Police aircraft deployed in South Yorkshire more than 200 times already this year – this is why

Aircraft were deployed 217 times in the first six months of 2020 to help officers on the ground in Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham, a Freedom of Information request by The Star and Doncaster Free Press has revealed.

That’s more than the 175 times the National Police Air Service (NPAS) answered the call for assistance during the whole of last year.

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Its fleet came to the aid of South Yorkshire Police on 57 occasions in April 2020 alone, with their new-found ubiquity leading some people to think they were being used to spy on those breaking lockdown during the first full month it was in force.

We can now reveal what the aircraft have actually been doing in the area, with the force providing a full breakdown of the reasons for every call-out.

The most common purpose for which the NPAS was needed during April this year was to help track suspects who had failed to stop for police, which its fleet did on 12 occasions that month.

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NPAS aircraft flew into action nine times over a missing or suicidal person, the same number of times due to theft or burglary, twice for domestic violence and on one occasion each to help with a murder investigation, a person with a knife or other weapon and a suspicious package or other object.

Some of the reasons given are more vague, like ‘police resource activity’, which was the description given once during that month, and ‘messages’, which was recorded twice.

It’s not known why the number of police aircraft being deployed across South Yorkshire has risen so sharply but one reason could be the four planes handily based at Doncaster Sheffield Airport which recently joined the NPAS’s existing fleet of helicopters to boost the support available to the 43 police forces of England and Wales.

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Below is a breakdown of some of the most common reasons police aircraft were deployed in South Yorkshire between November 2018 and June 2020.

Missing person: 63

Fail to stop: 48

Burglary: 31

Suspicious person/vehicle/circumstances/insecure: 31

Suicidal person: 23

Road related: 14

Sudden death or RTC death/injury: 12

Domestic violence or other domestic incident: 12

Theft: 11

Robbery: 7

Wanted people: 6

Drugs (dealing or possession): 6

Firearm: 5

Knife: 3

Arson: 3