Watching from above: Helicopters help fight war on drugs at no expense to taxpayers
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Though many know the aircraft cost the county nothing initially, some have wondered what pays for the day-to-day operation of the choppers.
“Drug dealers,” said Chief Deputy Danice Taylor. “We seized enough money off of one lady, $10,000, to just about finance the helicopters.”
Such seizures and fines go into a drug fund which is used to pay for fuel, maintenance, and personnel to fly the drug search helicopters as well as financing drug buys for undercover operatives.
“It’s using bad guys’ money against bad guys,” said Sheriff Jackie Matheny. “That’s win-win right there.”
The way the local sheriff’s department set about getting the helicopters is a study in perseverance, luck, and a certain amount of sheer faith in a system many have given up on.
“When I was running for sheriff the first time eight years ago,” Matheny said, “a gentleman approached me and said ‘Jackie, did you know that you can get helicopters from the surplus program for nothing?’ And I thought, well, yeah, OK, I’ll look into it. All I could think was that’s going to be costly, like everybody else would.
“So Danice and I talked about it, and he started getting the paperwork going. I told him, let’s go ahead and see it through, see what happens,” Matheny said.
“I got hold of the surplus people in Nashville,” Taylor continued, “and found out what kind of paperwork I had to do. There was a lot of paperwork. It started out with one sheet of paper, and ended up looking like a Sears catalog.”
The two military model Bell Ranger OH-58s were manufactured in 1972 and sent to a base in Texas, had bigger engines put in them, were reworked and sent to the Ohio National Guard, eventually winding up in the surplus program.
The next obstacle was finding a qualified pilot for the choppers, and once again, luck, or perhaps fate, intervened in the form of retired Army Col. John Black. Taylor heard there was a retired colonel working at the high school who was a Vietnam helicopter pilot.
Black is paid $50 per hour for flight time, and $15 per hour for maintenance time since he is also a qualified helicopter mechanic. All of these fees are paid from the drug fund.
Matheny realized early on the state had problems effectively covering all of Tennessee with its limited drug search team.
“Of course we knew we had a marijuana problem. We got to thinking if we got our own helicopters, we could do a lot of that ourselves,” Matheny said.
The choppers are mainly used for marijuana eradication, but have been helpful in other situations.
“We have used them for search,” Taylor said, noting they have also been used as backup for the local SWAT team.
The choppers have turned out to be a public relations tool as well. Taylor and Black take them to schools and local events where they are quite a hit.
“The kids love it,” Taylor says.
On the other hand, both Taylor and Matheny admit, since they have seized over $15 million in marijuana plants so far this year, they probably aren’t as popular with local marijuana growers.
But somehow, that doesn’t really bother them.