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helicopters have been flying for 30
years I was I was actually a part-time
guy with APD I was active duty in the
Air Force back when I flew for
Albuquerque in my career in the Air
Force I primarily flew Blackhawks but
I've had a few civilian jobs along the
way where I was able to fly different
things for EMS news flight training a
few other things like that the
Albuquerque police helicopters where I
got into law enforcement this is the
first appearance of the state police's
newest helicopter this is an Airbus h1
45 very state-of-the-art these have only
been around for a couple of years and
this is actually only the second law
enforcement h1 45 in the United States
right now
the other one is Vegas PD out in Nevada
well the helicopter itself costs
somewhere around nine million dollars
and then we have a couple million
dollars worth of police equipment on
here so with training and tools and
spare parts and warranties and all that
stuff
state paid just over 12 million dollars
for this setup helicopter pilots sit on
the right so this would be the pilot
seat on the right side they can be flown
from either side and sometimes we fly
with two pilots sometimes we fly with a
pilot and a tactical flight officer our
typical crew is a pilot and two tactical
flight officers because if you look in
the back part of the aircraft here we
have a what's called a TFO station a
tactical flight officer station it's got
a big screen and they can run their
camera and see all their stuff in the
back just like the guy up front can only
he has a little smaller screen up
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so very easy access especially if
there's no seats in here there's a lot
of room but we have room to put 8 seats
in the back of this helicopter plus the
two crewmen up front so we can carry ten
people comfortably if we needed to the
unique thing about this helicopter is it
doesn't have a conventional tail rotor
it has what's called a fenestration
astronomer but it's a kind of a ducted
fan looking thing and it's very
effective because the air can flow right
through it there's no big vertical fin
to block the airflow it's got ten blades
and it's very very quiet that's what
makes this helicopter a good
law-enforcement platform and it's also
safer you know that's a little harder to
walk into than ever conventional but as
state police officers you know we cover
the entire state not just the City of
Albuquerque or Bernalillo County or or
stuff like that so so we kind of have a
unique mission set and that's one of the
reasons why we went after a helicopter
like this this has a lot of power a lot
of good capability we can we can do a
heist work because we have a hoist on
this helicopter we never had a hoist on
any of the previous helicopters for the
state but this is a game-changer for us
because we'll be able to do rescues
anywhere in New Mexico any time of the
year and that's a big deal of course
because we do a lot of search and
rescues you know we support our TAC team
with surveillance with video recordings
we Patrol sometimes we support the auto
theft guys you know probably about 25
different mission sets that we can do
with this helicopter just depending on
what happens and where it happens in the
state of New Mexico so we go all over
the place so here we've got a PA system
we don't use this a lot but we could
talk to people on the ground if we
needed to with this they're really
powerful speakers
we can also broadcast recorded messages
we can play our siren if we need it then
if they need to know that we're police
officers stuff like that up here on the
front of the skid this is one of our
this is one of our downlink antennas so
we can downlink our video images to
anybody that has the right app on their
device
so our chief could be sitting in his
office up in Santa Fe and he can be
watching our video feeds from our camera
real time even if we're down in Las
Cruces so that's a really unique
capability over here on this side we
have our camera this is a
state-of-the-art infrared daytime
do-everything camera and it works works
really well a lot more capability than
our previous equipment we can we can get
the same picture on this from about six
miles away and then in the past we had
to be about 500 feet to get that same
picture so this thing this thing works
really well and then of course back here
on the F part of the left skid we have
our searchlight latest and greatest
searchlight extremely powerful some
people refer to those as night Suns
because they light up stuff at night
time for us and then if you look inside
the cockpit there there are no
conventional instruments in this
helicopter it's all just screens and
those are all computers and again you
know state-of-the-art avionics this is
an extremely capable platform we can fly
it in any kind of weather and
has a four axis autopilot so really easy
on the pilots actually it is we're gonna
have a dedication ceremony in January
where we're going to dedicate the hangar
and actually unveil the helicopter
officially this is actually the first
public event you know that we've been to
as I mentioned before but the official
unveiling will be in January I did I
interacted with him when I was working
for the Albuquerque Police Department
and a great guy very unfortunate
accident and we hope that with this kind
of technology we never have to have
another accident like that
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