LAPD Police Claim Helicopters Stop Crimes Before They Happen 160
HughPickens.com writes True Angelenos don't even bother to look up when one of the LAPD's 17 helicopters rattles their windows searching for a car-jacked Camry or an assault suspect hiding under a jacaranda but few doubt that more bad guys would get away without the nation's largest police helicopter fleet to help chase them. Now the LA Times reports that data shows that LA's helicopters are stopping crimes before they happen. Tapping into the data-driven policing trend, the department uses heat maps, technology and years of statistics to identify crime "hot spots." Pilots then use their downtime to fly over them, on the theory that would-be criminals tend to rethink their nefarious plans when there's "ghetto birds," as Ice Cube calls them, hovering overhead [explanatory video with annoying sound]. Months of data show that the number of serious crimes reported in the LAPD's Newton Division in South L.A. fell during weeks when the helicopters conducted more flights. During the week of Sept. 13, when the helicopter unit flew over Newton 65 times, the division recorded 90 crimes. A week later, the number of flights dropped to 40 and the number of reported crimes skyrocketed to 136, with rises seen among almost all types of crime, including burglary, car theft and thefts from vehicles. "It's extremely cutting edge," says Capt. Gary Walters, who heads the LAPD's air support unit. "It's different. It's nothing that we've ever done before with this specificity."
But Professor Geoffrey Alpert. a policing expert who has studied the use of police helicopters in Miami and Baltimore, says the choppers can deter crime in the short-term but criminals will likely return when they're not around (PDF). "You are deterring the criminals but you aren't getting rid of them and their intent. Those criminals could strike in a different time and place," says Alpert. "I mean that's the whole thing about random patrol. You see a police car and it's the same thing. You hide, he goes around the block and you go back to your breaking and entering."
But Professor Geoffrey Alpert. a policing expert who has studied the use of police helicopters in Miami and Baltimore, says the choppers can deter crime in the short-term but criminals will likely return when they're not around (PDF). "You are deterring the criminals but you aren't getting rid of them and their intent. Those criminals could strike in a different time and place," says Alpert. "I mean that's the whole thing about random patrol. You see a police car and it's the same thing. You hide, he goes around the block and you go back to your breaking and entering."
LAPD Police? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:LAPD Police? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the LAPD so bad that they need a police force that exists just to keep them in line?
There is some historical evidence to corroborate your theory.
Of course, it could be the LAPD needs to justify the huge expense of patrolling from Ghetto Birds instead of ground-based black-and-whites, and they're not at all bothered by the statistical insignificance of the small sample trotted out here as causation.
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Ground patrol might be difficult in LA traffic, I would imagine... and flying LA isn't much fun either (lots of air traffic to contend with) but at least there isn't the chance of running into gridlock.
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Re:LAPD Police? (Score:5, Informative)
The only time we've had any peace is when an independent entity audited the flight records of the LAPD helicopter squad and found multiple instances of abuse, like flying politicos and their friends around on tours. I can bet the copter pilots also fly around pretty girls they are trying to impress and make other completely needless flights. It's ridiculous...
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The LAPD Police are there to protect the PIN numbers for the ATM machines.
Could be but, (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think that this was the plot of the show Riptide, except they were private detectives.
Re:Could be but, (Score:4, Interesting)
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LAPD Chopper parody to Host Chopper (Score:1)
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Are you sure it is only delaying it? A lot of crimes are crimes of oppertunity where the conditions if changed slightly, the oppertunity changes also.
For instance, someone may be tempted to reach in a car with an open window and snatch a purse off the seat if no one is around. 20 minutes later, people might be around, the car may be gone, the owner may have came back and removed the purse or locked the car up. Same kind of goes for some violent crimed, 20 minutes later someone might not be as pissed off or
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well, point is it does nothing to change the guy who looks at cars "that way" to a good guy.
once they do it long enough it will just be back to normal. i guess it's good the bad guys don't get along well enough to coordinate doing all the bad stuff at the same time when the chopper is on top.
Better than Minortity Report (Score:3)
Pretty obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
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Did you not read the summary? Crime numbers for a whole week fell when there were more choppers.
Re:Pretty obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
So criminals will wait until the police pass by before committing a crime. Pretty obvious. .
Except that it is not "obvious". Most crime is opportunistic. Take away the opportunity, and you take away the crime. Criminals do not operate on a "quota system". The additional flights lowered crime over the entire period measured, so there is no evidence that criminals were just waiting for the helicopters to pass by.
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Yeah. There's no evidence presented to back up the claim that criminals just do crime elsewhere or elsewhen. Obviously any law enforcement measure isn't perfect, but thus far all the data shows this thing works. Professor Geoffrey Alpert is just mouthing off.
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The motivation or need to steal will still exist, it will just wait for the next opportunity. Most people dont steal just to steal, they steal because they need something. While you and I might not agree with their needs, its real to them. Your statement shows a SHOCKING ignorance of true crime behavior.
Criminals dont have a quotas, but their needs/wants dont just disappear because they are turned back a few times.
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The motivation or need to steal will still exist, it will just wait for the next opportunity.
The latter opportunity would be exploited regardless. So if the first opportunity is taken away, you have one crime, and if it isn't, you have two crimes. So one less opportunity results in one less crime.
Most people dont steal just to steal, they steal because they need something.
The correlation between "need" and "crime" is weak. Many very poor societies have little crime. Widespread crime can cause poverty, rather than the other way around, since people will not work and invest if their earnings will be stolen.
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... lower private firm to tunnel underneath?
If you defund us crime will go up!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Translated LAPD Police tries to justify their bloated helicopter budget.....
Re:If you defund us crime will go up!! (Score:4, Interesting)
If you eliminated police entirely, reports of crime would *certainly* go down. If police simply stopped responding to calls, reports of crime would certainly go down.
This is my problem with concluding that choppers deter crime from police crime statistics; while it seems plausible, "reports of crime" are just an approximate proxy for "incidence of crime". Gaming this has been an unfortunate consequence of "data driven" approaches to policing (see Campell's Law [wikipedia.org]).
Which is not to say that helicopters don't deter crime. It seems perfectly plausible. But it's also possible they cause crime to move elsewhere, timeshift ,or take forms which are harder to spot.
This gets to how you use data effectively for anything. When something in the data jumps out at you, it's tempting to believe your initial interpretation of it because it's so compellingly satisfying. But what you really need to do is *test* that interpretation, beat on it as hard as you can. If it can stand up to that you really have something. There's a world of difference between "promising" and "conclusive".
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If you eliminated police entirely, reports of crime would *certainly* go down. If police simply stopped responding to calls, reports of crime would certainly go down.
I wonder for those cities showing statistics of numbers of burglaries going down but it is really a result of departments that no longer respond to burglary calls. i.e. San Jose PD will not respond or take calls unless a violent crime occurred or a burglary in progress. Talking with someone who said one neighborhood in SJ which is fairly nice and well has had a huge increase in number of burglaries. One group burglarized four houses in a row during daytime when everyone was at work. It seems if you are in t
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Hey, maybe the helicopters simply convince people to not report crimes. Maybe it makes them bitter towards the police, so they don't want to call. Maybe it makes them feel like they're in a dangerous neighborhood and therefore can't expect reasonably police services, so why bother?.
John Titor's Chopper (Score:1)
Unfortunately, the LAPD's helicopters can't detect their pilots being an oppressive gang of statist stormtrooper thugs worthy of total revilement, so it evens out.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Combine liberalized concealed carry with the police subsidizing the purchase of guns and ammo by law-abiding, poor concealed carry holders. Let them also use police shooting ranges for free as long as they're in good standing. Then, on the street, take a reflexively pro-CCW holder stance until the facts say otherwise.
The biggest problem with your idea is that the police will find it a lot easier to say "I thought he had a gun" when they shoot people. Or even just assault them.
Tell you what, let's also require that for every person hurt by anything the government does(absolutely anything, justified or not), a government employee or family member will also suffer some equivalent harm. I'm not sure if it should just be those responsible in some way, or if it should be one big pot from the President on down, I would let i
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let's also require that for every person hurt by anything the government does(absolutely anything, justified or not), a government employee or family member will also suffer some equivalent harm
Good idea, but let's make a small adjustment: the individual responsible for the harm should be the one punished, as that's only fair. And only wrongful actions should be punished, as punishing justified harm would obviously be idiotic.
Oh, wait. That's on the books already, and it's certainly a damn sight less stupid than your suggestion of punishing random government employees for justified government actions.
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the group responsible for the harm gets to investigate their own involvement in the harm
In the UK, we have an official body separate from the police who follow up police complaints. [ipcc.gov.uk] Is that not how things are done stateside, or does it exist in theory but fail in practice? Either way is a problem, but improvement is possible.
paid time off while this is happening
As it should be: presumed innocence. The real problem is if an officer faces no consequences even when guilt is clear from the investigation.
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I've lived in LA. We had enough Ghetto Birds flying overhead that it was a pleasant, and noticeable, relief when (perhaps 15 year or more ago) they were switching to/getting new helicopters that were much quieter (or at least less annoyingly audible to humans).
In these areas, if someone is running or hiding from the police or has or are engaging in
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I'm currious. Are there any instances of concealed carry holders being shot by the police when carrying their weapon or not?
It just seems to me that should happen more often than news reports indicate if shooting innocent unarmed people is as common as it is portreyed. Oh, i'm not disputing that it happens and i certainly believe we have coward cops who will shoot first and ask questions later. I just do not think it is as systemic as it is claimed.
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I'm not sure there are a lot of impoverished any ethnic group getting a concealed carry license. They should, but I imagine that most of their finances is spent on either trying to live comfortable, or trying to temporarily escape the pitfalls of their life rather than purchasing a firearm and ammunition and jumping through legal hoops.
Are you suggesting that only impoverished minorities are being shot by police?
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The biggest problem with your idea is that the police will find it a lot easier to say "I thought he had a gun" when they shoot people.
Which is one of the reasons why standard patrol officers shouldn't be authorized to use lethal ammo. They should be packing sub-lethal rubber bullets instead. The SWAT guys can have lethal ammo since they deal with different sorts of encounters.
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Good standing? Let them use the ranges even if they are in poor standing. Provide proper training. The next turf war will decimate the gang member population, and reduce the number of stray bullets. Everyone wins!
Throwing dollar bills also stops crime (Score:1)
While the criminals are picking up the dollar bills, they are not committing any crimes.
Other than the stealing of dollar bills.
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Are you trying to say that you think their use of helicopters is expensive?
Angelinos are being groomed for droning (Score:4, Insightful)
Stops crime, and annoying (Score:1)
I know when I lived in a city with a constantly-circling police helicopter it was damned annoying at night. It wasn't terribly loud, but it was a varying, distant and then closer droning sound, like a lower-frequency version of a mosquito in the room. Maybe it discourages crime, but at the cost of the huge footprint it leaves on the city for criminals and non-criminals alike. It's also very expensive. I don't know the exact numbers, but for typical decent-sized helicopters used by a police force it's go
Correlation? (Score:2)
Captain Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
"I mean that's the whole thing about random patrol. You see a police car and it's the same thing. You hide, he goes around the block and you go back to your breaking and entering."
No fucking shit. Thank you Captain Obvious.
Perhaps I'm reading the tone wrong, but it seems like he's complaining. "Ugh, police oppressors! How dare they patrol neighborhoods and reduce violent crimes!"
Isn't this kind of exactly what we want cops to do? Wander around, see if anybody's being beaten or mugged, or just be a visible presence to let the bad guys know somebody's watching? You'd prefer they left?
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As a general rule, it's preferable not to have continuous noise. I only ever spent a brief time in LA, but the helicopters were really disturbing. I wouldn't be surprised if the stress they cause increases violence and shortens lives. But the lives it shortens are civilian lives, so I guess it's okay.
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Thiiiiis! Sadly, this is seems to be based almost purely upon on where you live. (e.g. If you live in Ferguson, cops are too busy handing out citations to actually solve investigate and crimes.)
OTOH, I don't think you'll see helicopters over affluent neighborhoods - ruining sleep. Maybe those in the "ghetto" can file a noise complaint?
Not enough helicopters (Score:2)
I think it would be a good idea to have helicopters flying above the whole city the whole, constantly covering every square inch and monitoring the behavior of the citizens. They should be painted black, and in order to keep noise levels at a minimum, it might be a good idea to make them special stealth helicopters who are hard to hear.
But we shouldn't stop there. LAPD should use portable brain scanners to question citizens randomly in some sort of improvised lie detector and loyalty tests. Another useful i
I saw this movie (Score:2)
I think it was called Blue Thunder, starred Roy Scheider sometime in the 80's
Personally, ... (Score:2)
If helicopters become commonplace (Score:2)
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It's not a novelty.
Crime is about more than intent (Score:2)
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1984 (Score:4, Interesting)
In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows.
-- 1984, George Orwell
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Did we notice the fact that the helicopter was cruising at 5000 feet and wasn't looking into anyone's windows? Or is there just such a frisson at quoting 1984? One good turn deserves another, deal with this wisdom:
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy."
-- George Orwell, "1984"
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Yeah I did... but the very idea that the LAPD is trying to suppress the people simply by flying helicopters near "hot-spots" immediately brought to mind the oppressive surveillance culture of 1984.
People seem to forget that 1984 was a warning, not a how-to manual.
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1984 was not a warning *or* a how to manual. It was a novel.
It was one guy, George Orwell's imagination, mainly commenting on Stalinist Russia, as part of the wider movement of the western Left's dissatisfaction and sense of betrayal over developments in the USSR. The Cold War drove the popularity of 1984 and its sister work, Animal Farm, because they could be used in the wider struggle against Communism.
Things that are slightly like what is depicted in 1984 are not automatically bad, nor are things not in
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It was a warning about 1948, the original title.
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Confirms? (Score:2)
Nasa's report [nasa.gov] says "Suggets". The evidence is good as we have suspected for many years, but can these popsci article writers can't even be bothered to check the sources and just make up stuff.
I am sure when IFLS picks this up, they will report that not only is there an ocean but life is confirmed too.
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Correction, we have not suspected for many years... I was confusing Ganymede with Europa. Doh!
Anyhow, I am just pissed off that when NASA says "Might", everyone jumps up and down and says "Confirmed for Truth!"
No wonder so many people mistrust scientists. They should mistrust lazy and corrupt journalists instead.
I think I can contribute to making LA even safer (Score:2)
I think I'll form a corporation to tender a proposal to the authorities to provide my world-famous crime-prevention rocks.
It's pretty obvious how effective they are. Neither I nor anyone else who has one of these has ever been victimized by crime. Hell, as far as I know, we've never even seen a criminal. Clearly, ne'er-do-wells and nefarious malcontents are strongly repelled by the magnetic forces projected by these stones. (I think it's magnetic, anyway. Who knows how that works? You just can't explain tha
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I think, if propelled with enough velocity, these crime-prevention rocks would work very well.
Really? (Score:2)
Also in other news: You never get mugged or robbed while in a choke-hold of a patrol officer.
BLUE THUNDER! (Score:1)
All this talk of choppers lately inspired me to rent Blue Thunder from Netflix.
Drones. (Score:1)
Quieter, cheaper, safer, fly longer, just better.
Literally WHOOSH (Score:2)
Tired of the endless WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP? well, turn white and rich, Mr. and Mrs. Bootstrap!
The 'peaceful enjoyment of liberty' (Score:5, Interesting)
The 'peaceful enjoyment of liberty' of hundreds of innocent citizens is being infringed to prevent a few car break-ins.
These copters are LOUD. And in these 'pre-crime' patrols, they make liberal use of their spotlight, essentially treating ordinary citizens as criminal suspects. They even invade Santa Monica (independently incorporated city), circling endlessly for 3 hours at a stretch in the middle the night, depriving entire neighborhoods'-worth of a restful night of sleep.
Oh, the best part, was on a radio interview show: The LAPD guy justified the practice on economic grounds! Wah, we just don''t have enough officers to patrol... Really? How much does a helicopter cost to operate? Maybe $300-500 per hour? Plus the two pigs along for the ride are getting salary. Could that money not be spent on neighborhood patrols on foot, or at least in squad cars?
It's ridiculous.
And a cop walking the beat (Score:2)
Bad Stats (Score:2)
From the article is sounds like they are just looking at the number of flights and comparing it to the number of incidents in an area. There are lots of other items that they should be looking at in order to determine if the helicopters are actually doing something. Weather plays an important factor. Even what week it is can be important because maybe the weeks that had spikes in robberies and assaults were weeks in which people received paychecks or social assistance. Did they factor in actions by othe
STATISTICS durn statistics. (Score:2)
The report appears innocuous but is also justification for more air power.
Hidden from us is the effect of flattening hot crime spots and dispersing crime more evenly across the area. Short term reduction of crime in hot spots seems very real but would identify the hot spot and move crime to cooler spots.
It does little to solve the social and economic wreckage in many neighborhoods that makes crime the most profitable activity.
With deep database background searches no past criminal can get an "interestin
Re:Freedom, liberty and privacy, and the police (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Freedom, liberty and privacy, and the police (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems to me that 20 years or so ago, that was the idea of choice for solving crime - cops walking (note that walking and driving are NOT the same) a beat.
Worked where it was tried, but I think it was dropped when the Next Great Idea came along. Shame, really, since it actually would have gotten away from "the police is the enemy" notion that permeates entirely too much of our culture (with good reason, at time, but still a problem).
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Re:Freedom, liberty and privacy, and the police (Score:4, Insightful)
cops walking (note that walking and driving are NOT the same) a beat
I've heard the same thing. I wonder if it's because walking is slower than driving (stop beating the guy for a second as the car passes), or if it's because seeing 'people' has more of an effect.
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cops walking (note that walking and driving are NOT the same) a beat
I've heard the same thing. I wonder if it's because walking is slower than driving (stop beating the guy for a second as the car passes), or if it's because seeing 'people' has more of an effect.
Some of both, I think. Cars are very anonymous, and the driver will (hopefully) be concentrating on driving rather than observing.
A police officer on a bicycle can be a good halfway: they're still very much human (can speak and be heard, can stop immediately without blocking the road) but they can cover a wider area. Depending on local geography, they can get to some places faster than by car. About half the police I see around here (London, but not the centre) are on bicycles.
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I don't see how putting crooked cops in cars will stop that. They can still get out of the car and strong-arm people, no?
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Re:Freedom, liberty and privacy, and the police (Score:5, Insightful)
Worked where it was tried, but I think it was dropped when the Next Great Idea came along.
In the UK, I'd explain that with the ridiculous "targets" based policies.
Say you put a cop walking around in a really bad neighbourhood and suddenly crime there stops altogether. You think that's perfect. The people living there (except the criminals) think it's perfect. Life is good. Then someone higher up in the police force notices that this cop hasn't solved a single crime, and his target is to solve x crimes per month. So he is taken off the beat, crime returns, and he happily solves ten percent of the crimes and makes his target.
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Seems to me that 20 years or so ago, that was the idea of choice for solving crime - cops walking (note that walking and driving are NOT the same) a beat.
Worked where it was tried, but I think it was dropped when the Next Great Idea came along.
Beat cops work great in high density areas, it's expensive though and the high density areas are usually poor which means those programs usually get canceled despite their effectiveness.
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Beat cops work great in high density areas, it's expensive though and the high density areas are usually poor which means those programs usually get canceled despite their effectiveness.
Unfortunately, Los Angeles is effectively one giant suburban sprawl, so there aren't really many locations that are high density. Most of the "ghettos" and "barrios" of L.A. where once reasonable working- and middle-class neighborhoods in the 1950s and '60s.
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It goes back further than that. Anyone remember that T.H.O.R program in the 80's that ended up putting a hole in the side of a skyscraper and killing all those people?
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It goes back further than that. Anyone remember that T.H.O.R program in the 80's that ended up putting a hole in the side of a skyscraper and killing all those people?
Different times. I think They should try it again. Just look how little collateral there is with modern avionics in drones. I'm sure firing 6000 rounds per minute from a 20mm rotary cannon in LA will work out much better with today's technology. Besides, that hole in the skyscraper wouldn't have happened if Roy Scheider hadn't stolen their thunder.
Doesn't seem likely. (Score:2)
If those helicopters were seriously impacting criminal activity, I would think they would have been shot down by now. There are 17 helicopters, each very expensive and hard to acquire in both the time and financial senses. Hardware sufficient to drop helicopters with extreme prejudice, particularly low flying ones, is almost free by comparison. Also easy. I could build such a device in my garage. One way is basic model rocketry and the most trivial short-ranged IR or human-assisted video guidance. Even a c
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That ignores the not so minor point that if you take a helicopter down the response will be extreme.
That one helicopter is not the only thing the state can bring to bear against you, and they will be very pissed off. In short, it would need to be a case of much of the city revolting before that becomes the kind of thing you might get away with.
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And your post ignores the not so minor point that gunmen are disposable, not to mention that you have to catch the gunman in the first place, which statistics show the police are really, really bad at getting done.
Face it. If those helicopters were in any way significant with regard to reducing serious crime, they'd be smoking piles of rubbish in no time.
Helicopter shows up, you wait. It goes away, you continue. Threat level? Zero.
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They are much better at finding those who commit very serious crimes, and bringing a helicopter down over a city is extremely serious.
This is one of those situations where almost anybody who would be capable of committing the crime and having any real shot of getting away with it also has better options in life.
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You need to learn about the amount of money crime, organized and otherwise, brings in. Google can help. Likewise, in re traceability, you need to learn about the underground market for weapons, particularly heavy weapons available via the international market. Again, Google can help.
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Kind of like the Escape from NY theme....
If you want free, govt or projects type housing, you move out away from people and take the crime with you.
At the very least, it should save on helicopter fuel.
I mean, we're certainly not having to police the middle class neighborhoods like this really, except the ones not far away or
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There aren't many urban places like you describe in the US really.
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New York is another. Ultra-high-density communities may not be common in the US -- but the ones that do are exist are, well, kinda' a big deal.
But -- oh, yeah! -- we were talking about city planning as relates to lower-income folks. And the thing is, even though you and I might consider it impossible to get to work, buy groceries, &c. in much of the country without a car, there are still people doing that by necessity. My brother-in-law used to take his bicycle on the bus and sleep on a bench until his
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