well I'm Sergeant Will Taylor with the
Albuquerque Police Department air
supports unit we monitor all of the apia
commands we also monitor the S so area
commands and um we basically listen for
anything that we feel that we can help
with when we are between calls we
basically Patrol the city we look for
anything from drunk drivers to Speeders
tonight uh we had a call where we
assisted uh officers in the Northeast
that uh had suspected uh U Auto burglar
um Upon a driving one individual was
hiding we assisted ground units in
locating that individual um burglary
tools were also found near the vehicle
that actually had been entered by these
individuals additionally we located four
other subjects in the area those
subjects um it was not determined yet um
if they were involved or not but they uh
were conducting activity that was
suspicious and led us to believe that
they may be this evening when we were uh
getting ready to head back to the
airport uh we did hear and observe that
Rio Rancho Police Department Department
was involved in a Pursuit we uh we did
uh fly overhead and assist them with
that Pursuit um the uh individual was
eventually Spike belted and uh the event
the subject actually eventually did stop
and was taken into custody peacefully um
but the overall Pursuit lasted close to
half an hour uh as a pilot of helicopter
um I actually kind of have the easier
job than the Tactical flight officer but
my job is to keep the aircraft overhead
uh be sure it's positioned where the
Tactical flight officer can um
effectively do his job tactical flight
officer um has several tools he's got
about three radios that he has to deal
with and he can switch between those
radios as he needs to transmit on on any
of the frequencies he also has a
spotlight which uh he controls um he has
the Fleer which uses a separate control
and then he has a keyboard that set a
monitor and that operates uh the
computer which is our aerrow computer
the ALU cre metro area is somewhere in
the vicinity of 400 square miles it's
pretty large area considering the speed
we fly we can typically get from one end
of town to other within 5 to 6 minutes
um usually when we're going from one
town to another we're flying somewhere
in the vicinity of about 112 knots which
is is upwards of 120 mes hour and um so
uh because we can go in straight lines
too we don't have to worry about
following roads we can get from one town
to the other uh quite
efficiently well as a pilot um first of
all obviously we have to be raided
helicopter pilots and uh then we also go
to school we go to American newor copter
and we have to be uh trained as in a
transition school to learn to fly this
particular helicopter we spend a week
learning it systems we spend three days
in ground school then we spend two days
of flying the helicopter