Police upgrade chopper fleet, plan to double patrol hours

The Tucson Police Department recently replaced two older helicopters with two new ones and nearly doubled the number of hours they patrol.

The two new helicopters, along with a 1999 helicopter, will be in the sky over Tucson around 3,300 hours a year instead of 1,600 hours a year, said Steve Riddell, one of the department's eight pilots.

Instead of one helicopter being in the air during weeknights, two helicopters will be flying, Riddell said. Two helicopters will continue to fly on weekend nights.

The pilots, along with 25 tactical flight officers, respond to about 10,000 calls a year, Riddell said. They assist patrol officers involved in pursuits, look for missing people, and do routine patrols. Most of the calls are at night, but the pilots are on-call during the day as well for such things as bank robberies.

"Helicopters are a force multiplier," Riddell said.

"If we're not being called to assist our ground units, we're flying around checking on hotbeds for crime," said Sgt. James Graves.

The helicopters, Bell 206B-3 JetRangers, replaced older versions of the same model, Riddell said. The older helicopters, a 1984 and a 1995, had more than 25,000 flight miles between them.

Helicopters with that kind of mileage can start experiencing structural problems and require more maintenance, Graves said.

A helicopter with 100 flight hours requires 100-hour inspections and the hours of inspection only go up from there, Graves said.

The copters cost about $3 million, but the cost was offset with the sale of the 1984 JetRanger for $216,000, Graves said. The 1995 helicopter will probably bring more than $300,000.

Another benefit of the new helicopters is that they are both outfitted with the latest in forward-looking infrared, which gives the crew the ability to detect body heat at night, Riddell said. The 1984 JetRanger didn't have that technology.

"The new tools enhance our ability to catch the bad guys," Riddell said.