD in particular are terrible enough that it makes this a great place to start.

DiscourseFan• 8 months ago

Couldn’t someone take out the drones pretty easily?

autoexec3• 8 months ago

That depends on the drone. There are drones/UAVs that fly so high in the air you can't even see them seeing you from the ground. Even low flying drones would be very hard to hit from a car involved in a high speed chase, and it's not as if people can't shoot at helicopters which are both larger/easier targets and much more dangerous if brought down.

Zigurd5• 8 months ago

Helicopters aren't exactly robust under fire and are four orders of magnitude more valuable as a target.

kylehotchkiss2• 8 months ago

Down in SD at least, the sheriff's office helicopters serve many purposes. They'll use them for firefighting, hike rescues (often! according to their IG), first responder to an aviation accident, loudly shouting garbled messages through their loudspeaker, etc.

There's just enough high-speed/timely crime here that I prefer they use these over drones. There's some extra legal protections built into helicopters that drones don't get, like prison time if some idiot points a laser pointer.

VerifiedReports2• 8 months ago

I seriously doubt that physically rescuing hikers or delivering first-responders to plane crashes represent a large percentage of LAPD helicopter missions. I live in a nice suburb and there's one of them circling over it probably weekly.

I don't see why large drones can't do most of what these helicopters are doing. They're using needlessly expensive helicopters, too.

asdff12• 8 months ago

LAPD doesn't conduct rescue operations or anything like that. Different helicopters are used from different agencies.

stickfigure3• 8 months ago

I work with CHP helicopters as part of our fire district's rescue team. We pull a half dozen people a year off of one of the local trails (sometimes as "recovery"). Most of these are via helicopter. There are two helos for a huge area - Yolo county down to Santa Cruz county. By acreage it's a lot bigger than LA.

My point is, two small helicopters are more than enough to do that job as a side-gig from all the other CHP work they do.

Also, Cal Fire has its own air wing. LAPD helicopters are not equipped for firefighting.

whalesalad• 8 months ago

I was in Santa Monica - the dense part with all the alleyways - during a foot pursuit involving a heli. Felt like I was in vietnam. It was at night, they were pretty low, and that light felt like the sun coming into the building.

rimbo789• 8 months ago

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

scottyah2• 8 months ago

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

Zigurd5• 8 months ago

Wrong answers only?

0xbadcafebee5• 8 months ago

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/audit-says-lapds-use...

  On average, the city spent an average of $46.6 million on the program, the audit disclosed. It also found that there is limited oversight or monitoring of the division, its policies and practices and whether the program is in line with the city's safety needs. [...]
  The department has 17 helicopters and over 90 employees. [..] The city operates their helicopter fleet on a nearly "continuous basis" [..] The total translates to more than $2,900 per flight hour. [...]
  Additional findings in the audit disclosed [..] 61% of the flight time was in fact dedicated to low-priority incidents like transportation, general patrols and ceremonial flights — like a fly-by at a local golf tournament, roundtrip transportation of high-ranking LAPD officers between stations and passenger shuttle flights for a "Chili Fly-In."

throwaway54652• 8 months ago

$5 per person per year then. Or, the price of a can of coke per person per month.

Much of which flows directly back into the local economy through wages spent and maintnance paid.

fn-mote• 8 months ago

You know this is ridiculous, which is why you posted with a throwaway.

Obvious excessive spending should not be shrugged off by dividing the expense by the population of the area.

Obvious excessive costs need to be reined in. Tax money needs to be spent on the highest priorities, which this is not.

tbrownaw• 8 months ago

Since when does a can of soda cost less than 50¢?

0xbadcafebee5• 8 months ago

That 46 million could be spent on education, transportation, aid for low-income families, the homeless, jobs programs, small business tax breaks, infrastructure renewal, public works, etc. According to the report, not only are they largely not used for anything productive, there's potential harms to both people and the environment. And as many have pointed out, the same work can be done with drones.

tclancy• 8 months ago

Hang on, LAPD with limited oversight? Someone bring back Daryl Gates! Man the Ramparts!

dsamarin• 8 months ago

Would using drones nowadays end up being much less expensive but with all the same necessary capabilities for police work?

analog31• 8 months ago

What are the necessary capabilities? My city has no helicopters or drones. There's a medical chopper that flies over my house regularly, but it has an obvious purpose.

TOMDM• 8 months ago

Being able to follow a car involved in a hit and run and intercept them when they stop without restoring to what could be a dangerous police chase.

Aerial surveillance has it's place.

LeoPanthera• 8 months ago

This doesn't seem to work properly in Mac Safari. The map is blank except in a thin stripe at the top.

nonameiguess• 8 months ago

My first question was how much of this is labor, and from the chart provided at the bottom of the helpful link provided elsewhere (https://controller.lacity.gov/landings/lapd-helicopters), it appears to be around 60%.

I was wondering because I remember the last time I lived in Los Angeles in 2009 I went to a Lakers championship parade and talked to one of the cops assigned to crowd control, and asked about it when a helicopter flew overhead. She told me it's a great job a lot of them try to get because even 20 years ago they were starting out at something like $215,000 a year and were not expected to have any flight experience. The city just trained up regular patrol officers and tripled their pay.

asdff12• 8 months ago

The way they fly you can tell they don't have a lot of flight experience. Really low compared to news choppers following the same pursuit. Juvenile even, at times (1-4)

1. https://old.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/1oolm68/lapd_he...

2. https://www.threads.com/@kilodelta/post/C5m373ZOX9Q

3. https://preview.redd.it/jcfdph3aiczf1.jpeg?width=1164&format...

4. https://preview.redd.it/dl7lqa2blbzf1.jpeg?width=1206&format...

citizenpaul• 8 months ago

Roughly a dollar a second which if you are a theater kid you know is about $31,536,000 mil a year.

Honestly not that bad considering it provides a real service. I mean how much does the city spend on lawsuits against corrupt cops and other employees. According to the budget something like $300 MILLION on lawsuit payouts last year alone.

Who gives a $hit about the helicopters. Build an app that tracks the employees causing these lawsuits that are still keeping their jobs.

asdff12• 8 months ago

People know what to do to get away from the helicopter and they have been successful at it. Two chases in one week this past august the suspect shook off the helicopter and got away. It is as easy as driving under an overpass or into protected airspace. In one case this past month, they followed a suspect all the way into san diego and allowed them to cross the border into Mexico where they were lost.

dgrin91• 8 months ago

That's if it's one helo at a time. If it spikes to 2+ then the numbers go up way faster. They have 16 total and I would assume 1/3rd can go up at a moments notice

BadBadJellyBean4• 8 months ago

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.

shoddydoordesk4• 8 months ago

There are high speed police chases (100mph+) in Los Angeles — no exaggeration — on an almost daily basis. Air support is the primary defense tool for law enforcement.

It's so bad that the local TV stations have their own choppers and a dedicated on-screen UI tailored for the chases with GPS-based tracking and speed.

If you're lucky you can catch one of the many YouTube live streams. Here's one from....two days ago: https://www.youtube.com/live/uGiJU-FlpdE

stefan_2• 8 months ago

I mean in most other places people have simply realized that unless there is an immediate risk to life, the only thing high speed police chases do is create that very risk.

Nicely contrasts with all the news about the omnipresent license plate scanners - it's just pointless, don't take the risk, arrest them at your leisure.

asdff12• 8 months ago

They get away from time to time from the airship. Two in one week this past august and I don't think they ever caught the suspects. One drove under an overpass and fled on foot, the other entered LAX airspace which requires waiting on clearance from ATC and got away somehow after that. I don't know why they don't just shoot a magnetic dart at the car with a gps tracker on it.

dilippkumar• 8 months ago

There are high speed police chases (100mph+) in Los Angeles — no exaggeration — on an almost daily basis.

How is anyone driving at that speeds in LA traffic?

BadBadJellyBean4• 8 months ago

Then why do you have so many car chases? That seems like an odd problem. There must be a reason.

chrisweekly• 8 months ago

I wonder how much of the high-speed chase "scene" is actually fuelled by all the hoopla. (TV broadcasts of soccer/football matches tend not to show streakers on the field for this reason)

JLO64• 8 months ago

Personally I prefer Fox 11's coverage of these chases. The guy they have up there is fun to listen to and always sprinkles in comparisons to past chases.

dudeinjapan• 8 months ago

This YouTube video is missing a Kavinsky soundtrack.

Avshalom3• 8 months ago

The thing is: there shouldn't be. Car chases cause far more damage (including injury and deaths of bystanders) than the crimes that precede them do and "air support" is not a defense against that in any way.

asdff12• 8 months ago

They bought them and spent a lot of money on supporting infrastructure and are therefore compelled to use them when they chase a middle aged drunken homeless man through a neighborhood.

embedding-shape• 8 months ago

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.

BadBadJellyBean4• 8 months ago

In a big city. Not rural at all.

c0balt• 8 months ago

At least for Berlin I can attest that helicopters, outside of the yellow ones for emergency care, are a very rare occurrence. I have yet so see a police helicopter outside of a large demonstration.

Semaphor2• 8 months ago

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.

Aurornis6• 8 months ago

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.

rootusrootus3• 8 months ago

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 ...

sneak• 8 months ago

That’s pretty much only because of Hollywood’s film industry. It isn’t comparable otherwise.

littlestymaar• 8 months ago

The LA area is more population dense

LA is absolutely not “dense” by any European standard though.

potato3732842• 8 months ago

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

Nextgrid• 8 months ago

The police state needs to enforce its dominance.

h14h• 8 months ago

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.

throwaway48476• 8 months ago

Don't give them ideas.

jjwiseman2• 8 months ago

They're not usually doing surveillance on people, they're mostly used as a quick way to get eyes overhead when something else is happening--foot pursuit, high speed pursuit, just about anything really where an aerial perspective might be helpful. They can fly anywhere in LA pretty quickly.

sharts• 8 months ago

Los Angeles is a massive city. To cover that much ground given limited police it’s sort of necessary.

PeterHolzwarth• 8 months ago

Too true. It's hard to understand just how gob-smackingly enormous the greater LA metroplex is - it's as large as some small countries.

aleph_minus_one• 8 months ago

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.

Relevant German song concerning this mentality:

Foyer des Arts - Hubschraubereinsatz (1982)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pAr1IMiP6A

Here is some video of the song that also shows the lyrics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykRB9SVlDhU

jurschreuder• 8 months ago

The difference between rich and poor is way bigger in the USA it's been growing and growing since Ronald Reagan, while in Europe it has stayed basically the same.

nmeofthestate2• 8 months ago

The German eagerly commenting that, actually, it's different in Germany is becoming a defining cliche of HN comment sections.

Teever• 8 months ago

Honestly I'll take that over the "street poops are so bad in SF" brigade any day of the week.

mgraczyk• 8 months ago

We have more criminals and more crime in the US

VerifiedReports2• 8 months ago

Looks like there's supposed to be a map, but it only loads the very top edge... occasionally redrawn.

Hm, now on reload it shows a whole map... but if you zoom in it resets it and zooms out by itself at intervals.

andy99• 8 months ago

Seconded, I thought it was just me

ninininino2• 8 months ago

This is neat but also has serious implications for criminal enablement.

asdff12• 8 months ago

Why? Helicopters already are on ADS-B.

polalavik3• 8 months ago

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

ninininino2• 8 months ago

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

asdff12• 8 months ago

This was circulating recently and is sort of funny:

https://old.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/1oolm68/lapd_he...

LAPD flies quite recklessly especially downtown, where they aren't even clearing the buildings. News choppers fly much higher, well over the skyscrapers, and have no problems getting very tight shots on whatever subject there is down there.

If you follow them on ADS-B you see they really aren't used that frequently at all for calls and end up in holding patterns with nothing to do really before flying somewhere else for a new holding pattern, until their shift is up presumably.

bigiain• 8 months ago

end up in holding patterns with nothing to do

Cynical-me assumes those are the ones running stingrays/imsi-catchers.

colordrops• 8 months ago

I don't see why a realistic theory that happens to point at an unpleasant possibility should be called "cynical".

maxbendick• 8 months ago

Living in LA, the LAPD helicopter noise really is incessant.

It's hilarious to hear flying cops try to be intimidating through when dispersing illegal concerts or singling individuals out in non-violent crowds. It's impotent posturing and an obvious waste of money. They really don't need to send 5 squad cars and a helicopter for noise complaints.

I will say though that the loudspeaker on those things are surprisingly clear, even through the buzzing of a helicopter.

burnt-resistor• 8 months ago

Blue Thunder wasn't just B-movie conspiracy theory paranoia porn but also contained a warning about technology authoritarianism and invasion of privacy, and police over-militarization.

NullCascade• 8 months ago

What is the ROI?

During the summer of 2017 Denmark flew hourly surveillance helicopters and military SIGINT aircrafts over Copenhagen to stop Sweden-like gang shootings. It was expensive but worked.

swrobel• 8 months ago

“Sweden-like gang shootings” is not a phrase I expected to come across

frizlab2• 8 months ago

I must say I initially wondered why the LDAP protocol needed helicopters… then I re-read the title.

MathMonkeyMan• 8 months ago

No, the helicopter tracker is implemented in LDAP.

frizlab2• 8 months ago

Makes more sense, thanks!

insane_dreamer• 8 months ago

We need an ICE spending tracker.

zobzu• 8 months ago

Not ICE, but a bunch of similar data at scale for the US https://usdebtclock.org/

AIorNot• 8 months ago

What no Blue Thunder?

https://youtu.be/LXg5Pu-yZrE?si=DFYPLVCBjYVi7a_g

zkmon• 8 months ago

It's just a matter of striking a balance between "what a waste" and "what a lack of law and order". So, like a pendulum swing, cut down all spending drastically, until people scream "where is government?" and then swing backwards, until they cry "what a waste". Keep swinging back and forth until you find the local minima. Wait, am I talking about gradient descent?

QuiEgo• 8 months ago

To those not familiar with LA or the USA, here’s a cultural time capsule from 2Pac circa 1996:

“ It's the, City of Angels and constant danger South Central L.A., can't get no stranger Full of drama like a soap opera, on the curb Watchin' the ghetto bird helicopters, I observe”

Pretty much still sums it up.

smt88• 8 months ago

Well the danger part has decreased a lot. It peaked at almost 100 per 10k people in the 90s, and now it's closer to 25. Still very high, but a lot of progress.

getpost• 8 months ago

Kenneth Mejia, our progressive, data-driven controller audited LAPD helicopter use, and published his findings.

"The ASD program costs nearly $50 million annually while most of the flight time is not devoted to high priority events. Our audit found that the estimated annual cost to operate the helicopter program is $46.6 million (i.e., $127,805 per day or $2,916 per flight hour). There are 14 City departments whose annual budgets do not reach this amount;"

https://controller.lacity.gov/landings/lapd-helicopters

mwkaufma• 8 months ago

Publicly funded noise-pollution.

almost_usual2• 8 months ago

Actually a lot less than I expected.

LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

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