Went out with the TPD last night and it was cool....literally about 30 degrees. I took a couple of Dramamine an hour or so ahead of time and got ready to go. I found the helipad easily and rang the doorbell. Noone answered and I began to wonder if I was in the wrong place. Shortly after I rang the doorbell the second time, a rather serious looking fellow in a flight suit opened the door. After the requisite stern and ever so Paul Schnorenbergish (retired police/also father-in-law), "Can I help you?", I explained to Jeff who I was and it was all good from there. I filled out the required form and got to talk to Jeff and Antonio (sp?) about stuff. A preflight rundown and a couple of trips to the men's room - I was all set. The helo had leather seats in the back and was pretty much what I expected - sweet. The cabin warmed up quickly and we were soon off the ground and moving out toward the inactive runway at the airport. The tower cleared the pilots and we were off.

It was smooth as a baby's butt with only an azimuth wobble in the wind every once in a while. These guys got pretty busy right off the pad and we were soon over an apartment building where someone lived who was suspected of calling a pizza guy and then robbing him. Nice. That incident cleared and then it was a trip over the top of our local mall for some reason. Back across town for a 250lb woman in a running suit running from the ground units in the dry riverbed. That took a few passes with the FLIR and NV goggles. It was really fun to look around at the city. I began to recognize the streets since the mountains were dark and there wasn't enough moonlight to see them. After clearing that incident and one more where the FLIR was used to check a car for occupants, the real excitement started.

Evidently someone had just carjacked a truck and was racing away from the police down Mission Rd....at 80+ miles per hour. This is a tiny two-lane street in parts that runs through residential areas. He really opened it up when it turned to four lanes and opened up. At 115 knots of airspeed it only took a few minutes to be over the chase and I could see everything as it unfolded. It was like being in an episode of Cops....really. The TPD pilots handled themselves really well. They warned me that this could get exciting and we'd discussed keeping off of the mic earlier. They said to hang on and see what happens.

Soon they made contact with the police car that was in charge of the chase and let him know that they had the guy and the pilots then started relaying information to the guys on the ground about directions and street names. It was interesting too that they called the street light conditions and warned the patrol cars about busy intersections. The clown in the truck must have watched the show Cops a few times because he was trying all kinds of things to evade the police cars. He avoided the spike strips, unlike one unlucky patrol car, and would cut the corners whenever he saw a police car at an intersection. The copilot was flying the helo at this time and would keep the left side down so that Jeff could see everything. This meant that I could see everything too. This meant that a few really tight turns were required every few minutes as the the guy switched direction in the truck. I found myself grunting/valsalva manueuver and looking around a good bit so that I wouldn't get dizzy. The guy sideswiped one person at an intersection and probably would have completely t-boned this person had it not been for a raised curb. He was soon up to about 100 mph on the highway and back off again into side streets. The pilot told the person in charge of the pursuit to back off so that this guy wouldn't kill anyone and they did. The guy in the truck must have thought that he was getting away and decided to cut into a neighborhood area. This would be his last move of the chase. He was hauling it down a four lane street and took a left turn into a small street. It was a small Dodge pickup and they're not exactly built to handle fast turns. The truck started to drift as soon as he turned it and he was soon up over a curb and head on into a power pole. The passenger got out and ran as did the driver. The passenger was subdued by the ground units and the driver took off into a group of houses. He soon realized that he had nowhere to go and gave up until the officers tried to take him into custody. After a small scuffle and a gravity check or two, he was cuffed. It turns out that the passenger was a pregnant woman. Nice going there dummy. The incident was soon being debriefed by the ground folks and the pilots moved on. I guess that I was really lucky to see this because it rarely happens around here and when it does, it's sometimes over when the helo gets involved. There's just not room to run in T-town.

One more check of a person running from the police and then it was back to the hangar. I was tired and a bit dizzy from the final spotlight check of the night, but was really pleased with the ride and the way that the pilots worked. I think that having this helicopter is a good thing for our town and would challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to go for a ride.

I've looked all over the newspapers and can find no report of this incident that involved over 10 police cars and two or three different collisions. I don't think that most folks around here really know what goes on in different parts of their neighborhood, much less different parts of the city and the "news"papers don't really report what happens.