Since 2017, the Eagle crews have been operating 24/7, but the number of jobs they attend still surprises OC Sergeant Colin Ware.

“We're getting called to just about everything these days.”

Up to 60 per cent of the calls they attend throughout Auckland’s three Police districts are vehicle related, and changes to the fleeing driver policy have added to the workload.

“Now that everyone's thinking proactively and trying to plan things, where ground crews are not rushing into just instigating a pursuit, it means that Eagle ends up having a lot of time pressures in following a vehicle for a long period of time waiting for something to happen on the ground.”

Since Police News last joined the unit for a story in 2015, the number of attended events has nearly doubled and Eagle’s budget for flying time has also gone up from 1800 to 3300 hours a year so the unit could go 24/7. The crews spend a little over three hours in the air per shift.

The unit – three Bell 429 choppers, two sergeants, 12 constables and three training positions, as well as nine civilian pilots on rotating shifts – has recorded a job success rate of 62 per cent.

In many ways, Colin says, its success rate is the reason behind the unit being so busy.

“For example, when we attend a job and find what we were searching for, that’s good for everyone – less investigation time, better evidence and less chance of repeat offending. This naturally creates a higher demand for our service, but the challenge some days is staying within our budget.”

Tagging along on a couple of shifts earlier this year, I experienced the level of demand first hand. During a search for a stolen vehicle in West Auckland, the three-person crew was called on for four other jobs in the space of 10 minutes – two stolen cars, a missing person, and a public disorder event where a man “wearing a cowboy hat and holding a whip” was intimidating members of the public.

During the day, the crew had been monitoring anti-vaccination protest activity at Mt Eden prison where Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki was being held.

Inside the cockpit, the officer in the back seat monitors several screens, checking number plates on a laptop or iPhone, and listens to the Auckland police radio channels, while the officer in charge sits in the front and operates the forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera with what can only be described as a juiced-up PlayStation controller with 28 command functions.

Staring down on Auckland at night, the orange and yellow glow from the city’s lights could give the impression that everyone’s tucked up in bed by 10pm, but the comms radio chatter tells a different story.

To the untrained eye, trying to find a “red Mazda Demio” among every other car in West Auckland, is almost impossible, but for this unit it’s second nature. By the time I had figured out where we were meant to be looking, both officers had already found a car that matched the description and were homing in on the number plate.

Speeding drivers on the motorway, however, are glaringly obvious to anyone in the Eagle cockpit.

The team is seeing an uptick in firearms-related jobs, something that used to be a notable event, but Sergeant Mark Jamieson says he now expects one every day.

“Firearms are concerning to us, because we feel that we have a responsibility to the ground staff to provide as much support as we can to keep them safe at these jobs. Just last week, an offender was pointing a firearm back at police after a car chase.”

Providing that safety net of surveillance and evidence gathering from 300 metres above has clear advantages for Auckland’s Police districts and the unit empathises with the rest of the country that doesn’t have an eye in the sky at their disposal.

During a five-week trial of the ASU in Christchurch in early 2020, Eagle attended 346 jobs and 210 people, including nine gang members, were apprehended thanks to the surveillance from above.

However, Christchurch is not getting an Eagle yet.

“Although, in our eyes, the trial was successful, and reinforced proof of concept, for a variety of reasons this has not yet resulted in duplicating the unit and creating a southern Eagle,” Colin says.

Laser strikes continue to be a problem. Although they are not as frequent, Colin says they still come in waves. Between July 2020 and December 2021, the crew was targeted more than 20 times.

“One shift recently was hit twice by two different people. They were both caught and dealt with. The difference is we’re the only asset that can actually catch the offender. If any other aircraft gets lasered, they get away with it. We can hold them to account.”

The Eagle crew uses the FLIR camera to track offenders and record the evidence as they direct ground teams to the suspect. In January, a man in Blockhouse Bay was arrested for striking both the Eagle and a commercial plane on the same night. He was easily identified out in the open in a backyard and could face up to 14 years in prison.

These days, some of the team’s successes, all captured on high-quality video, are shared by the Police media team. The true-crime vids make compelling viewing, usually with a satisfactory resolution when the cuffs go on.

Complaints by disgruntled residents over the Bell 429 helicopter’s distinctive sound still roll in, particularly in the warm summer months when Aucklanders leave their windows open at night. Colin says most people are understanding once the crew explains what they were doing.

“There’s a fair degree of misunderstanding or misinformation that the New Zealand Police Air Support only trains at night just to annoy people. That’s the wonder of Facebook nowadays.”