Cut the chopper

Ozzie Knezovich has said he’s apprehensive about the helicopter deal he inherited when he took over as sheriff of Spokane County. It could end up being a financial migraine, especially as critical federal grant money dries up, he says.

But (shrug) the department is committed too deeply to back out now. There’s nothing Knezovich can do.

Sure there is. He can pull the plug. He’s the boss.

Former Sheriff Mark Sterk initiated the project before he resigned last spring. The department was supposed to get a 1970 Bell Scout for free, but it had a few bugs that needed attention – about $500,000 worth.

That kind of surprise should be a strong hint to Knezovich that deals like this one routinely turn out to be less attractive than they seem at first.

If they didn’t, deputies would have been helicoptering around Spokane County skies for the past quarter-century. That hasn’t been the case because past experiences with aircraft for local law enforcement agencies have been disappointments.

In 1981, the department confiscated a Canadian-owned airplane used in a drug deal, hoping to convert it to Spokane County law enforcement purposes. The deal didn’t pan out, but the department recouped enough cash from the aircraft’s sale to buy a 14-year-old military surplus chopper for a song, then spent thousands making it fit to fly.

Still, it was considered a bargain so – despite the fact that the Sheriff’s Department was undergoing grave budgetary distress – county commissioners soon agreed to buy three more for $20,000 from Grant County. Two were for parts, one was to fly.

The plan, then-Sheriff Larry V. Erickson said, was to use helicopters for search and rescue efforts and for drug surveillance in remote areas.

Sure enough, in April 1983, a chopper broke up some teenagers’ beer party along the Spokane River near Sullivan Road.

Three months later, the flyable Grant County chopper crashed in the river during a search for a missing child.

Helicopters obviously offer important mobility to law enforcement agencies, as they do to medical emergency workers, but, as history suggests, it’s the owning and operating that has failed to work out for Spokane County, which explains why the county decommissioned its last helicopters 15 years ago.

Under the deal Sterk worked out, the agency will incur more than $130,000 in operating costs during the first year. For that kind of money, it could buy a lot of air time chartering private helicopters on an as-needed basis.

The lure is that all the expenses will be covered by grants. The reality is something else. Grants don’t last forever, and Congress has a maddening habit of reneging on what local officials have interpreted as promises.

As locally borne costs take flight, aircraft get grounded.

Knezovich has acknowledged the pitfalls. He should trust his instincts and call the helicopter deal off now rather than regret it later.