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City of C Town uses helicopter to ensure safety of holidaymakers

Beach
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City of Cape Town is tracking lawbreakers from the skies, this as the Metro Police contracted a helicopter for daily use.

The bird’s eye-view helps to respond to incidents faster, especially on the roads and at beaches.

Cape Town has over 300 kilometres of beaches and ensuring the safety of residents and visitors is a tall order.

The helicopter can monitor vast areas in a fraction of the time it would take on the road.

Response times are more effective.

“We’ve actually found the chopper extremely useful. The rule of thumb is that for every 3 million people in your city you should have one policing or emergency services chopper and unfortunately for municipalities in South Africa we just can’t afford that. But we are exploring opportunities to do this with the private sector where we co-own the helicopter with the private sector so that it’s used for their commercial operations on some days and we use it for enforcement operations so that we can get the public benefit out of it as well,” says City of Cape Town’s JP Smith.

The balmy weather lured holidaymakers back to the beaches after a cold and wet Christmas day under the watchful eye of the chopper squad.

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