Police Aviation News December 2007

Police Aviation News December 2007 11
MISSOURI: St. Louis, Missouri-based Aerospace Filtration Systems, Inc. (AFS) have
announced a donation of $3,000 to their local St. Louis Metro Airborne Law Enforcement
Foundation. The Foundation assists the local Metro Air Support Unit in funding its aerial
law enforcement helicopter operations throughout St. Louis and St. Charles Counties as
well as in St. Louis City. Earlier this year, AFS sponsored the company’s first annual AFS
Charity Golf Tournament to benefit the Foundation.
Previously, the company also contributed $10,000 to the cost of painting one of Metro Air
Support’s frontline patrol aircraft. The unit now has two of its MD500E helicopters painted
with the classic black and white police paint scheme.
AFS will be at Booth 4013 during the HELI-EXPO 2008 in Houston, Texas, February 24-26,
2008. www.afsfilters.com
TEXAS: The Houston Police Department [HPD] was one of the two law enforcement operations
selected to trial UAV’s under controlled conditions for the Feds but in recent days it
looks as if they have been trying to play their cards very close to their chest and hide their
activities.
It is claimed that when they trialled a Scan Eagle UAV over a remote farm plot in Waller
County on November 21 they shrouded their activities like it was some top-secret military
venture and greatly increased the interest of both the residents and the media – the latter
were banned further heightening the sense of mystery at what ought to have been an open
investigation of the technology.
The location of the trial was some 70 miles northwest of Houston and police cars surrounded
the scrubby land with roadblocks in place to check each of the dignitaries arriving
for the invitation-only event. The invitations included the US Department of Homeland Security
and dozens of officers from various police agencies in the Houston area. The props included
a row of suitably mysterious black trucks, satellite dishes and a rotating radar dishes,
all items to get tongues wagging on a low news day.
The media may have not breached the inner site security but the local TV news organisation
was not put off. It used ground and helicopter born cameras to record everything as if
they had been invited. As a result a low interest news story that would have probably bored
everyone was the subject of the probing high powered camera following the aircraft for
more than one hour as it circled overhead.
Worse than that the news hounds hauled in to the studios critics of all police surveillance
and the local non-event was being hyped up to be an international cause for concern. Many
US citizens take a dim view of probing cameras [especially ones able to look through walls
like the hype in superdrive was suggesting] and surveillance in general. HPD was pushing
the ‘Homeland Security’ angle but all the news organization saw was traffic cars driving out
of the site. So, for the sake of an unnecessary secret, the Scan Eagle is now being presented
to a sceptical public as a speed camera carrier.
All the flying appears to have been undertaken by the developers of the Scan Eagle - Insitu,
Inc. based in Bingen, Washington. The 40 pounds/ 18kg craft has a 10.2 ft / 3.1 m wingspan
and requires a substantial support team – all those black trucks. It is launched by a
catapult rather than by hand so all in all it is a substantial machine and somewhat difficult to
hide from view.
It seems that the HPD ‘wasn't ready to publicise’ the demonstration [although the Feds had
already told the media that they were to trial them] but in the event they were forced into
hastily setting up a news conference when they realised that the whole event had gone su-