When the Coast Guard is in pursuit of a suspected smuggler within US waters, I believe they use an anti-materiel rifle fired from a helicopter to disable the engine block.
Here are two officer-involved shootings by US police snipers shooting from helicopters, one in CA, the other in TX. Both were firing on vehicles. In the Texas case, the suspect was unarmed. In both cases, again, these were snipers, not rack-mounted air-to-ground weapons or nose turrets.
I have read of some instances where the police fired from a helicopter:
During a high speed chase, in which the car was going the wrong direction on the freeway, the police helicopter came down to try to stop the vehicle. The suspect then jumped out of the vehicle and began to run from the police on the ground, but his vehicle continued going down the highway and collided head-on with another vehicle (the occupants of that car were later taken to a hospital).
The police tried to assert that because the suspect had been going over 100 miles per hour trying to evade police, the shooting was needed to prevent “more injuries to the public,” despite the fact that the suspect had already exited his vehicle.
There’s a very quick shot in Terminator 2 when the T-1000 is chasing them with the helicopter. It shows how he has temporarily ‘sprouted’ a third arm in order to both fly the chopper and reload his weapon. Though actually I think he’d need four arms because I’m pretty sure a chopper pilot has his left hand on the collective lever at all times.
Former Army Huey pilot, With the trim on in level flight one may not need a hand on the collective at all times but in the movie situation yes for sure.
People hunt wild pigs in the Southwest with long & short guns from helios and small planes all the time. Usually the passengers, the pilots mostly tend to the ‘don’t hit the ground, trees, wires with the flying machine’ stuff.
Coyotes have been hunted from the air for years. Some of the pilots got excited and forgot to fly the air machines.
I’m doubtful of the practicality of accurate sniping from a moving chopper at a moving vehicle with a hand held rifle. I don’t consider “blazing away” to be “accurate sniping”. And I’ve had some experience sitting in the back of a slick (aka Huey aka UH-1D). I suppose it’d be possible to put a .50 cal or 25mm round into an engine from a chin turret with all sorts of gyro stabilization and electronic sights.
When I was in the Coast Guard, I got assigned to the Law Enforcement Boarding Team. There weren’t that many guys on the cutter with a CIB. Depending on which was most due for a complete strip down and cleaning, the warning shots were fired from either the pintle mounted .50 M-2 or the 20mm. If that didn’t convince them to stop, well, there was some debate there between the GMC (Chief Gunner’s Mate) and the Warrant GM. One side was shooting the second warning burst into the bridge. On the other hand, there was firing into the engines too. Of course, with the cigarette boats, well, it was really smarter for them to just heave too, you know? The decision was above my pay grade, I was getting geared up to board the lifeboat to cross over and board the boat once it had stopped anyway - I was on the other side of the cutter. But I did board boats that needed convincing.
I guess it boils down to state and municipal laws. And insurance. I think the liability risks for a local police department would be astronomical.
Lots of federal agencies have their own police departments* to handle police issues on their property, and it’s normal for a police department to have a SWAT team.
And NASA has a lot of valuable stuff, sometimes with national security implications, so it’s not really surprising that their police department would be one of the better-armed ones.
*There’s even an “FBI Police” that does nothing but police the facilities of the FBI, which is itself a federal law enforcement agency.
Just a point of order, as one who has been around AH-64’s during my life (civilian, not military).
The Apache does not shoot Depleted Uranium rounds; the M230 30mm Chain Gun fires High Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) rounds, useful for ground suppression and light vehicles; same for the 2.75" rockets, although they come in various types. The tank killer in this case would be the AGM-114 HELLFIRE Missile, which is laser guided and
capable of taking out a tank, if you don’t mind the subsequent explosion/blast wave/shrapnel…
For what it’s worth, “ordinarily not allowed” could refer to just departmental policy, not necessarily an actual law. In that case, all it’d take to get an exception would be the chief’s say-so.
Posse Comitatus applies. The Army and Air Force are specifically prevented from engaging in domestic law enforcement (other than disaster recovery, providing emergency supplies, or consultation). In 2009, US Army MPs were deployed for Ft. Rucker to Samson, Alabama to assist with a murder spree. They assisted with things like traffic control and such. Because the governor did not request them, and the President did not authorize, several officers received slaps on the wrist for violating the Posse Comitatus Act.
National Guard Units are exempted, since they are tools of the states. When I worked on the WTC Recovery, there was no regular military there - only National Guard units from every darn part of the state.
When I worked in Federal law enforcement, we always had a few intel analysts TechOps guys on hand; unarmed doing intelligence stuff and and making sure our Special Agents didn’t steal our surveillance equipment.
I know this is a really old post and all, but the presumption of innocence and due process are not the same thing. The presumption derives from English common law, though it is one of the rights protected by the Due Process Clause.
As a couple of people have pointed out police do fire from helicopters, though the practice is controversial (rightly IMO).
I can’t see how that would be legal and a gun mounted on the helicopter itself would be illegal. Though politically would be a much harder sell. In the same way as British troops were sent to Northern Ireland they replaced their tracked troop carriers with wheeled ones, so they were “sending tanks onto the streets”, despite the fact there is no real difference between tracked and wheel military vehicles.
As someone else mentioned, police departments probably do not want/need the extra hassle and expense of operating actual gunships. Something like the Coast Guard’s HITRON helicopters, though, could be incorporated for SWAT support. These have the advantage that you can still use the aircraft for the police’s more frequent patrol/transport/rescue missions by leaving the guns behind.
Except the National Guard’s AH64’s in those states that have them, are not sitting around all over the place on ready alert status for an anti-tank strike. It may take you most of the day to “scramble” a response, maybe a little quicker for states who have A-10s in their Air National Guard inventory but still – and if you were to ignore Posse Comitatus restrictions the units from the regular forces are quite spread apart and it may take them a while to get there. If you’re lucky you *may *have a nearby NG infantry/combat engineers unit that may have portable AT missiles or mines in its armory you can get moving in a couple of hours, but in any of those cases do you really want to be taking those kinds of shots in civilian residential neighborhoods?
[quote=“Enola_Straight, post:33, topic:137281”]
Back in the mid-80s the Philadelphia police dropped a time-bomb on a house to evict radical pains-in-the-ass terrorizing the street.
The resulting fire BURNED DOWN THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD!
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I remember that one. It was one of those "wait, they did WHAT?? they can *DO* that???" moments.
