Guardian One, 2013 WSB archive photo

Story and photos by Jason Grotelueschen
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

Neighborhood leaders gathered Tuesday night to share ideas and hear from police leadership at the monthly meeting of the West Seattle Block Watch Captains Network at the Southwest Police Precinct.

Special guests at the meeting: Members of the Guardian One helicopter team from the Air Support Unit of the King County Sheriff’s Office, who talked about their work in the skies of West Seattle and the surrounding area.

WSBWCN co-leaders Deb Greer and Karen Berge kicked off the meeting with some quick updates:

• COP-I-CON: This event on Saturday, May 18 (rescheduled from earlier this spring because of the snow) is a chance to learn about SPD, and have some fun with various activities and food. 10 am-3 pm at 2203 Airport Way S, Building C.
• West Seattle Bee Festival (see our preview here): Also on Saturday, May 18, this community event will be held from 10am-2pm (plus an informal at-your-own-pace Honey Run at 9 am) in the area stretching from the West Seattle Bee Garden (at Lanham/Graham) to Neighborhood House (6400 Sylvan Way SW). Berge, also an organizer of the festival, noted that community safety will be a prominent theme, featuring representatives from SPD and SFD, more than a dozen tables as part of an “urban survival skills fair” by West Seattle Be Prepared, and radio/communications demonstrations. A highlight of the festival will be a concert by Laura Love (performing with Terry Hunt) from 12 pm-2 pm.
• Neighborhood Street Fund (see our summary here): Voting is open until May 5th for Neighborhood Street Fund projects, and you can use this online ballot to select the five projects you’d like to receive funding.

Next, an update from Southwest Precinct commander Capt. Pierre Davis:

Davis began with a plug for this Saturday’s semi-annual Drug Take-Back Day from 10am-2pm at the Southwest Precinct (2300 SW Webster) where you can dropoff your expired or no-longer-needed prescription drugs, and representatives from SPD and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will safely destroy and dispose of them (read our summary here).  Davis said there are numerous reasons to do this, aside from reducing your personal health risks: some houses become stockpiles of old drugs and “the bad guys know that stuff is in there, too” which becomes a safety issue, and of course in households with kids it’s wise to know what drugs are in the house and how they’re secured.

Davis said the number of overall crimes in the precinct are down about 20 percent in 2019 compared to last year, but he noted that after a considerable slowdown with the snow in February, criminal activity has begun picking up (particularly robberies) as the weather has become warmer. Davis cited the successes they’ve had in partnership with people like crime prevention coordinator Jennifer Danner (see our profile here) to keep the community engaged, and liaison attorney Joseph Everett to help navigate legal issues and particularly to ensure that prolific offenders are serving proper consequences. For the remainder of 2019, Davis said, the precinct’s focus will be individuals involved with car prowls and breaking into homes. With that in mind, Davis added, neighborhood block-watch efforts are “the foundation of any law enforcement endeavor we can put together.” Earlier in the year, there were considerable problems with young street robbers stealing phones, and there are still issues with purse/wallet snatchers, Davis said, adding that there will be a “robbery bulletin” released later this week with some information and tips to keep people from being victimized. Davis added that issues of homelessness are front-and-center in people’s minds, referencing the Seattle Is Dying documentary as an example of the pressure being put on SPD to help with the problem, but the solutions need to be well-thought-out. “We can’t victimize the homeless just for being homeless,” Davis said, “it’s a bigger issue than that.”

Some questions from the audience for Davis:

• Question: It sounds like property crime is down but robberies are up, what’s the difference? Answer from Davis: Property crime includes shoplifting, car prowls, and burglaries.  Robberies are one-on-one situations in which a criminal takes something from someone by force. Davis said the lines can be blurred if, for example, someone shoplifts at a store, but then has an altercation with an employee who tries to restrain them but the criminal pulls the stolen goods away — that’s usually a robbery.
• Question: What about last week’s announcement from Mayor Durkan’s office that the City of Seattle will relaunch its Community Service Officer (CSO) program and hire new officers — will West Seattle get one?  Davis: We’re not sure how it will be done and what staffing we’ll gain, hopefully it will mimic what we had before, they’ll likely start out with a few new officers in the city and then expand.  We don’t have much info, but assistant chief Adrian Diaz does, I’ll make a point of finding out and will get back to you. Follow-up questions: Can we “lobby” someone to encourage them to give WS an officer; wouldn’t that be a good thing and free up time for current officers? Davis: Not sure exactly how the process will work or what the nuances will be. I do think it’s a good thing that they’re revisiting this approach, it could definitely ease the burden on resources like 911 dispatch.
• Question: What about the drive-by shootings recently (WSB coverage here of last-month’s South Delridge shooting)? I have a neighbor who is certain she heard gunshots on a recent night.  Davis: Unfortunately, when the weather gets nice we see people out joyriding and shooting, we had one earlier today just with a pellet gun. We see these acts as “person-specific,” an ongoing feud and not random, and our gang detectives are working on it. We think we have a good handle on it but there’s another group of individuals involved as well. Often these individuals are “migratory” and move between jurisdictions, and in the past it’s been useful for us to have “summits” with officers across districts to deal with the problem. As the weather gets nice we want to get out ahead of it.
• Question: What about staffing? Are you short staffed, and will that impact things like the bicycle unit?  Davis: Department-wide, yes, we are deficient, which unfortunately is the trend nationally. But we’ll still have our bike crews and other resources. If we get additional support, obviously we’ll take it, but of course we also lose officers to retirement. All the more reason why we need block watches and the community to help us do our jobs, that is “worth it’s weight in gold.”

Next up were the evening’s special guests, deputies Josh Sweeney and Dan Malloy from the Air Support Unit of the King County Sheriff’s Office, to give some insight into what Sweeney called “the best job in the department.”

Their core unit is only 4 full-time people (out of 600-700 deputies in the department), so turnover is low and qualifying for the job is highly competitive, requiring a minimum of 5 years patrol experience but no prior flight experience. Their primary coverage area is King County (2,134 square miles and 2.2 million people) but they are considered a “regional asset” and have received grant funding to help other departments.

They have 4 “mission capable” helicopters (meaning they are equipped with all of the required police equipment) and a training helicopter, all manufactured by Bell. For each flight of Guardian One, the minimum crew size is two – one pilot and one tactical flight officer (TFO) – and each of the 4 Air Support crew members has been training for both jobs, so they can rotate shifts and “trade back and forth to keep our skills sharp,” as Sweeney said. All pilots in the unit are first trained as TFOs, whose primary duties in the air include running the radio comms and the FLIR camera, navigation, “command and control” and providing assistance so they pilot can focus on flying safely. Their staff also includes two temporary/backup members and 9 part-time medical crew members to staff the back of the helicopter for rescue missions. Although their budget allows for a certain maximum number of flight hours, Sweeney said they have “never come close” to hitting that limit, and their only real limitations are weather conditions, aircraft maintenance and number of personnel available.

Air Support deputy Josh Sweeney and WSBWCN leader Karen Berge

Types of missions they fly: Patrols, tactical support, marine, fire and rescue (they have a device that allows for 5 people to be rescued at a time), hauling cargo, oil spill mapping with the Department of Ecology, identifying illegal marijuana grow operations (with heat-imaging technology built into their FLIR (forward-looking infrared) cameras), pre-warrant service recon and security detail for visiting VIPs and dignitaries. Guardian One can support officers on the ground by assisting with vehicle pursuits, “finding bad guys” who are on the run, tracking K9 units, and providing a “bird’s eye view to increase situational awareness for police on the ground,” Sweeney. “They only have a 2-d picture, but we can see it all” and can get to a needed patrol area in a matter of minutes rather than 30 minutes or more for an officer in a car.

Their primary helicopter is a Bell 407, which is capable of flying as high as 20,000 feet, but “we’re usually at 700-800 feet, where we can be most useful” according to Sweeney, who added that because of “layered airspace restrictions” in the area, there are some higher-altitude parts of West Seattle where their maximum altitude is only 500 feet. The crew generally doesn’t do mountain rescues, because there are separate contracts for other air support groups qualified to work above 10,000 feet.  The backup Guardian One helicopter is a Bell 206.

The deputies showed a few videos (they post a lot of their camera videos on YouTube) illustrating the kinds of situations they work on. With the FLIR camera, they can easily see “hotspots” where people are trying to hide around buildings or in wooded area. Sweeney stressed that it’s “not an x-ray camera” but can detect differences in heat to a very fine degree, meaning that a human form outdoors is nearly impossible to hide. In another video, showing an aerial view of an illegal marijuana grow operation, the rooftop vents of the house and even the power line and transformer feeding into the house glowed much brighter than a typical house. Another video showed a dramatic vehicle pursuit, in which the crew was able to follow a suspect and, using camera mapping technology and radio contact with patrol officers on the ground, tell them exactly what streets the suspect is on and to “be eyes and ears and see traffic ahead of them.” If a pursuit becomes unsafe for officers on the ground, Guardian One can continue pursuing and then lead officers to an arrest.

Some additional details from Sweeney regarding particular types of Guardian One missions:

• Search and rescue: Each hoist can hold 600 pounds. The Bell 407 can do a “long line” rescue, in which a rescuer rides on 100ft rope and gets dropped off on the ground, it’s effective but not as much as doing a hoist.
• Tactical operations: Our team trains with SWAT, can transport 8 officers at a time, we do an exercise in which we drop officers onto a moving boat in Puget Sound, we go into “low hover” and when we’re in position, can put 8 officers on deck in about 30 seconds. This is crucial training, WA state has one of largest ferry systems in the world, we definitely want to be proficient.  SWAT snipers are trained in shooting out of aircraft, so we work with them. Another technique is the “fast rope” in which an officer wears thick leather gloves and basically just slides down a rope from the helicopter down to the ground (no rappelling, just a straight slide down).
• Marine operations: We see lots of flooding on the Eastside and we have select marine/dive unit members who can do river and lake rescues. We don’t do rescues in the Puget Sound, generally, we have an agreement with the Coast Guard that they handle everything in Puget Sound and we’ll handle the mountains.
• Fire department support: We use FLIR cameras to help find hotspots, and train with the SFD on hoist operations. The “AirTep” is a pentagon-shaped device that can carry 5 rescuers at a time. We train on scenarios such as a capsized boat, victims stuck in a tall building during a fire, and rapid insertion of firefighters in an emergency situation.
• Disaster response and cargo hauling: We help with disaster response, did a drill simulating an earthquake in which we moved supplies and personnel, we trained with the fire department and a Snohomish County helicopter. We also have advanced mapping, for the Oso landslide we looked at overlays on the FLIR camera screen, shows us the actual lines and words telling us what streets we’re looking at, in a major landslide situation it can show us addresses of where houses were supposed to be, which is also useful for oil spill mapping and  vehicle pursuits.
• Surveillance: We can help with pre-warrant service for officers, giving them eyes in the sky.

Sweeney said the department is very fortunate to have the equipment they do, and have received grants to procure most of it. They have access to HD cameras (can zoom in and read license plates), a spotlight (not used a lot, but good for calming unruly crowds or in criminal pursuit, and an onboard LoJack tracking device that helps to find stolen vehicles (“we can follow the signal down to within a single city block). Sweeney added that from the sky, “we are out of danger and in good position to help,” and that every mission is different.

Air Support deputy Dan Malloy

Some Q&A with attendees:

• Q: The helicopters over West Seattle seem to fly really low and are very loud, aren’t they? A: We are usually at 600-700 feet, in some elevated areas of West Seattle we can’t go higher than 500 feet because of the Sea-Tac airspace. However, there are good reasons to stay low: 1) camera range, so we can actually see what’s happening 2) establishes a noticeable presence to let suspects on the ground know that we’re there. We have to talk to Boeing (Field) Tower when we’re in WS and they’ll let us know how other air traffic will affect us. We have a special MOU (memorandum of understanding) to let us fly in some areas. We’ve flown out of Renton since 2011, we do stop at Boeing Field at Modern Aviation, for gas and for restroom/coffee breaks. Another meeting attendee said he’s a private pilot and he knows that the ferry terminal and water towers are used as location reference points for pilots in that busy corridor.
• Q: How do you interact with TV-news helicopters?  A: Quite frequently, especially during the day. Our hangars are right next door to the news helicopters and we have a great relationship with their crews, we talk with each other. Typically they fly higher than we do.
• Comment: It must be really gratifying to know you can direct officers to a scene safely.  Response: Definitely. A lot of departments across the country have dedicated pilots and dedicated TFOs but no rotation, it’s fun to go back and forth but it also helps us do our jobs better. It’s the best job there is!
• Q: For search and rescue, can you track rescue beacons?  A: Yes, we can get signals from LoJack and avalanche beacons, and we also have device that attaches to the bottom of Huey helicopters which is basically a long antennae that hangs on our cargo hook.
• Q: Do you wait for calls for help, or are you actively looking for opportunities?  A: We have shifts in which we’re on-call, but are also effective by scanning frequencies and jumping on calls to offer help, but we also have a special call sign that agencies can use to contact us directly. For example, right now (Tuesday evening) both of us are on duty, we let dispatch know we’re not flying right now but that they can call us if necessary. When we’re at the hangar, we have emails to answer and administrative work to do.  On a typical night shift we go up a few times, 90-120 minutes at a time. On busy nights we go from one call to the next, there is no set schedule, we’re given a lot of autonomy, it’s “nice to be trusted with a $3-million helicopter with all of the police gadgets to fly around with.” We never fly a full 8 hours, it’s usually 3-5 hours. Follow-up Q: When are the shifts? A: Night shift is Tuesday-Saturday 6 pm-2 am, and the day shift is Monday-Friday 9 am-5 pm. We get called from home quite a bit.
• Q from the private-pilot attendee: I’ve always found it difficult to switch between aircraft, is it hard for you? A: Not really an issue for us; at first it can be difficult, but all of our helicopters have the same manufacturer (Bell) so most instruments are in the same spot. It would be much harder if it were a different manufacturers, because some other types of helicopters have rotors that turn the opposite way, for example.
• Q: I live pretty close to WS bridge where copters frequently hover; how can I find out what’s going on?   A: We do our best to use Twitter (KCSOAirSupport), frequently retweeted and used by West Seattle Blog, it’s a great way for us to share info. In general, West Seattleites are always very curious about police activity, we think we have a good relationship with WS. Our first priority is of course to deal with the call, so our Twitter updates may not be real-time (in fact they’re usually not, they happen afterward). However, for cases in which there are suspects in an area or individuals we’re trying to find, the TFO may tweet that information out right away so the community on the ground can be “eyes and ears” to help us. Aside from that, the best source would be the non-emergency 911 line. The TFO job requires a lot of multitasking. Comment from deputy Malloy: People sometimes mistake us for a news helicopter when we hover, or they get worried that we’re hovering for so long. Sweeney: People often think the worst, that we’re looking for murder suspects, but sometimes we’re just looking for kids throwing rocks off of an overpass.
• Q: I use the PulsePoint app and can see any call routed to the fire department, is there anything like that for the police and for Guardian One?  A: Not that we know of, and we probably won’t, often police work is a little more sensitive, we don’t want suspects we’re pursuing to know what we’re doing. With fire, there’s not very much “secret stuff.” But again, check Twitter and the West Seattle Blog. Some people complain that we’re not visible on flight trackers, which is usually true, for example the helicopter we’ll be flying tonight can’t be tracked.
• Comment: I recently saw two copters in orbit around Westwood Village, they were in perfect sync, orbited for a long time, it’s quite impressive. Question: If we see the helicopters how do we tell which are from TV and which are Guardian One? A: We have a spotlight on the back of our helicopter, which is usually pretty visible.  Our aircraft are all green and white, although from the ground, all you see is a white belly.  News helicopters have a transmitter on the back.
• Q: Is there any way we can do a ride-along? (this prompted several “yes!” comments in the room)  A: We typically only take up members of law enforcement; we couldn’t take everyone who asked or we would get inundated. Plus, some of our aircraft are military surplus so we can’t carry civilians even if we wanted to.

The West Seattle Block Watch Captains Network meets at 6:30 pm fourth Tuesdays most months at the SW Precinct (2300 SW Webster).