Down in SD at least, the sheriff's office helicopters serve many purposes. They'll use them for firefighting, hike rescues (often! according to their IG), first responder to an aviation accident, loudly shouting garbled messages through their loudspeaker, etc.

There's just enough high-speed/timely crime here that I prefer they use these over drones. There's some extra legal protections built into helicopters that drones don't get, like prison time if some idiot points a laser pointer.

I work with CHP helicopters as part of our fire district's rescue team. We pull a half dozen people a year off of one of the local trails (sometimes as "recovery"). Most of these are via helicopter. There are two helos for a huge area - Yolo county down to Santa Cruz county. By acreage it's a lot bigger than LA.

My point is, two small helicopters are more than enough to do that job as a side-gig from all the other CHP work they do.

Also, Cal Fire has its own air wing. LAPD helicopters are not equipped for firefighting.

I seriously doubt that physically rescuing hikers or delivering first-responders to plane crashes represent a large percentage of LAPD helicopter missions. I live in a nice suburb and there's one of them circling over it probably weekly.

I don't see why large drones can't do most of what these helicopters are doing. They're using needlessly expensive helicopters, too.

LAPD doesn't conduct rescue operations or anything like that. Different helicopters are used from different agencies.