Update: This post has been updated with a report from the Los Angeles City Controller to show the stats on the heavy usage of LAPD helicopter pilots. Along with LAPD, corporate media helicopter pilots coming mostly from ABC, NBC, and FOX news are also circling & hovering over Los Angeles county non-stop. Los Angeles is being engulfed in 24 hours of noise, fuel, and lead pollution that is linked to violent crime, dementia, heart disease, cancer, & other serious issues. Community advocates are currently working to get billboards up across Los Angeles county to get more residents involved and to also bring forward legal action against the city and county of Los Angeles, LAPD, the state of CA, aviation and corporate media companies and the FAA. You can join the movement by joining the groups below or subscribe to the HTWWS website and put aviation in the notes to get update by email.
🚁LAPD HELICOPTER AUDIT: FINDINGS
• Hourly cost: $2,916 per flight hour
• ~$50M per year (more than 14 city dept. budgets)
• 61% of time not spent on high priority crime
• Disproportionate time spent in certain communities
• ~762k gal fuel burned/yrhttps://t.co/ni5XMmZOxV pic.twitter.com/951lEL26x2— LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia (@lacontroller) December 11, 2023
Online anti-rogue aviation groups:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/blueskiesadvocates/?mibextid=oMANbw
https://www.facebook.com/groups/fumefightersunitedvny/?mibextid=oMANbw
Aviation noise pollution over local Los Angeles county neighborhoods
To be clear, this specific example of police violence happened near the MacArthur Park area in Los Angeles. The information was provided to my by one of my peers. The heavy usage of LAPD helicopters seems to be a reoccurring, every day, all day thing happening in Los Angeles right now. The heavy usage of helicopters, the loud noise, and pollution is NOT public safety, in fact, it’s the exact opposite! FYI, some of these reports of heavy helicopter violence are sent to me by my peers & others I’m able to track via various airspace tracking apps.
A while back, one of my co-workers randomly started talking to me about the heavy usage of police helicopters around Los Angeles. She mentioned how it triggered her PTSD and I got to thinking about how they made me feel. Another co-worker mentioned that he was leaving his community near Silverlake because he was tired of hearing helicopters all day. One of my close peers mentioned that they felt like they lived in a war zone because LAPD helicopters were flying so frequently over their home. After my peers freely/randomly told me about the LAPD helicopter violence that they were experiencing, I also began thinking about all of the unhoused residents who were dealing with the massive noise & fuel pollution, and how that pollution could cause serious disruptions in a person’s mental and overall health. I think about our home called Earth and the heavy fuel that helicopters burn, causing massive amounts of pollution that humans, other species, nor the Earth need at any moment in time but especially not during a climate crisis!
So, about the MacArthur Park area, it’s essentially Koreatown/DTLA but let’s have an honest conversation about what’s going on over there. I’ll start by saying that YES there are a lot of unhoused residents in the area. All of them are in need of permanently affordable/supportive housing that advocates have been demanding from city, county, & state officials for years now. Advocates understand that many, not all but many unhoused & housed residents are in need of supportive healthcare services in the area of corrective behavioral, mental, and/or rehabilitation health services. What the unhoused don’t need, nor does the housed community, is the constant flying of helicopters at all hours of the day and night! See the video below of an LAPD pilot flashing helicopter lights into the apartments of civilians on another morning around 3AM;
#LAPD helicopters hovering near Koreatown, this isn’t public safety it’s police violence! The LAPD helicopter was intentionally flashing helicopter lights at 3AM into the windows of residents! This is a constant daily thing for locals!!! #LosAngeles #GavinNewsom @KarenBassLA pic.twitter.com/8y1xHE8jzH
— How The West Was Saved (@HowTheWestWS) March 16, 2022
I’ve asked it before, and now I’m asking it again; What is public safety to you??? The total “law enforcement” budget in LA County is 8 BILLION +, the majority of public spending, yet our communities are not any safer because of it! Every day civilians are being impacted by police violence and unarmed civilians, sometimes unhoused veterans, that are in need of mental, behavioral, and rehabilitation healthcare are being shot & killed by police. The current system as it stands requires a victim(s) to operate. It’s a sacrificial system that doesn’t work if there aren’t any victims! Public safety to ME is about crime prevention or at least trying to prevent some of the crimes from happening. No other “job” in the world can underperform like our current “law enforcement system” is underperforming and still get more money every year! We DO NEED a public safety system, but militarized police like LAPD and many other local forces around the country, around the world, do not belong in civilian communities! We MUST form a new public safety system, we MUST invest in our communities, and we MUST divest from militarized occupations in local communities!
As I type this, another act of gun violence has happened in America, in New York, a place that has close to a 10 BILLION dollar police budget. A gun-touting person of interest was able to get onto a public train station with a loaded weapon, a subway that has 100’s of officers on-site! Public safety is PREVENTION, no person should be able to actively board a PUBLIC train with a loaded weapon! Further, if we had the community investments that are needed, we likely could prevent more of these crimes from happening and YES, we do need to get unmarked weapons off of the street. We do need critical investments in youth crime & gang prevention, we have to fix or dismantle and revamp the broken foster care system, we have to eradicate poverty, we MUST address white-collar crime, and CYBER fraud, etc. I’m not ignorant to the issues that we are having I’m just asking and wondering is more money to the police every year actually making us more safe bc it doesn’t seem like it is? LAPD is using helicopters every day all day and they are leaking noise pollutants linked to violence. How is that public safety? How does it prevent crime?
“The skies over Los Angeles are the densest net of helicopter surveillance in the world. The LAPD’s aerial division is a constant presence over the city, particularly its poorest neighborhoods. The glaring searchlights and cutting noises keep residents up at night, communicating an air of supremacy and control”
https://massivesci.com/articles/helicopter-los-angeles-environment-new-nature/
I invite everyone reading this to learn more about the Civil Grand Jury of Los Angeles. It is my belief that we need to not only pay Civil Grand Jurors more money (no, they are not paid enough money) but we need them aligned respectively with all districts where there is an active police force. The civil peers should be working along with progressive grassroots teams to establish a new public safety system that works, and they should begin the dismantling of the violent militarized police that are occupying our communities.
Civil Grand Jury of LA County
“America, the first Grand Jury was established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. The Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury (Jury) has three areas of responsibility:
1) to provide civilian oversight of the governmental agencies within Los Angeles County
(County),
2) to inspect jails and juvenile detention centers within the County, and
3) to investigate complaints made by individuals in the County. The Jury does not mandate;
it makes recommendations.
This report is the result of our investigations from July 1,
2019 to June 30, 2020.“
“The LASD has adequate staff to have two helicopters on patrol, and one on standby.24 Since the LASD is responsible for covering 4,084 square miles of territory,25 only two helicopters on patrol at a time are not sufficient for adequate coverage, particular in the Lancaster/Palmdale area. The LASD should hire one more aircrew, which means eight more staff to have a third helicopter on patrol.26 LASD helicopters, Eurocopter AS350, requires a staff of 1 Pilot and 1 Technical Field Officer. The Super Puma Rescue helicopter requires a staff of 2 pilots and 3 SWAT medics.27 Members of this Committee rode in two separate LASD helicopters. During the ride-along, they observed the culmination of a police pursuit. However, a suspect was not located from air. After circling for 20 minutes, the search was terminated. The LAPD has three helicopters airborne at any given time covering an area of 498 square miles.28 Pilots fly for 2 ½ hours and are on the ground for 2 ½ hours for a rest period and then fly for another 2 ½ hours.The LAPD has three helicopters airborne at any given time covering an area of 498 square miles.28 Pilots fly for 2 ½ hours and are on the ground for 2 ½ hours for a rest period and then fly for another 2 ½ hours” Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury Report pg. 60 (2019-2020) http://grandjury.co.la.ca.us/pdf
What is public safety to you? Because what we are currently dealing with in our local communities is NOT public safety. I now look at the militarized violence that has happened in communities outside of the U.S that involved the U.S and I can’t shake the feeling of the violent crimes of humanity that are happening at the hands of the state. We will, we can, we MUST divest from the barbarians that dared draw a weapon of war against any civilian!
To complain about LAPD’s heavy noise & fuel pollution, LAPD Police Commission email is; police commission @ lapd DOT online. cc lapcfails @ gmail DOT com.
Looking at this LAPD helicopter and it also did an 8pm night loop of canyon country then topped if off with a visit to the Hollywood sign. Why are we paying for this? pic.twitter.com/1rbhFs37yk
— GarrettML (@GarrettML) August 31, 2022
Rooted in enslavement and imperialism, policing is always how colonizers have controlled people and deprived communities of autonomy.
Read our Automating Banishment report, about policing’s roots in settler colonialism and conquest: https://t.co/GE1i8ZC6f5
— Stop LAPD Spying Coalition (@stoplapdspying) March 24, 2022
And yes, I’ve learned the full story.
An unhoused person was looking for some place to take a shower. She was trying to raise money for a hotel room, but someone told her to take a shower in the vacant house.
Anyway, she was no longer in the house by the time cops there.
— Film The Police LA (@FilmThePoliceLA) October 21, 2021
WATCH: Today a coalition of more than 70 community orgs & families of LASD violence held a press conference to release a letter to the BoS urging a charter amendment be placed on the ballot to create an impeachment process for the LA County Sheriff #CheckTheSheriff #LASDgangs pic.twitter.com/wrmMqLkRZB
— CheckTheSheriffLA (@CheckSheriff) February 8, 2022
@LBPD pays out more in misconduct settlements than 87% of depts per capita ($4million a year or $10k per day). They are more violent than 87% of departments & less accountable than 98%.
These misconduct costs are not coming out of the police budget.
pic.twitter.com/9pVYxmej9I— CheckLBPD (@checklbpd) August 22, 2021
Pretty sure this won’t solve homelessness. pic.twitter.com/wM6qysQumP
— Michael McConnell (@HomelessnessSD) April 11, 2022
Daily reminder: Today in the U.S., corporations will steal $137 million in wages, the rich will steal $2.75 billion in taxes, and 1,300 humans will die from poverty, air pollution, and medical error. Who benefits from the news ignoring it and focusing on low-level crime instead?
— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) April 11, 2022