Since 1926, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has been one of the largest sheriff’s aviation forces in the United States and established models for many of the missions performed by law enforcement organizations around the world. The expansive geography of Los Angeles County with sprawling urban spaces, extensive suburbs, lengthy coastline, and rugged hills has made ensuring public safety a challenge. Led by aviation-enthusiast Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz, between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) used airplanes, and even a blimp, to maintain an aerial perspective over the county and support emergency response.
The department’s acquisition of helicopters in the mid-1950s helped change law enforcement aviation. Initially tasked with highway patrol duties and looking for lost hikers and swimmers, by 1964 Sheriff Biscailuz’s protégé, Peter Pitchess, led the world in introducing the helicopter as a tool to combat violent crime. A federal grant funded a transformational study in 1966-67 called Project Sky Knight. By highlighting significant statistical reductions in major crimes, the effort fueled the rapid growth of law enforcement helicopter units across the nation during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Combined with new technologies like light turbine-powered helicopters, xenon spotlights, and night vision goggles, these helicopter units demonstrated that air support to ground units, particularly in night operations, was a game changer in combatting serious crime.
By the mid-1980s, a new generation of turbine helicopters optimized for medical evacuation and aerial rescue, along with new tools such as FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared Radar), greatly improved the efficiency of rescue and patrol missions. In the early 2000s, the homeland security response and Department of Defense support of law enforcement allowed upgrading of fleets, while datalinks and onboard computers greatly improved situational awareness and response times.
LASD helicopter, 2002
Courtesy of LASD
