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Search-and-rescue officers load a stretcher onto an Airbus AS350 helicopter. | Photo courtesy of Macacones/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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In a 4-1 vote, the Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s request to purchase a new helicopter and airplane for patrol and other deployments at a total cost of $18.46 million.
“Our aviation division is robust for a patrol setting,” Bianco said ahead of the vote. “But you look at the size of our agency and the county, and it’s almost laughable. Aviation is absolutely necessary for an efficient law enforcement operation.”
Board Chairman Kevin Jeffries cast the sole dissenting vote against the expenditures, citing his disagreement with the sheriff’s position on declining to make at least one of the choppers available for firefighting operations.
“The Orange County Sheriff’s Department provides water-dropping capabilities when requested,” the chairman said. “The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department provides water-dropping capabilities when requested. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department offers water-dropping capabilities. This could be beneficial to (our) residents. This county has so many fires where we don’t have enough aircraft.”
Bianco replied that the department’s six Airbus AS350 patrol helicopters are not certified for firefighting operations. The agency’s twin-engine Airbus H-145, purchased last year, can be outfitted for short-haul water drops. However, Bianco said the helicopter’s primary mission is search-and-rescue, and converting it to firefighting ops would require removing the expensive gear on the underside of the chopper, leaving his crews standing by for fire dispatches instead of law enforcement missions.
“I will gladly enter into water-dropping capabilities like the other counties, if you buy me the helicopters to do that,” he said.
The board authorized Bianco to add a new Airbus AS350 helicopter and a Pilatus PC-12 fixed-wing single-engine turboprop to the sheriff’s fleet. The funds for the purchases will be drawn from departmental accounts, not the county General Fund.
The price tag on the chopper is $7.72 million, and the Swiss-made Pilatus runs $10.74 million, according to sheriff’s documents.
The department has six Airbus helicopters on hand, plus a piston-driven Cessna 182 Skylane. The choppers were manufactured between 2000 and 2020; the Cessna rolled off the assembly line in 1974.
Bianco said the new helicopter will be based at Cochran Regional Airport in Thermal, raising the airborne patrol fleet to the number needed for “close to 24-hour coverage” on both the east and west ends of the 7,208-square-mile county.
Sheriff’s documents indicated that the Pilatus, which has gained popularity in the executive and charter aircraft markets, will be deployed to carry “investigators with time sensitive tasks,” as well as transport fugitives, “shuttle staff to complete jail inspections (and) meetings in and out of the county,” conduct search-and-rescues and “be a resource to other county departments with reduced travel time.”
The Pilatus has a 2,071-mile range, max cruising speed of 330 mph and service ceiling of 30,000 feet, according to sheriff’s officials.
Bianco suggested that the nearly $11 million airplane could be used for off-airport landings, on unimproved surfaces, saying “it’s able to land in the desert.”
“The actual airplane is state-of-the-art … (and) is exactly what the county needs,” the sheriff said.
He called it “offensive” that people would criticize the purchase as something other than a legitimate law enforcement need.
Officials said the C-182 cannot fulfill a number of preferred tasks due to its four-seat capacity, lower cruising speed and range limitation of 800 miles generally on two tanks of gas.
It was unclear whether sheriff’s administrators performed a search of the secondary or pre-owned commercial aircraft market space to find less expensive alternatives to the Pilatus.
The sheriff noted during fiscal year budget hearings last June that the aviation unit was encountering challenges covering all corners of the county.
He also has pointed out the need for expansion of correctional space. Only one-third of the Benoit Detention Center in Indio is in use due to staffing limitations. The amount of money going to aeronautical purposes that could be allocated for correctional hiring was unknown.
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