That 46 million could be spent on education, transportation, aid for low-income families, the homeless, jobs programs, small business tax breaks, infrastructure renewal, public works, etc. According to the report, not only are they largely not used for anything productive, there's potential harms to both people and the environment. And as many have pointed out, the same work can be done with drones.

▲

bildung 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To drive this point further: The one stable causal relastionship relevant here is the one between inequality and crime. Reduce inequality in ways 0xbadcafebee suggested would reduce inequality - though probably not in sizes measureable after a few years.

▲

mike_d 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The report is wrong. If you bother to watch LA news you'll see they are used a few times a night to track vehicles from the air. This frees up ground units and avoids high speed chases which saves lives.

It's fun to call this a waste of taxpayer dollars until you watch a carjacked vehicle recovered with kids inside.

	▲	aapoalas 8 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Are you asserting that the report is lying, and that a majority of the flight hours aren't actually being used for all those mentioned low priority purposes? If so, is your assertion based on the helicopters being used a few times a night per television reports?
	▲	free_bip 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Do you really need 17 helicopters and 90 employees for the occasional car chase? This feels wildly over the top. They could do that just fine with one third the resources.