According to a number of comments, the Helicopter Unit has fallen to the budget ax:
- chicago and cook county have been sharing the helicopters in an agreement to split the bill. Now, cpd is pulling out 01 jan 2012 due to the high cost of maintenance and fuel to keep the helicopter up. Interesting to see if the county will keep it now. what a joke this city is... every major city in this country has helicopters but the incompetents in chicago cant keep them. this city is a joke. by the way, this hasn't been made public yet but will next month when the budget comes out... we at the county here already got the call that its happening so we can figure out what to do with them now.
We remember a comment a while back that said for every hour in the air, the helicopter needed something like 4 or more hours of maintenance? Is that possible? Even in the military, does that sound plausible? We knew choppers were somewhat economically inefficient, but the benefits for a military operation as opposed to urban patrol would be justified from a national defense viewpoint. Having a Chicago Police helicopter just because it's "cool" doesn't seem to justify it's existence when Rahm and Mc(insert name here) are looking to cut $190 million or more from the budget.