It's so bad that the local TV stations have their own choppers and a dedicated on-screen UI tailored for the chases with GPS-based tracking and speed.
If you're lucky you can catch one of the many YouTube live streams. Here's one from....two days ago: https://www.youtube.com/live/uGiJU-FlpdE
It's not only dense but the scale is far larger than most European cities. Only Asian and South American cities outclass the insanity that is LA. Until you've been there it's hard to appreciate the scope of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles#Urban_area...
This isn't a size measuring contest. I think Europeans forget how _young_ America is. That's the only unique part of this country. Give us a few thousand years and we'll be on par.
Seems like a vicious cycle, fed by the terrible news media.
Seriously? It's from people not wanting to be arrested and go to jail. If they get away, perfect. If they don't, well, they were going to jail anyways. Now they have a cool story to tell while in jail. These are not people getting pulled over because they rolled a stop sign. These are people doing dirt, know it, and are willing to try something to avoid getting caught. It's really not complicated
Although if you watched "Last Week Tonight" recently (S12 E28, 2025-11-02), Mr Oliver's long segment is about police chases and IIRC he covered more than a couple of cases where people were, in fact, being pulled over / chased for trivial matters which then lead to crashes, deaths, etc.
The police officers don't know why you are running away and can reasonably expect that there is something wrong other than an unbuckled seat belt -> a kidnapped person, tons of drugs in the trunk, a wanted murderer driving, etc.
Well at least in my country where chases are rare. I understand in US it is difficult since people are more eager to run away.
The latter is often a result of the former. People self-medicating to escape misery.
Can't we just blame GTA?
(assuming they do in fact have more per capita/car...)
UK has stuff like [0] which contains a whole bunch of "is it worth it?" considerations. Also if a chase causes a death, the officer(s) can be prosecuted[1] - I suspect the nonsense of "qualified immunity" means there's no risk to a US officer for initiating a chase that ends in death.
[0] https://www.college.police.uk/app/roads-policing/police-purs...
[1] e.g https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-58889155
After this case [0] the standing orders are that it's basically never worth it, you risk a prosecution no matter what the circumstances.
[0] https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/garda-charged-aft...
Off the top of my head: 1) US cops are more likely to harass, maim, kill you than most other places (whether you've crimed or not); 2) US legal system seems a little hinky when it comes to certain people; 3) "three strikes" (not sure if that's countrywide or state-level? pretty sure it's still around tho'?) can mean life for three trivial crimes; 4) car-centric country - lots of them and everywhere is designed for cars[0].
[0] Imagine a car chase around London[1] or some other wackily streeted city.
[1] No, the godawful nonsense Hollywood comes up with does not count.
It's basically a list of violent crimes, the only one that seems out of pocket is selling PCP, meth, or cocaine to childre, which is bad but could arguably be less bad than the others on the list
But not all states are California.
> No one is getting life in prison for littering or insurance fraud
William James Rummel begs to differ[0] - fraudulent use of a credit card ($80), forged check ($28.36), failure to return payment for non-performed work ($120.75) and voila, life sentence (albeit later reduced to time served on procedural grounds.)
[0] also references "Graham v. West Virginia, a 1912 case which involved an individual convicted of three separate counts of horse thievery total[l]ing $235" which ended up in a life sentence.
In summary, some states may have sensible 3 strike laws, some may not.
It takes a lot to earn strikes in California.
In a city with large population, it only takes a few people willing to commit crimes to make the news.
john oliver did a whole thing on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ygQ2wEwJw
Except that the person trying to get away knows that too, so if all they're doing is buying themselves a bigger fine, why are they doing it?
The answer to that could be because they stole the car, or because there's a body in the back, in which case mailing them a fine doesn't work.
There is generally no crime for owning a vehicle used in a crime. The violation belongs to the _driver_ and to no one else. Burden of proof can be extreme in US courts.
A hoodie is enough to defeat the drone surveillance, and regardless of what facial recognition technology you use, a jury still has to buy the output of that system.
For drones with less than a 6 foot wingspan that don't require a runway you've got maybe 30 minutes of flight time at a top speed of 30 miles per hour. So unless you know where they're going already you're not going to be able to effectively deploy it in the time necessary to capture them and you can't loiter long enough to track them with infrared.
The helicopter is an insurance policy. When you have a bunch of marked units doing twice the speed limit on a long enough chase they're going to hit something. Those crashes are devastating and lead to eye watering settlement amounts. The helicopter can safely chase most vehicles at almost any speed and the risk of them crashing with any civilian or even civilian property is effectively zero.
thing is, in Germany and many other European countries there's a mandate to register your place of residence with the authorities in a timely manner (i.e. 2 weeks after moving in).
Americans and Brits don't have that, so "mail them a fine" is most likely going to result in the letter not arriving where it should.
Hitting a car going 100mph with a magnetic dart that and getting it to hit on a metal part, not a window or trim, and specially a steel panel, is not easy at all.
It would be nice if someone else with knowledge would chime in here. If this damages cars, then I want to know, so I can stop doing it in the future.
Some people will get snide about anyone who cares about their car’s paint, but as someone who once bought a car I had to save a long time for and spent a lot of time with car care products I would be very sad if I saw you drop a magnet on to it and then pull it off without a second thought. Please don’t.
Seems like everyone here is assuming you used a 40lb neodymium magnet you dropped in the dirt first.
I like to assume the best in people.
You can look up people even trying to detail their cars to make them cleaner and end up leaving “love marks.” It doesn’t matter how soft the thing you’re using is. It’s because the car has contaminants on it and by rubbing anything on the car, those contaminants end up scratching everything. It’s like when you’re at the beach and you’re trying to remove sand off your skin. You’re probably not aggressively rubbing it off or using much pressure but it still hurts. It’s the same with cars, it’s just that the rocks aren’t as visible to you. They will leave swirls and scratches though… which become noticeable.
I’ve had people just lean against my car when it wasn’t completely clean and completely ruin the paint requiring an entire 5 stage detail.
I don't even know what a 5 stage detail means but I can safely say you are overreacting. A car is just a tool and a rando putting a fridge magnet or leaning against your car once in a while is just completely negligible compared to the amount of shit a paint is exposed to when driving it. Sand and dirt do not ask for your permission either.
Assuming this is true, it seems like something has gone badly wrong somewhere in this process.
Why can't cars have paint that survives being "leaned on"
I never thought of my Olds Silhouette minivan as a high performance car. Neat.
The rubbery panels were great. I was at school pickup and another parent backed into it. They crushed the front fender to the firewall. Then they pulled up and it popped out.
They were freaked out but it was fine. And it's just a car.
Officials asserted in their letter that live continuous coverage
causes dangerous police chases to be looked upon as entertainment,
and encourages suspects to flee in pursuit of instant fame.
“Dangerous suspects are acquiring instant celebrity status when they
recklessly evade police over our streets and highways. This form of
notoriety is life threatening and should not occur,” said Los Angeles
County Sheriff Lee Baca in the press release.
"There have been instances where drivers look out windows and wave. Many
[suspects] have made it abundantly clear that they’re enjoying the whole
thing,” said Julie Wong, director of communications for the mayor’s
office.How is anyone driving at that speeds in LA traffic?
Nicely contrasts with all the news about the omnipresent license plate scanners - it's just pointless, don't take the risk, arrest them at your leisure.
So unless there's an immediate danger, there is no reason for chasing people and create dangerous situations. You can just follow them around from the severance cameras and catch them once they are no longer on the move. Even if you don't have disability for one reason or another, it still doesn't make much sense to engage in high-speed driving around people minding their own business.
"Once this baby hits 88mph, we're home free!"
Air support is used to coordinate with law enforcement up ahead to deploy spikes to end the chase.
You are just repeating empty political talking points that simply don't work in the real world.
> They could learn a few things from the Georgia State Patrol, the undisputed world champions of the PIT.
Why not just open up on them with antitank weaponry? PIT maneuvers are extraordinarily dangerous, especially at high speeds.
If you are eluding the cops at 100mph you are a danger to the public, they are not going to let you go home.
>Why not just open up on them with antitank weaponry?
I've heard cops say something similar on body cam footage.
I'm not sure that the cops pursuing people at those speeds is doing anything besides making the situation more dangerous. Police in the US are grossly undertrained, I wouldn't trust them to actually be competent at what is very technical and difficult driving.
One would think that basic firearm safety would be the bare minimum, since we pay them to carry a gun. However, I have had to vacate a shooting range 3 times due to police showing up and being unsafe with firearms. I have had this happen in 3 different ranges, where off-duty cops have shown up and proceeded to ignore basic safety rules like not flagging people with guns. I'm not dumb enough to try to give a cop a safety lecture, so I've always packed up my stuff and left. However, if they aren't even given enough training to not figure out to point their guns downrange instead of at the firing line, they aren't trained well enough to trust with something technical and difficult like a pit maneuver.
One of these times was at a CA range, they were socal cops. Training standards for police in the US are woefully low, most cops aren't able to hit the broad side of a barn given ideal circumstances. They agitate about how dangerous their job is, but they don't train like it is. They fire a few rounds a year and have absolutely horrendous marksmanship standards. Don't get fooled, your average cop has roughly zero idea on firearms safety or even how to use the darn things.
They would not even try to reach those speed if they weren't chased. A criminal who thinks he escaped the police will try to not attract attention. They would just follow the normal flow of the traffic and you can follow their path thanks to the millions of cameras and the helicopter mentionned earlier. We are not in the 70's anymore.
You can follow them from a distance they can't spot you so you can lock the road if they turn back and dispatch police force form in various exit points of an highway without starting an high speed chase.
High speed chase is about cops endangering the public for the thrill and adrenaline really. They do that because they like it, not because they need it to arrest criminals.
But well, it's America, having the risk of a stray cop bullet hitting you because just like car chases, shootous are inevitable, makes it safer!
Same for me, but I live in America.
The specific location matters a lot. The LA area is more population dense and bigger than might be obvious.
To put it in perspective, the GDP of the LA area is about 1/4 as much as the GDP of your entire country.
That's underselling it a bit, IMO. You can look at an aerial map and observe that it's pretty big, but experiencing it in person ... it's enormous. It just goes, and goes, and goes, and goes ...
And then there's all the GDP that arises from the population itself: construction, healthcare, education, real estate.
If you take away the entertainment industry, it becomes a different place, but there's a lot of economic activity and most of it isn't film and tv and music production.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_port...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_airports_by_pa...
https://www.comparea.org/r122576+r396479
Don't know how the math works out exactly, but if they don't have the workforce to cover their patrol area with squad cars, there's probably an argument to be made for covering gaps with areal support. Given that Chicago struggles with workforce shortages, I can only imagine how much worse it'd be if you had to cover 4x the area with half the tax base.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/U3mncVE1TQ0
Unsurprisingly, the comments are mostly making fun of them for wasting tax money on hunting down some guys with spray bottles.
Also, according to the tracker, there's only one airborne in LA right now, and it is a pretty large city. It's close to 100x bigger than a 200k city.
On average, the city spent an average of $46.6 million on the program, the audit disclosed. It also found that there is limited oversight or monitoring of the division, its policies and practices and whether the program is in line with the city's safety needs. [...]
The department has 17 helicopters and over 90 employees. [..] The city operates their helicopter fleet on a nearly "continuous basis" [..] The total translates to more than $2,900 per flight hour. [...]
Additional findings in the audit disclosed [..] 61% of the flight time was in fact dedicated to low-priority incidents like transportation, general patrols and ceremonial flights — like a fly-by at a local golf tournament, roundtrip transportation of high-ranking LAPD officers between stations and passenger shuttle flights for a "Chili Fly-In."Much of which flows directly back into the local economy through wages spent and maintnance paid.
It's fun to call this a waste of taxpayer dollars until you watch a carjacked vehicle recovered with kids inside.
Obvious excessive spending should not be shrugged off by dividing the expense by the population of the area.
Obvious excessive costs need to be reined in. Tax money needs to be spent on the highest priorities, which this is not.
https://old.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/1oolm68/lapd_he...
LAPD flies quite recklessly especially downtown, where they aren't even clearing the buildings. News choppers fly much higher, well over the skyscrapers, and have no problems getting very tight shots on whatever subject there is down there.
If you follow them on ADS-B you see they really aren't used that frequently at all for calls and end up in holding patterns with nothing to do really before flying somewhere else for a new holding pattern, until their shift is up presumably.
Cynical-me assumes those are the ones running stingrays/imsi-catchers.
It's hilarious to hear flying cops try to be intimidating through when dispersing illegal concerts or singling individuals out in non-violent crowds. It's impotent posturing and an obvious waste of money. They really don't need to send 5 squad cars and a helicopter for noise complaints.
I will say though that the loudspeaker on those things are surprisingly clear, even through the buzzing of a helicopter.
These needs should be filled by drones. Way less noisy, dangerous and expensive.
There's just enough high-speed/timely crime here that I prefer they use these over drones. There's some extra legal protections built into helicopters that drones don't get, like prison time if some idiot points a laser pointer.
I don't see why large drones can't do most of what these helicopters are doing. They're using needlessly expensive helicopters, too.
My point is, two small helicopters are more than enough to do that job as a side-gig from all the other CHP work they do.
Also, Cal Fire has its own air wing. LAPD helicopters are not equipped for firefighting.
LAPD has been patrolling with helicopters for decades. I have yet to see a drone follow a car in high speed pursuit down the 5 at 100+ MPH.
Realistically though, I agree with your sentiment. Solving this would drones would require a constant flock of something more akin to Predator drones.
The better question is - why do we allow high speed pursuit chases in the first place?
Rather than some inherent sized for safety idea.
Jamming might be interesting, I suspect that it's easy enough (and a much bigger crime) to follow a very loud jamming signal though.
Every practical metric a drone surpasses a helicopter; they are so much simpler to operate that you can easily offset any perceived downside with more drones. And you don't get a tested solution without trying it out.
AFAIK they've changed their tactics in recent years, but growing up around LA these we're like sporting events on TV. It's a guilty pleasure, but almost everyone I know tuned-in and watched the chase.
But people love ‘em, and if you point out what a bad idea they are people label you “soft on crime” (as happens with a lot of plainly good policy)
The fleeing driver is choosing to turn that lawful stop into felony fleeing/eluding if they choose to attempt to flee at triple digits.
Without both of:
- A driver willing to flee the cops.
- A cop willing to chase at dangerous speeds
The high-speed chase doesn’t happen. Both make it happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_MQ-8_Fire_Sco...
I'm sure it depends on screen resolution etc but I'd love to be able to click links to the data sources.
Overall an interesting idea. I'd love to know the data source for the cost of the operation of the aircraft. Would be really interesting to connect a database of all aircraft types then present the ability to watch the cost of like "all American Airlines flights currently flying" or "all US military aircraft".
Hm, now on reload it shows a whole map... but if you zoom in it resets it and zooms out by itself at intervals.
During the summer of 2017 Denmark flew hourly surveillance helicopters and military SIGINT aircrafts over Copenhagen to stop Sweden-like gang shootings. It was expensive but worked.
Aerial surveillance has it's place.
They don't really use them for hit and run. How could they? Think about how fast that crime occurs and how much time will pass between that incident and vectoring a helicopter, which might be tied up on other work.
Less than 20% of hit and run cases are even solved in California (1). I'm sure the rate is even lower in a city like LA.
1. https://attorneyatlawmagazine.com/legal/opinion/dragged-and-...
It does, but I would be very surprised if the LAPD knew its place or cared to keep it there to prevent it from wandering into places that are totally unnecessary and expensive invasions of our privacy.
I was wondering because I remember the last time I lived in Los Angeles in 2009 I went to a Lakers championship parade and talked to one of the cops assigned to crowd control, and asked about it when a helicopter flew overhead. She told me it's a great job a lot of them try to get because even 20 years ago they were starting out at something like $215,000 a year and were not expected to have any flight experience. The city just trained up regular patrol officers and tripled their pay.
1. https://old.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/1oolm68/lapd_he...
2. https://www.threads.com/@kilodelta/post/C5m373ZOX9Q
3. https://preview.redd.it/jcfdph3aiczf1.jpeg?width=1164&format...
4. https://preview.redd.it/dl7lqa2blbzf1.jpeg?width=1206&format...
Honestly not that bad considering it provides a real service. I mean how much does the city spend on lawsuits against corrupt cops and other employees. According to the budget something like $300 MILLION on lawsuit payouts last year alone.
Who gives a $hit about the helicopters. Build an app that tracks the employees causing these lawsuits that are still keeping their jobs.
