Editorials

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Police service's expensive 'taste'

By: Editorial

Posted: 01/13/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

There is no hard cost-benefit comparison behind the bid to buy a police helicopter, which has wide support at city hall. A report two officers prepared lays out the tangible and intangible benefits; those officers concede it is impossible to attach hard numbers to the limited savings a helicopter should produce.

The benefit comes not in evidence of crime suppression, but largely in how high-speed chases are managed with a helicopter on call. A chase involving a helicopter is longer than one involving a cruiser because the latter typically is resolved quickly -- aborted by police when they become too dangerous -- and sometimes dramatically, when a vehicle crashes or someone is harmed. But when a helicopter gets to the scene, police cruisers fall off the chase and wait for word when suspects ditch the vehicle and head for cover. A helicopter will be invaluable, it is said, to finding missing persons. Response times in general should improve, the officers say, because fewer cruisers are tied up chasing suspects. All of this is backed by evidence, much of it anecdotal, from police departments with helicopters.

There is no reconciling the balance sheet with the $3.5 million city hall has approved to buy a brand-new helicopter and build a hangar, nor with the annual operating costs (starting at $1.3 million and rising to almost $1.4 million in three years) that city hall expects the province to foot. It is simply at increased cost to the taxpayer. This is why a London, Ont., professor, having studied the fine details of a helicopter's cost benefit, concludes that giving officers an eye in the sky is a matter of taste, not economics.

Further, the benefits are constrained by the fact that, so far, one helicopter is on the wish list. The Winnipeg Police Service expects it to fly only 20 hours a week. Experience in other cities is that the criminals catch on to this fact fast.

There will be a day when city hall is petitioned to buy a second helicopter, as has happened elsewhere. Will the province agree to double its rising, annual contribution, which is the real expense of this proposal? Chief Keith McCaskill, ignoring the fact a helicopter works for only a few hours each week, noted it would cost more, operationally, to put another cruiser on the street, 24/7.

It is precisely that kind of woolly cost-benefit thinking and sales pitch that makes those yearning for a detailed financial analysis nervous. If any such people lurk at city hall, it is long past the time they spoke up. Winnipeggers should know exactly what they're buying into.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 13, 2010 A10

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