With the city in the middle of a budget crisis, Sgt. Trent Crump acknowledges it's probably a bad time for the Phoenix Police Department to break in a new $4.15 million surveillance plane.


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Crump said he understands the plane likely will raise eyebrows among residents, because Phoenix also is eliminating jobs and cutting employees' pay. But the police spokesman said the department didn't have many options when it acquired the Pilatus PC-12 Spectre single-engine plane in September. That's when funding became available from a voter-approved 2006 public-safety bond, which also paid for a crime lab and police stations. Crump said the bond money could not be used to pay for officers or to supplement the city's general fund. "There are things from 2006 we would like to take back, but we can't reallocate bond money," Crump said. The plane is used to more safely conduct aerial surveillance and to extradite prisoners. The pressurized plane, which has a capacity for nine passengers and two pilots, is in a hangar at Phoenix Deer Valley Airport. In the next few months, a few seats will come out and it will be fitted for a special camera and a viewing monitor that will allow officers to conduct surveillance above 9,000 feet. The additional equipment will cost about $600,000, also coming from bond proceeds.

Source: Phoenix police are breaking in $4 million airplane