Touring the city with St. Louis’ chopper cops
By Matthew Halverson
Photograph by Scott Rovak
“Are you prone to airsickness?” It’s a simple question, one that might elicit a once-traumatic-but-now-funny tale about airplane turbulence. When Deputy Dave DeVillez poses it to me a mere seven minutes before I’m scheduled to strap myself into the back seat of a police helicopter for a public-relations tour of St. Louis, though, it conjures up green-tinged images of barrel rolls and barf bags.
But when you’re being grilled about your gastrointestinal fortitude by a crewcut police officer who wears an army-green flight suit and black combat boots to work every day, you laugh off the inquiry—as if only a wuss would let a couple hours in a helicopter cause him to lose his lunch. “It happens all the time, so don’t be ashamed if you throw up,” DeVillez says flatly, oblivious to the fact that he’s only making things worse.
Six-and-a-half minutes later, after my seatbelt has been secured and the propeller is whump-whump-whump-ing, a voice in my ear asks whether I’m ready to go. For a second I think it’s my inner pragmatist, second-guessing my decision to make my first-ever helicopter flight a ride-along with the police. Then I realize that it’s the pilot, Officer Dan Cunningham, speaking to me through my headset. I check to make sure the airsickness bag is where they told me it would be and give him a shaky thumbs-up.
I’ve been offered the opportunity to join Cunningham and DeVillez on this brief aerial shift because, as Capt. Kurt Frisz, commander of St. Louis Metro Air Support, told me a week earlier, his department is trying to build a fanbase in the city. It’s the same reason they make public appearances at company picnics and sell T-shirts on their website.
This public-outreach campaign goes beyond just making friends, though: The department needs money. Things have improved significantly since the St. Louis city and county police departments and the St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department pooled their resources in 2003 to create one fleet to patrol 1,500 square miles of the metro area, but the four choppers in regular use are well past their freshness dates.
Actually, that may be an understatement. As we circle above a South City neighborhood, shining our 30 million foot-candle spotlight on an off-duty officer who’s been the victim of an attempted carjacking, Cunningham informs me that the department’s two MD500E helicopters—one of which I’m sitting in—have logged a combined 20,000 flight hours. The other two flew in Vietnam; one was shot down over Cambodia and later repaired. I can’t tell whether it’s because we’ve been flying in a tight circle for nine minutes or the fact that he just used the words “shot down,” but I suddenly feel a little woozy.
But for all of DeVillez’s assurances that he won’t think less of me if I hurl, the flight fails to truly turn my stomach. In fact, I’m surprised by how smoothly we glide around the city. The chopper may be old, but it doesn’t have the shakes yet. Things only get hairy when Cunningham makes abrupt course changes to respond to calls: Up becomes down. The skyline recedes. My preflight burrito advances ... but holds steady.
Strangely, despite my fears of midair heaving, I find myself wishing for a high-speed chase down Highway 40. Frisz tells me that, aside from searching for lost children and rescuing boaters stranded on the Mississippi, Air Support engages in a pursuit about once every three days. Now that we’re in the air, the warring halves of my psyche have compromised; I’m hoping for an O.J.-style pursuit: the drama of a suspect on the lam without the extreme bowel churning of a World’s Scariest Police Chases–style event. Unfortunately, I fail in my various attempts to will motorists to bolt. (It turns out that I was about a day early. Frisz later informs me that the chopper squad aided in no fewer than eight pursuits in the week after my flight. I’m simultaneously disappointed and relieved.)
After two hours of flying along the river, above the city and near the Arch—despite my pleas to zip through it—it’s time to return for refueling and to drop me off. Having succeeded in keeping my gut in check for the duration of the flight, I’m infused with a sense of manly pride, a swelling of machismo ... but I still drop into a crouch, well beneath the still-spinning propeller, as I trot across the tarmac to my car.
Safety in Numbers
-67 vehicle pursuits without an injury*
-$2.1 million in recovered goods
-83 vehicles recovered
-23 missing people found
* all numbers for 2005
