“I love to fly, and I love to catch bad guys,” said Jeff Thomason. And that’s just as well, because Thomason is the chief pilot of the Denver Police Department’s Air Support Unit, known to his fellow cops and their criminal quarry alike as “Air1.”
It’s fortunate too that he prefers to be busy. The Denver metropolitan area has a population of nearly three million people, and since 2022, the so-called “mile high city” (its official elevation is 5,280 feet/1,609 meters — exactly one statute mile) has been one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. for both the economy and the crime rate. And as of right now, there is no “Air2.”
A single Bell 407GXi, crewed by Thomason and his two colleagues, is the only police air support in the state of Colorado. The two pilots and one dedicated tactical flight officer (TFO) are all sworn Denver PD police officers.
“We’re the only law enforcement helicopter in the state that supports patrol,” Thomason said. “We support the guys and gals on the ground. Anybody that runs from the cops, on the ground or in a car, we chase them down. That’s our deal.”
And it’s been “their deal” since the 1970s, when the police department teamed up with a local talk radio station for a mutually beneficial arrangement that gave them both an eye in the sky.
“The unit was established with a Bell 47,” Thomason explained. “A local radio station leased us the aircraft for a dollar in exchange for doing traffic reports.”
That relationship lasted nearly a decade, but it was another 10 years before Denver PD was ready to acquire its own aircraft.
“In the 80s, we disbanded that unit, and then in 1998, they went back out and bought a Bell 407,” Thomason said.
When the department decided to modernize, they stuck with the 407 platform, upgrading to a GXi model that was delivered in 2019 equipped with Garmin G1000H avionics. The instrument fit is particularly helpful given the unit’s location. Based out of Denver Centennial Airport, itself a very busy general aviation hub, they are only a few miles away from Denver International — the third busiest airport in the country.
The beat and the tempo
“It’s busy airspace around Denver Centennial with class B, C and D,” Thomason explained. “There’s also a lot of news helicopters, medical helicopters and general aviation aircraft that are around the Denver area, so having the TCAS [traffic collision avoidance system] is invaluable for us. Having that extra layer of security really helps.”
While the airspace keeps the pilots busy, the various boundaries and jurisdictions on the ground makes the coordination of support to law enforcement operations equally challenging. This is the domain of the TFO, who sits in the left seat beside the pilot and not only helps keep the aircraft safe, but also controls the aircraft’s mission systems to best support the units on the ground. Heather Jossi is the Denver PD Air Support Unit’s dedicated TFO.
“For a TFO, you kind of divide the aircraft into two sides — law enforcement side and aviation side,” she explained. “You’re running the camera, you’re running the light, you’re listening to all six police channels just for the Denver districts and then you’re also listening to the primary district that you’re flying over.”
It’s a busy role and with responsibilities divided between the cockpit and the ground, it requires an intimate knowledge of both environments in order to be effective. The only way to get into the TFO job is by putting time in on the ground learning the art of good policework, and prior to being selected, Jossi was assigned to Denver’s gang unit. She credits this experience on the ground as being crucial to building the situational awareness necessary for success in her airborne role.
“It’s a unique relationship going from gangs to Air1,” she said. “I know what those guys are doing, what they want me to say and how I should be saying it. And I know the information that they need.”
Both of the pilots are also qualified in the TFO role. Just like the only way into the air support unit is to be a sworn officer, the only route to flying Air1 is via the TFO’s seat. This way, the whole crew are on one page, and they all understand the jobs of the officers on the ground that they are there to support.
The other pilot in the unit is Ron Brightwell. He became a police officer in late 2000 and early on in his career was determined to remain a patrol officer. His lieutenant encouraged him to push outside his comfort zone, which led to him visiting the air support unit. His ambition to join the team was cemented by his experience meeting the officers who worked there at the time.
“The way I watched them interact and treat each other, how professional they were in the aircraft and how they took care of business, that was who I wanted to surround myself with,” he said. “Now, it’s me, Jeff and Heather. It’s definitely the people that make this a desirable position to be in.”
With his mind set on the TFO job, there was only one catch: he needed to have a pilot’s license. He put aside two weeks of leave to study for the ground school and then got his private license on the day that applications closed. Before long he was splitting his time between his beloved patrol job and the TFO’s seat in Air1. While the part-time role kept him on the street for most of the duties, that division brought its own challenges.
“I would come over here every other Wednesday, and as the TFO that was really hard,” he explained. “You’d learn how to do something, then you’d leave for two weeks and when you came back, you’d have to relearn that all over again.”
When the role came up full time in 2018, his wife and he sacrificed their new kitchen fund to pay for the helicopter rating that would make him a competitive candidate. Cooking facilities took another hit when it was time to get his commercial helicopter license to qualify as a pilot with the unit. “We’re still slinging food in the same kitchen, but someday we’ll get that fixed,” he laughed.
Brightwell went to the Helicopter Institute at Fort Worth, Texas, in 2021 for the 407 type-rating and flew his first mission as a pilot in 2022.
“With the multifunction display, having that moving map and the traffic awareness is great,” he said. “Being able to see where you’re at with all the airspace when you’re chasing cars that are sending you through [Denver International Airport], you already know [that] once I get to this point, the Class Bravo [airspace] is coming up. I really like that.”
As impressed as he is with the aircraft’s avionics, it is in the left-hand seat that the aircraft’s technology most impresses Brightwell. Fitted with a Trakka Systems TrakkaBeam searchlight and an L3Harris Wescam MX-10, the aircraft has a formidable capability to find, fix and track anyone who has managed to elude officers on the ground.
Vision of the future
“With the color camera during the day, we can tell you color combinations and people’s shoes, emblems on clothes and even give good descriptions of facial hair,” he said.
These kinds of descriptions are frequently vital in identifying suspects, particularly when they are victims of fashion, as Jossi explained. “We had a guy the other night who was in yellow pants and I was like, ‘This is just the perfect situation,’” she laughed.
At night, the camera’s sensitive thermal imager comes into play, granting the ability not just to see in the dark but to reveal hiding places that would otherwise provide perfect concealment. An endeavor that provides Brightwell with visible satisfaction.
“You can find that tiny little heat signature, whether they’re hiding in a trash can or in the mud,” he said. “When you find that and you walk the guys into where that is and they’re like, ‘Holy cow, how did you do that?’ That’s a lot of fun.”
While the camera allows the TFO to see in the dark, the TrakkaBeam light can provide a variety of illuminating effects depending on who it is directed at.
“Say we’re following a car and the suspect is bailing from the car, you know that resources are covering in pretty quickly,” Jossi said. “We’ll throw that light on that suspect to get him to go to ground, because what we want him to do is stop running.”
The TrakkaBeam has other tricks up its sleeve that are yet to be fully exploited by the department. It is able to direct an intense infrared spotlight at the ground, providing a “God ray” to direct officers on the ground equipped with night vision devices, while leaving the suspect it is shining on literally in the dark.
While the aircraft is always in demand, having a team of just three people can make operational planning difficult. Late afternoon missions can easily run into nights, meaning early morning calls must then be flown by a different pilot and a fatigued TFO.
“It doesn’t matter when we are up, there is work for us to do, and we are a 24/7/365 unit, so if you need air support then we are going to be there for you,” Thomason said. “But having another aircraft and more personnel would enable us to do a day shift and a night shift and give better coverage.”
It’s a grueling tempo that allows the air support team little time off, but however hard they work, they need an aircraft that can keep up not just with the tempo but also with the tactics and the territory.
Hot pursuit
“We chase a lot of guys and gals that don’t want to get caught,” Thomason said. “They’re driving fast in urban areas and the 407 allows us to kind of throw it around. I could go from 120 knots to 60 knots in a matter of a few seconds without overspeeding the rotor system where heavier aircraft would have an issue with that.”
As the moniker implies, the mile high city brings its own complications to aviation under these circumstances, and it isn’t always any easier in the daylight hours. Colorado summer temperatures can see the air support unit’s standard operating altitude of 1,800 ft. (550 m) above ground level easily exceed 10,000 ft. (3,050 m) density altitude. Again, Thomason is full of praise for the 407.
“I’m not going to tell you that the heat does not affect us here because we are at high altitude first of all, and then we get days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit [38 degrees Celsius] in Denver,” he said. “With full fuel and two people, you might have to do kind of a running takeoff, but we haven’t had to turn down any missions because of it.”
Add up all the unique demands placed on the Denver PD Air Support Unit, coupled with an unblemished safety record, and there’s no wonder that Thomason is quick to attribute the success of the unit to the capability of the machine.
“Last year, I believe, we got over 20 homicide suspects in custody as a direct result of the aircraft,” he said.
But the helicopter, the smart avionics, the thermal imagery, and the multi-mode light have no concept of the work they are doing, and no means of doing it without their crew. The air support team can count the criminals that they have helped send to prison, but there’s no way of knowing how many of their colleagues they have kept safe in the process.
“At least three or four times a month, we’re telling people on the ground, ‘Don’t go over that fence’ or ‘don’t go around that corner,’” Thomason said.
He described a recent case in which a suspect had concealed himself under a table with his gun leveled at the corner of a building as officers approached. They later discovered that his intent was to kill the next police officer that came around the corner.
Instead, Air1 identified the suspect’s location and a police dog was deployed, closing in on the gunman’s position before he was able to fire. The record will reflect a single arrest, but the real benefit is felt by every officer’s family whose parent or partner went home safe at the end of the shift.