Airborne Enforcement by State/ Area

[Rocketman59]

I have been reading the exploits of the members trying out this aircraft system TPAS/ PCAS to detect / track airplanes used for enforcement of speed. Certain states IE Florida and Washington State seem to be big users.

http://www.radardetector.net/forums/...revisited.html

Has anybody compiled by state and area where it is currently being used across USA.

It would be nice to know when planing a trip or vacation area's and states to avoid.

Just an idea.

[switch626]

Compliments of Krypton2 http://autos.aol.com/article/police-airplane-radar/

[Rocketman59]

Ok, Thanks for the link. My state of Ohio is on the list. Anyone been stopped by Ohio Cop in the sky, or know what area they use it in. I have not seen any timing marks on the road, at least on the Hy 90 Toll Way in north western Ohio. Also are they using timing (STOPWATCH) or just calling the ground unit to zap you?

[thx1138]

Read this....An officer in the plan observes your vehicle cross the lines on the highway and times you. Lines are typically 1/4 mile apart.

http://www.radardetector.net/forums/...eders-sky.html

[krypton2]

If it helps you much, a quick Google News search came up with this:

http://www.whiotv.com/news/24895996/detail.html

It's from last week...Montgomery County used troopers in helicopters to get speed, it sounds like via a stopwatch based on the article.

[kfmcmahon]

How cost effective is this? Must be pretty pricey to use aircraft to dole out speeding tickets.
Our tax $$ HARD AT WORK...

[krypton2]

How cost effective is this? Must be pretty pricey to use aircraft to dole out speeding tickets.
Our tax $$ HARD AT WORK...

It depends on a lot of things - the amount of officers on the ground helping the air unit, whether they are on regular time versus overtime, how much of a speeding citation goes to the state versus other departments' fees, how many speeders are caught per hour, what airplane/helicopter you're using...

Airplane costs are actually a lot lower than helicopter costs...POLICE airplanes are usually around $100-$200 an hour to run. Helicopters cost about $300-$500 per hour. That's the aircraft itself, I'm not counting the cost for the officer in the aircraft.

Since the OP is from Ohio, I'll use that for my examples I guess. Ohio Highway Patrol troopers make about $50,000 a year to start, and around $55,000 at their third year. I'll use that third year rate. Using a 40 hour work week, they would work 2080 hours a year... that's at a cost of approximately $26 per hour.

Let's say there's one trooper in the airplane and five on the ground... that's six troopers, multiplied by $26 per hour each. A total of $156 per hour, plus the cost of the airplane at $150 per hour - a grand cost of $306 per hour. That doesn't include some small other costs, like fuel for the cars...but if the troopers were just driving around versus doing this, they would end up using more fuel anyhow.

So we're at $306 per hour. How much is your average speeding ticket? Let's just say $150...that would mean they only need to write 3 citations per hour to make more money than it is costing the state. But not all of that money actually goes to the state general fund - probably about a third of it does, so we'll work with $50. In order to exceed that $306 amount, you'd have to have 7 citations written per hour. With 5 troopers on the ground, that's definitely possible...it's only a little over one per trooper, per hour.

In reality, each trooper would probably write 4-5 per hour, so 20 to 25 citations per hour total. That would be $3000-3750 in citation money per hour, but if we're working with that rough $50 amount that actually goes to the state, then $1000-$1250 per hour. And if you remember, the total cost for the airplane plus the six troopers was $306 per hour.

Using those numbers, the state would actually be profiting $694-944 per hour.

None of that is exact nor did I intend it to be. The only thing that is totally accurate is the trooper salary and the airplane cost should be close since I looked those two up. The $150 average citation cost was just a guess.

I'm just trying to point out that it's not really that expensive to use the airplane. It's more planning than anything - planning to get all of the troopers in one area, the airplane ready for take off, the pilot available, etc.

[kfmcmahon]

How cost effective is this? Must be pretty pricey to use aircraft to dole out speeding tickets.
Our tax $$ HARD AT WORK...

It depends on a lot of things - the amount of officers on the ground helping the air unit, whether they are on regular time versus overtime, how much of a speeding citation goes to the state versus other departments' fees, how many speeders are caught per hour, what airplane/helicopter you're using...

Airplane costs are actually a lot lower than helicopter costs...POLICE airplanes are usually around $100-$200 an hour to run. Helicopters cost about $300-$500 per hour. That's the aircraft itself, I'm not counting the cost for the officer in the aircraft.

Since the OP is from Ohio, I'll use that for my examples I guess. Ohio Highway Patrol troopers make about $50,000 a year to start, and around $55,000 at their third year. I'll use that third year rate. Using a 40 hour work week, they would work 2080 hours a year... that's at a cost of approximately $26 per hour.

Let's say there's one trooper in the airplane and five on the ground... that's six troopers, multiplied by $26 per hour each. A total of $156 per hour, plus the cost of the airplane at $150 per hour - a grand cost of $306 per hour. That doesn't include some small other costs, like fuel for the cars...but if the troopers were just driving around versus doing this, they would end up using more fuel anyhow.

So we're at $306 per hour. How much is your average speeding ticket? Let's just say $150...that would mean they only need to write 3 citations per hour to make more money than it is costing the state. But not all of that money actually goes to the state general fund - probably about a third of it does, so we'll work with $50. In order to exceed that $306 amount, you'd have to have 7 citations written per hour. With 5 troopers on the ground, that's definitely possible...it's only a little over one per trooper, per hour.

In reality, each trooper would probably write 4-5 per hour, so 20 to 25 citations per hour total. That would be $3000-3750 in citation money per hour, but if we're working with that rough $50 amount that actually goes to the state, then $1000-$1250 per hour. And if you remember, the total cost for the airplane plus the six troopers was $306 per hour.

Using those numbers, the state would actually be profiting $694-944 per hour.

None of that is exact nor did I intend it to be. The only thing that is totally accurate is the trooper salary and the airplane cost should be close since I looked those two up. The $150 average citation cost was just a guess.

I'm just trying to point out that it's not really that expensive to use the airplane. It's more planning than anything - planning to get all of the troopers in one area, the airplane ready for take off, the pilot available, etc.

...wow, I would NOT have thought an airplane only costs $100/hr...can I get a private flight to LA for $400?

[Solidjake]

Probably not listed in any of the links, but in Long Island I heard that Suffolk County used helicopters for a bit to catch speeders coming across Robert Moses Causeway bridge.

[Raoul Duke]

Suffolk County has also used airplanes to patrol the LIE and Sunrise Hwy during rush hour looking for speeders and agressive drivers (i.e. tailgating, etc.). It was a trial run with a borrowed airplane, but they may do it in the future.