[Emma_Goldman]

Police helicopters tend to be heavily concentrated in cities. A better metric might be population. The US population is only about 5 times bigger than that of the UK. It therefore has 20x more police helicopters per capita.

[hnbad]

Police helicopters are also more heavily used in poorer (and higher crime, but also more heavily policed in general, thus inflating crime statistics) areas of those cities.

[tekknik]

They’re primarily used to hunt for escapees, and to keep eyes on someone running or involved in a chase. Poor areas don’t have the resources to buy a police helicopter, that’s why they’re sometimes loaned to other departments in these situations. I have never seen or heard of one being deployed to control poor people.

[godmode2019]

My country doesn't have different departments. One department for the whole country / state.

They make use of helicopters typically before a car arrives.