James' World 2

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The Jay Stephen Hooper Memorial Heliport sits on top of a brutalist brick-and-concrete building, the C. Erwin Piper Technical Center, across from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. It’s an area where trains, buses, and highways all converge, and where the sounds of helicopters coming and going are barely noticeable above the din of engines and the smell of exhaust. From the ground, the heliport is barely visible. The best view of it is nearby, from the Cesar Chavez Bridge, over the Los Angeles River, which, in this part of the city, is just a low stream of water in a giant concrete aqueduct. From there, looking over a rail yard, one can see the helicopters parked at an angle on the roof, and the blinking of video monitors inside of an observation tower. On a recent evening, just before sunset, a police helicopter alighted, paused for a few minutes with its propeller spinning, then took off again.

The C. Erwin Piper Technical Center is the headquarters of the Air Support Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, which, according to the L.A.P.D., is the largest local airborne law-enforcement unit in the world. The division has seventeen helicopters in its fleet and more than ninety employees, and keeps at least two helicopters airborne for twenty hours a day or more, if deemed necessary. The aircraft are a constant part of the L.A. backdrop, like palm trees and traffic. A cluster of them hovering might indicate a crime or an accident, but one would have to be motivated to find out for sure. In addition to the L.A.P.D. patrols, there are also many news helicopters in L.A., plus the choppers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Aero Bureau and of the Fire Department, and private helos ferrying the very wealthy. These other helicopters are identifiable on radar apps you can download onto your phone, but L.A.P.D. helicopters aren’t always labelled on these apps, which can make them difficult to track. They are often black with a white stripe down the middle, somewhat orca-like in appearance. At night, they blink with green and red lights, or beam blinding Nightsun spotlights toward the ground. The division’s mascot is a cartoon buzzard, in apparent honor of their tendency to circle. Rare is the day in central L.A. when you go without seeing one. They have made their way into movies—“Blue Thunder,” “Boyz n the Hood”—and into the city’s psyche.

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In the past few years, as public sentiment toward the police has shifted, the L.A.P.D.’s helicopters have also come under scrutiny. Photograph by Stuart Palley

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