Why is a police helicopter flying above the area where I live everyday and night?

[frenchlavenderfeild]

I live in a residential area on the outskirts of a mid sized town. The area is a council estate sitting sandwiched in between two private estates all small, very quiet and bordering green belt.

I appreciate that sometimes police will be out in response to a particular crime or situation but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Instead the helicopters just circles around and around for a lengthy period of time then flies off.

It can be once or a few times a day. It often will circle round for a while on Friday or Saturday evenings sometimes with its search light on which you can see passing through the garden. I thought perhaps they were training pilots but surely they don’t train that many as they’ve been coming here for years now but seem to be getting ever more frequent!

We’re not near any big roads and where they circle is more towards the houses and fields than the roads.

Any ideas as to why police helicopters are flying round a quiet residential area on a daily basis?

@PurpleRainDancer yes I know, I’m one of them!

A council tenant that it, not a trouble maker.

Just found out Boris Johnston is near by today so that perhaps explains today’s excessive police air presence.

@frenchlavenderfeild It went on sporadically for months, but especially on Friday and Sat nights, which I suppose are the big 'drug activity' nights. I have no idea how long these surveillance operations go on for but someone who did surveillance for benefits fraud cases told me they kept watch on the suspect houses for months, I guess in those cases so that people couldn't claim that undeclared live-in partners were only there for a short time and were not living there.

Our local police helicopter has a Twitter page so you sometimes get an update there of why they’ve been in the area

It might be training. We had the ambulance helicopter over us for hours several nights in a row a few months ago. You could follow it on flight radar. Someone tweeted them and they replied it was pilot training exercises. Apparently the Campsies are good for training over.

If it's been going on for 4 years, I'd say it's probably training.

It should be easy enough to email your local police and ask, or ask in your local FB group.

If you're absolutely certain it's a police helicopter most forces will have a section on their website where you can look up why the helicopter was in a certain area. It's unlikely to tell you the juicy details you want to know, but may give a hint e.g. missing person enquiry/stolen vehicle etc.
I think most forces share their helicopter over a number of different forces so it seems very unlikely that they could be focusing on the same area every night.

The police helicopter is always above our town. Tends to be car crime, drugs, etc. The town itself is dead quiet. Have a look at the crime map the police do to see what's been going on...

the police helicopter is out over our area at least two or three times a week. we do live on quite a rough council estate though. last week there was a helicopter, riot vans, dog units, armed response combing the area for hours! it was focused on the houses and gardens at the back of ours and my kids were glued to the windows fascinated. it’s the most entertainment they’ve had all lockdown!

www.scotland.police.uk/spa-media/hcopclwz/20-2206-response.pdf

Here is a snapshot of reasons for launch..

In some areas it’s because wooded areas are magnets for midnight drug deals

Could be pilot training?

Do you live near the coast? Or an area where people might be coming on shore from the sea? I assume not because I am guessing you're in Scotland. The police fly a lot of drones along the south coast to look for migrants.

Do you live near an airfield or somewhere similar that might do test flights? We live near to a helicopter engineering firm that makes helicopters for the military/police. We get a lot of them flying over us on test runs after they've been repaired or before they are sent out after being built. That would seem unlikely if you are sure it's the same one.

The police helicopter is out quite often where I live too also a council estate ,we do live very close to a red light area ,and there is some drug dealing ,it always wakes me up

There may be a reason why, whenever it's up it ends up over you. Good all round visibility, near a road where it meets other vehicles, ensuring pilot hours etc often things like this which seem bizarre to us outsiders make perfect sense to 5hose in the know.

@helpfulperson Thats interesting about ensuring pilot hours, what does that mean exactly?

So to hold a pilots license you have to fly so many hours per year. If a pilot looks like they may be short they will need to 'make up' these hours.

That doesn't mean they will fly round aimlessly but they may do things like practise tricky manoevers or carry out surveillance that they wouldn't otherwise

In our area the air ambulance sometimes attends incidents where it seems like overkill and a team member explained to me it was so they had enough flying hours.