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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
by BadBadJellyBean 11mo 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.
- potato3732842 11mo agoIt's not about results per dollar. It's about sending a message.
- Nextgrid 11mo agoThe police state needs to enforce its dominance.
- shoddydoordesk 11mo agoThere 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 https://www.youtube.com/live/uGiJU-FlpdE
- stefan_ 11mo agoI 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.
- TravisLS 11mo agoWorth noting that many people who run from the police also have fake or stolen plates.
- stefan_ 11mo agoI don't get this gotcha. The license plate scanner associates a plate with a location and time, it doesn't care for who drives it. In a chase, you know the plate, you don't know the location. Seems perfect?
- nradov 11mo agoPerfect how? The license plate scanner can only tell that a particular plate number was in a particular place at a particular time. It doesn't know if the plate was fake or stolen, or who was driving the vehicle, or if there was contraband in the vehicle. Stopping fleeing vehicles is one of the most effective ways to catch people with outstanding arrest warrants and get illegal weapons off the streets.
- lukan 11mo agoI think the idea is, if you know where the car is and where it is going, you don't need to chase it openly on high traffic areas with high risk of accidents. You use restraint and take them at a safer place. (surely won't work all the time)
- nradov 11mo agoYou don't know where it's going.
- mrtksn 11mo agoThat shouldn't matter, after all, even if the plate is legit, you can't just find a person's location from the database. They usually have some legal address or something, not live location. So unless there's an immediate danger, there is no reason for chasing people and create dangerous situations. You can just follow them around from the severance cameras and catch them once they are no longer on the move. Even if you don't have disability for one reason or another, it still doesn't make much sense to engage in high-speed driving around people minding their own business.
- shoddydoordesk 11mo agoSo your proposal is to just let the criminals run away? And that somehow won't embolden them further? "Once this baby hits 88mph, we're home free!" Air support is used to coordinate with law enforcement up ahead to deploy spikes to end the chase. You are just repeating empty political talking points that simply don't work in the real world.
- bluedino 11mo agoA lot of departments terminate chases very early
- shoddydoordesk 11mo agoThey could learn a few things from the Georgia State Patrol, the undisputed world champions of the PIT.
- mapt 11mo agoBasically, letting them run away and then setting up a raid at their house the next morning is safer for everyone. If you can follow them from altitude well enough to do that, you reduce risk dramatically relative to either interception or chase. > They could learn a few things from the Georgia State Patrol, the undisputed world champions of the PIT. Why not just open up on them with antitank weaponry? PIT maneuvers are extraordinarily dangerous, especially at high speeds.
- shoddydoordesk 11mo agoBuddy, most of these are stolen cars. Do you think they are driving them home and parking it in the driveway? If you are eluding the cops at 100mph you are a danger to the public, they are not going to let you go home. >Why not just open up on them with antitank weaponry? I've heard cops say something similar on body cam footage.
- netsharc 11mo agoIf they're eluding cops at 100mph and being a danger to the public, it's because they're being chased by cops... But well, it's America, having the risk of a stray cop bullet hitting you because just like car chases, shootous are inevitable, makes it safer!
- sokoloff 11mo agoIn many cases, the driver is not associated with the plates, with the car and/or plates being stolen.
- dylan604 11mo agoJohn Oliver recently did a segment on police chases https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8
- asdff 11mo agoThey 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.
- efnx 11mo agoIt would have to be a very special dart. Cars are mostly aluminum and foam. A piercing dart would be dangerous and a magnet would really work.
- asdff 11mo agoOutside certain high performance cars, most cars have steel body panels.
- bluedino 11mo agoSome steel body panels. Much of a car is made of plastic/urethan type materials, hoods are usually aluminum, some bodies are all aluminum....
- WarOnPrivacy 11mo ago> Outside certain high performance cars, most cars have steel body panels. I never thought of my Olds Silhouette minivan as a high performance car. Neat. The rubbery panels were great. I was at school pickup and another parent backed into it. They crushed the front fender to the firewall. Then they pulled up and it popped out. They were freaked out but it was fine. And it's just a car.
- Aurornis 11mo agoIt’s more common than that. A lot of cars have aluminum panels now.
- Esophagus4 11mo agoThese exist! https://www.thedrive.com/news/police-tag-fleeing-cars-with-gps-tracking-darts-to-avoid-dangerous-pursuits https://www.thedrive.com/news/police-tag-fleeing-cars-with-g... https://www.starchase.com/products/vehicle-mounted-gps-launcher/ https://www.starchase.com/products/vehicle-mounted-gps-launc...
- dilippkumar 11mo 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?
- dylan604 11mo agoLike an asshole. We've all seen them, even if not in a chase. It may not be 100mph+ the whole time, but when there's open air, they'll get there.
- BadBadJellyBean 11mo agoThen why do you have so many car chases? That seems like an odd problem. There must be a reason.
- ripberge 11mo agoI have only been to Germany once, but my assessment was that we have a very different population here.
- BadBadJellyBean 11mo agoPossible but it seems like the chases are not even a US problem but more a "certain places" problem. I genuinely wonder what the cause of this behavior is.
- dylan604 11mo ago> I genuinely wonder what the cause of this behavior is. Seriously? It's from people not wanting to be arrested and go to jail. If they get away, perfect. If they don't, well, they were going to jail anyways. Now they have a cool story to tell while in jail. These are not people getting pulled over because they rolled a stop sign. These are people doing dirt, know it, and are willing to try something to avoid getting caught. It's really not complicated
- samdoesnothing 11mo agoI think they're asking why there's such a large population of people willing to commit crimes and then get into high speed chases.
- dylan604 11mo agoThe cause of the behavior (as phrased when asked) is not wanting to go to jail. Asking why people are in situations where they are committing crimes that could land them in jail is a totally different question. Typically, poverty. Also common, addiction.
- chrisweekly 11mo agoI 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)
- jjwiseman 11mo agoIn 2003, "Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn, along with Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles Police Chiefs’ Association and the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners sent a letter Feb. 26 to news directors of television stations asking them to consider reducing the amount of police car chase coverage they broadcast." Officials asserted in their letter that live continuous coverage causes dangerous police chases to be looked upon as entertainment, and encourages suspects to flee in pursuit of instant fame. “Dangerous suspects are acquiring instant celebrity status when they recklessly evade police over our streets and highways. This form of notoriety is life threatening and should not occur,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca in the press release. "There have been instances where drivers look out windows and wave. Many [suspects] have made it abundantly clear that they’re enjoying the whole thing,” said Julie Wong, director of communications for the mayor’s office.
- shmeeed 11mo agoIntersting. Did this letter have any effect?
- JLO64 11mo agoPersonally 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 11mo agoThis YouTube video is missing a Kavinsky soundtrack.
- Avshalom 11mo agoThe 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.
- samtho 11mo agoLaw enforcement operates in a position where they “can’t lose” an encounter. This is a major cause of rapid and unnecessary escalation with LEOs and the civilians they’ve stopped.
- ultrarunner 11mo agoFriendly reminder that LEOs are civilians as well— while they may dress like it, they are not military.
- FireBeyond 11mo agoVery much so. Perhaps their training shouldn't explicitly use such language and work to increase that separation - LE training is notorious for teaching cops old and new that anyone/anything "not a cop" is not one of them, and is a threat or has threat potential.
- Avshalom 11mo agoI understand, but again, they shouldn't. (This is why we want to abolish them)
- CPLX 11mo agoGenuine question. What do you think the alternative is? Let's say for argument's sake, that it was relatively well known that you could just drive away rapidly from a police encounter and successfully escape. Do you think that would affect the number of people who made that decision to do that? I can see both sides of this, but I'm curious what yours is.
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- asdff 11mo agoThey 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 11mo agoWhere 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.
- BadBadJellyBean 11mo agoIn a big city. Not rural at all.
- c0balt 11mo agoAt 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.
- chmod775 11mo agoThey're used in Berlin, though they're surprisingly quiet compared to the emergency care ones. Maybe flying higher? Here's their POV: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/U3mncVE1TQ0 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/U3mncVE1TQ0 Unsurprisingly, the comments are mostly making fun of them for wasting tax money on hunting down some guys with spray bottles.
- Semaphor 11mo agoI 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.
- rootusrootus 11mo agoSame 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.
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- Aurornis 11mo 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.
- rootusrootus 11mo 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 11mo agoThat’s pretty much only because of Hollywood’s film industry. It isn’t comparable otherwise.
- toast0 11mo agoThe greater LA area has Hollywood film and television and a lot of music stuff too. It has the 16th and 19th busiest container ports in the world (Los Angeles and Long Beach) [1]. It has the 11th busiest airport by passenger volume [2], and several other airports because that one isn't enough for the area. It has a pretty extensive computer industry. There's a lot of petroleum processing. There's a lot of agriculture. There's some financial services (many cities in the US are bigger in finance, but there's still a lot in the LA area). A pretty good amount of manufacturing. Several top tier universities. It drives a lot of tourism. And then there's all the GDP that arises from the population itself: construction, healthcare, education, real estate. If you take away the entertainment industry, it becomes a different place, but there's a lot of economic activity and most of it isn't film and tv and music production. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_ports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_port... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_airports_by_pa...
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- h14h 11mo agoI 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 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 11mo agoDon't give them ideas.
- jjwiseman 11mo agoThey'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 11mo agoLos Angeles is a massive city. To cover that much ground given limited police it’s sort of necessary.
- PeterHolzwarth 11mo agoToo 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 11mo 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 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykRB9SVlDhU
- jurschreuder 11mo agoThe 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.
- nmeofthestate 11mo agoThe German eagerly commenting that, actually, it's different in Germany is becoming a defining cliche of HN comment sections.
- Teever 11mo agoHonestly I'll take that over the "street poops are so bad in SF" brigade any day of the week.
- mgraczyk 11mo agoWe have more criminals and more crime in the US