| This week's MapLab comes from Fola Akinnibi, a Bloomberg CityLab reporter, and Raeedah Wahid, a Bloomberg graphics reporter. They recently investigated – and mapped – the New York City police department's recent uptick in helicopter use. It was an annoyed resident of Manhattan's Battery Park neighborhood that tipped us off: Day after day, helicopters would buzz overhead and rattle the 11th-floor window of Bill Accordino, Jr.'s apartment, rocking and shaking the building. The noise pushed him to check flight-tracking applications to see what was causing the nuisance. That's when Accordino noticed the New York City Police Department was responsible for many of the trips. Accordino wasn't the only fed-up New Yorker. Last year, the city recorded 59,127 complaints about helicopter noise, dwarfing the 3,330 lodged in 2019 and more than double the figure from 2022. While sightseeing and charter flights represent a lot of that activity, we were inspired to look into NYPD's share after Accordino got in touch with us. The results of our reporting came out in a story last month that maps this uptick in aviation activity by the NYPD and shows what it means for the city. Our reporting started with the city's budget. The NYPD's spending on its aviation unit has increased dramatically under Mayor Eric Adams. The increase has come as Adams has made cuts to prekindergarten programs, mental health services, library hours, parks and other cultural institutions.  Next we wanted to know if the money spent coincided with more flight activity. To paint that picture, we needed flight data for the department's helicopters. Luckily, we found most aircraft broadcast their location – usually every second – using Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast, a satellite technology more precise than radar that helps with navigation and safety.
There are public ADS-B aggregators that allow anyone to tune in to the traffic in the sky. We worked with Flightradar 24, one of these services, to obtain five years of data tracking the NYPD's helicopters. We supplied Flightradar with the unique identifiers (known as N-numbers) for the aircraft, obtained through public filings, photos and other documents. Flightradar returned location, altitude, speed and directional data for every flight going back to 2019.  We spent hours looking through these trips – as well as real-time flight feeds – searching for patterns and a sense of how the NYPD dispatches its helicopters. We saw trips that coincided with protests, where the NYPD would circle a location for hours on end. We also plotted trips where it looked like the helicopter was doing flybys of the Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium and other notable landmarks. Other times, it would leave New York City and land in Philadelphia or Atlantic City, New Jersey, before looping back. The hundreds of trips outside of the city surprised us the most, especially when helicopters seemed to land for long periods of time.
The NYPD wouldn't tell us what many of the trips were for. The department issued a statement saying they are in full compliance with policy, noting that helicopters are used for "patrolling sensitive locations such as bridges, ports, and other landmarks; scrutinizing large container ships and other vessels in New York's waterways; and carrying out a host of counterterrorism assignments." We're sticking with this story. A question we're trying to answer now is who is on these flights, especially the ones that leave New York City. If you're curious about your own city's police helicopter use, our reporting can be replicated pretty much anywhere. So the next time you hear buzzing up above, take a look at an ADS-B application to find out what's going on in the sky.
Do you have more information on the NYPD's helicopter use? Share your story at fakinnibi1@bloomberg.net or on Signal @fola.74. -
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