for many constabularies its not that much these days (as little as a few hundred quid) they do a “fixed cost” deal with the helicopter manufacturers where they get the fuel, maintenance etc for free as part of the total price of the aircraft, so the only extra costs are the pilot and the coppers who would be on duty anyway.

this is why you see the helicopters in the air a lot more commonly these days (even during the week) and being tasked to comparatively minor incidents (round here AA99 was sent to try and follow two lads who may have been doing a single low cost drugs deal (they didn’t even catch them!), just because a nosey neighbour called 999….)

Other forces such as hantspol and sussex use a fixed wing aircraft which is cheaper to run, in all cases if they do pay for fuel they get cheap tax-free fuel from the military (the aircraft are always kept at MOD bases)

Unfortunately, the costs of properly cleaning up a farm site including the human waste can easily reach the thousands at normal commercial rates, and are comparable with the costs of using the police helicopter.

its also a matter of principle to the cops, they are being lobbied by locals/landowners as well as the NHS and have to be seen to be “doing something” about illegal raves…

you could try, but the issue here (and with other CCTV schemes) is that you are only entitled to the footage shot of yourself and not anyone else, and the cops can say it will be disproportionately expensive to black out all the photos. Helicopter footage is usually a high level shot to assess numbers present /entry exit points and of course shows loads of people..

Even the media only get footage from cases what have already been heard in Court and even then they often obscure the face of the target or any coppers who for “operational reasons” do not wish to appear on telly (they also are protected by human rights/health and safety laws)

also if they allowed any random to get this footage, people like farmers/locals could get it and perhaps even use it to try and do vigilanté actions…

for instance at a local rave helicopter footage was only relased to the media of the nighttime shots so individual people couldn’t be identified.

I was looking at FOI requests sent to a East Anglian force (they have to put them on the web or give reasons for refusal) and there were some quite chilling attempts by individuals to get info what they clearly would have used to take the law into their own hands or to gather dirt on people, I was actually glad to see the cops refused their requests!

costs a chopper 20,000 just for them to get in the air and to were their going … dont no about extras such as filming etc …

it costs 500,000 to call out the bombsquad so no one go making prank calls :yakk:

Haha cool

it says here that they hire it out 2 other forces 4 £1500 per hour…

http://www.surrey.police.uk/foi/surrey_police_Helicopter_6293.pdf

anyone interested then