Helicopter report hella hard to find

The timeliness of the release and availability of information regarding the purchase of a police helicopter has been atrocious. Probably because the dominant perspective in the media has been that a police helicopter in Winnipeg is a positively wonderful purchase for City Council to make as a gift to the Winnipeg Police Service. Whether or not this will be correct is not the issue at hand; rather, how we came to the conclusion.

The report by Patrol Sergeant Dave Dalal and Constable Nick Paulet was not released until after the funding was approved. At the time, all city council had to go by to make their decision was a WPS Helicopter Information Sheet and a general consensus in favour of the idea based on a biased info sheet and good vibes.

Will the presence of a police helicopter detour car-thieves and vandals alike from breaking into your car complete with “baby on board” decal while you’re inside the grocery store buying lettuce? Maybe! But it isn’t safe to assume that the copter is worth the $3.5 million purchase cost and additional $1.3 million annual operating costs for the foreseeable future until the eye in the sky retires. It’s at least not safe to assume without any presentation of a report at least more objective than the “information overview”.

The report that is now available is not only hidden so deep within the City of Winnipeg website that it’s only locatable by hired geeks and information nerds, it also does not have a hyperlink so that it’s easily sharable. Whoever wants to see the information necessary to form an educated opinion on the hella-purchase has to go through the City Council labyrinth for report access.

I have saved a copy of the Helicopter review report and uploaded it via YouSendIt so that citizens have reasonable access to the document. Not because it’s anything special, but because I if I don’t, I’m no better than whoever is behind making these documents so impossibly hard to find.