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Durham Regional Police ASU reaches 10,000th flight hour

By Sarah Grandy | April 20, 2016

Estimated reading time 5 minutes, 2 seconds.

Durham Regional Police was the first municipal policing agency in all of Ontario to benefit from helicopter patrol. Mike Reyno Photo
Durham Regional Police was the first municipal policing agency in all of Ontario to benefit from helicopter patrol. Mike Reyno Photo
The Durham Regional Police Air Support Unit (ASU), which polices one of the five jurisdictions of the Greater Toronto Area, recently recorded the 10,000th flight hour in its Bell 206 JetRanger.

Captain Bruce Buck from National Helicopters, which is contracted to provide the ASU with pilots as well as provide maintenance, was at the controls when the aircraft reached the landmark on March 29 — and he was also the pilot when the aircraft took its first flight back in December 2003.

“I couldn’t think of a better job-specific platform than the 206,” said Lyndon Greene, detective constable and tactical flight officer in the Durham Regional Police ASU. “Its reliability and practicality made reaching the 10,000-hour mark painless.”

Durham Regional Police established the ASU in 1999, becoming the first municipal policing agency in all of Ontario to benefit from helicopter patrol. The unit began operations using a leased JetRanger before purchasing its current Bell 206 JetRanger new from Bell Helicopter.

“[The] aircraft we have serves our needs. It’s reliable, a great aircraft, a great platform for what we use it for [and] it does exactly what we need it to do,” said Greene.

Based out of the Oshawa Municipal Airport, the ASU covers all 2,500 square kilometers of Durham — making it the largest regional police service in Ontario from a geographical standpoint. Included in that territory are two of the province’s nuclear power plants, and the shorelines of Lake Ontario, Lake Scugog and Lake Simcoe.

The ASU is proactive, often covering its service area several times in each shift, as well as offering help to surrounding regions when needed.

The ASU recently updated its camera system from the original L-3 Wescam MX-3 to the MX-10 high definition IR camera. The Durham Regional Police ASU Photo
The ASU recently updated its camera system from the original L-3 Wescam MX-3 to the MX-10 high definition IR camera. The Durham Regional Police ASU Photo
“We’ll actually go out looking for calls; we don’t wait for calls to come to us,” said Greene. “We do patrol flights; we don’t just respond to the dispatch calls. If there’s nothing on the radio [that] calls for service, we will go up and do a full patrol, either a clockwise or counter clockwise flight.”

In 2015, the ASU responded to 781 calls for service, assisted in 88 arrests in those calls, was first on scene 402 times, and had 190 locates, which could range from a missing person to a fleeing criminal. “Even if we don’t actually locate the fleeing criminals, having our aircraft orbiting overhead drives the criminals to ground, which slows them down or stops them for a K9 unit locate and arrest,” said Greene.

Recently, the ASU upgraded some of the equipment on its JetRanger in order to provide the best possible service.

“We updated our camera system from the original L-3 Wescam MX-3 to the brand new, cutting edge MX-10 high definition IR [infrared] camera,” said Greene. “We also updated our Churchill ARS [Augmented Reality System] to the latest and greatest that they offer, so we are cutting edge at this point. Everything is high definition.”

The ASU flies 1,000 hours a year, five days a week, and on call 24 hours a day, even on its scheduled two days off. “We’re always working,” said Greene. “The aircraft can travel anywhere in the region in 25 minutes. From our North Durham division, officers take almost 45 minutes to drive to a call in our most northern border. We can get there first, assess or contain the situation from the air and direct or prepare officers for what to expect on arrival. From officer safety issues, to traffic concerns, to containment for K9, we can update them on route.”

Greene said that the aircraft has proven itself to be a huge benefit to public safety over the years. “The missing child would stay missing that much longer, the home invaders or any other ‘in progress’ criminals would be well on their way to an escape without an air support unit.”

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