In Plane Sight

0

The new spy plane keeping an eye on the city of Lancaster has drawn lots of attention, from the ire of privacy proponents to the praise of local law enforcement.

But what’s flown under the radar is that the high desert city’s aerial surveillance system is provided not by high-price local law enforcement but by a low-cost startup.

The system is run by a Lancaster company, Aero View LLC, which uses civilian pilots to fly a single-engine plane equipped with an off-the-shelf video camera, catching sight of traffic accidents before they’re reported and swooping in to surveil crime scenes.

Now that the system is up and running and getting good reviews from city leaders and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Aero View executives say they’re ready to sell the service to cities across the country.

“We’ll invite city managers, people who control the budget, people who operate the law enforcement, whether it be the sheriff’s department or their own police,” said Steve McCarter, Aero View chief executive. “I think our main selling point is just to have people in and see how it works.”

Police departments have used planes and helicopters for aerial surveillance for decades, though usually for specific missions or emergency response. Several companies provide aircraft and pilots to law enforcement agencies, though they usually require an officer or deputy to ride along with a civilian pilot to relay information to the ground.

But Aero View’s system is different. It provides hours of general surveillance rather than aerial support for specific incidents. It sends a live video feed to commanders on the ground, eliminating the need for a ride-a-long deputy.

That makes the system a cheaper alternative. The company is starting out at a time when local governments and law enforcement agencies are looking to cut costs – and one of the biggest is helicopter units.

“Post-9/11, when law enforcement had a lot of federal cash, it was pretty great, but frankly, it’s gone down a little bit. Budgets are tighter in any city – whether for police or fire or teachers,” said David Ayotte, vice president of sales and marketing for North American Surveillance Systems, a Calverton, N.Y., company that sells mounts and other equipment used to outfit choppers with surveillance cameras.

Flight plan

Lancaster is more than Aero View’s hometown and first customer. The city also provided the company with $1.3 million in startup capital. The funding was used to buy a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, equip it with a camera and develop software that transmits a secure live video feed from the plane to the sheriff’s station in Lancaster.

City officials had been looking for an aerial surveillance system since 2008 and even considered drones, but those proved too expensive. Instead, the city started working with Spiral Technology Inc., a Lancaster firm that provides software and engineering services to nearby Edwards Air Force Base and other military customers. Spiral set up a spinoff, Aero View, for the city-funded project.

Aero View charges $297 an hour for 10 hours of daily surveillance, or about $1.1 million a year. That covers everything, including fuel, airplane maintenance and pilots’ wages, as well as equipment that records and archives two years of surveillance footage.

The service might appear costly but it’s significantly cheaper than the $500 to $900 an hour that law enforcement agencies estimate it costs them to provide airborne services. Driving down Aero View’s costs are its use of a relatively cheap plane – a new Skyhawk can sell for about $300,000 – instead of helicopters, which can go for $1 million or more and have higher fuel and maintenance costs.

The company’s contract pilots likely don’t earn more than the $50 to $80 an hour fee that a flight instructor can command. (Aero View has not released the figure.) By contrast, the Los Angeles County Fire Department pays its pilots up to $280,000 annually including benefits, or about $140 an hour.

In exchange for the startup money, Aero View agreed stay in Lancaster for at least a decade, to provide one year of free service to the city and to give it a discount if others sign up for surveillance services. For each additional customer that signs a contract for a year or more of service, Lancaster would get a $5-per-hour discount, which would work out to a break of about $18,000 a year.


New model

Aero View is one of several companies that offer private air support for public agencies, but its technology sets it apart. The company provides live video to the local sheriff’s station, where a deputy can control the plane-mounted camera as needed. Competitors require an officer to fly with the pilot and relay information verbally to officers on the ground.

Aero View plans to highlight that feature as it begins marketing the surveillance system, the Law Enforcement Aerial Platform System, to other cities and police departments.

“Typically, the law enforcement officer has to describe the situation as he sees it,” McCarter said. “Unfortunately, the information is limited to their ability to communicate in words. Ours communicates directly.”

He plans to start his sales campaign by inviting city and law enforcement leaders from around Southern California to come see how the system functions.

To be sure, the system won’t work everywhere. Aerial surveillance makes sense in sprawling suburbs, but less so in denser locales such as downtown Los Angeles, where buildings would block the camera’s view.

However, there are plenty of small and midsize cities where the system could work, as well as plenty of local leaders and police chiefs interested in trimming their budgets without cutting services.

In some cities, that’s led to agencies combining their aviation divisions, as Burbank and Glendale did a few years ago. Other cities, such as now-bankrupt San Bernardino, got rid of publicly owned units and instead contracted with private firms.

Kurt Frisz, president of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association, based in Frederick, Md., said Aero View’s hybrid, lower-cost system should draw interest from municipal customers.

“To have no law enforcement official on board, that’s the first time I’ve heard of that,” he said. “We’re in a day and age when we’re starting to see a lot of (unmanned aerial vehicles). This sounds kind of like that, but manned.”

No posts to display