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Ferguson police used flight restrictions to muzzle media, with feds' help

Beaudreaux said:
Might want to read something other than Al Jazeera and RT, which tend to spin things into an anti-US view when this as an example has a very simple explanation that has historical and safety precedence.

It is normal practice to limit airspace access over areas that police helicopters are being used, to reduce the potential for mid-air collisions in uncontrollable airspace with police and news helicopters flying all around in every direction and altitude (usually in the dark but also during daylight hours) without the ability to prevent them from making course or altitude changes at will, which is because mid-air collisions and near collisions have happened in the past. This is done in many areas, including the liberal havens of California, New York and so on.

Here's just one example: 2007 Phoenix news helicopter collision - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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From the OP's quote: "...audio recordings obtained by The Associated Press show that local authorities privately acknowledged the purpose was to keep away news helicopters.The new revelation is fresh evidence of the tension between law enforcement and media in the St. Louis suburb, where reporters and photographers said they suffered harassment by police while covering protests..."

Also, I have personally seen at least four newscopters hovering in the air above several large protests.
 
Beaudreaux said:
My friend, I explained to you already that the media helicopters are dangerous and are not controllable by the FAA, and given that there were numerous police helicopters flying around, the airspace had to be restricted to controlled commercial traffic and the police only. It was a safety issue.

Has nothing to do with free press. This story has everything to do with the press being pissed off and pole vaulting over rat turds in an attempt to make it out to be some sinister conspiracy against them. Which it is not.
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The facts revealed by the audio recordings contradict your bogus claim.
 
Excon said:
:doh
The AP also reports this.


So?


The folks here have been telling you why this no-fly zone was put in place yet you refuse to acknowledge it.
Why?

Yes they wanted to keep press helicopters out, not to restrict the Press, which is a claim disproved by the Press on the ground.



It was a safety issue and nothing more.

twit-2.jpg

JJMcNab ~ Twitter
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From your link:
"..On the tapes, an FAA manager is heard assuring a St. Louis County Police Department official that the updated restrictions would allow planes to land at nearby Lambert-St. Louis International Airport but, "It will still keep news people out. ... The only way people will get in there is if they give them permission in there anyway so ... it still keeps all of them out."

"Yeah," replied a county police captain. "I have no problem with that whatsoever."
 
Hard Truth said:
From the OP's quote: "...audio recordings obtained by The Associated Press show that local authorities privately acknowledged the purpose was to keep away news helicopters.The new revelation is fresh evidence of the tension between law enforcement and media in the St. Louis suburb, where reporters and photographers said they suffered harassment by police while covering protests..."

Also, I have personally seen at least four newscopters hovering in the air above several large protests.
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I've seen news helicopters over lots of things, and I've also seen the ATC close the airspace to news helicopters (and other helicopters) during many events. It happens a lot during disasters and emergencies. Not all the time, but a lot. It depends on the local government's needs, concerns and the FAA's concurrence with the need.

Hard Truth said:
The facts revealed by the audio recordings contradict your bogus claim.
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To keep quoting (as you and many others here have done) the fact that it was done to limit news helicopters and there are recordings saying so doesn't show intent to restrict the press, but proves that it was done for the exact same reason it was done during Hurricane Sandy, Katrina and Floyd, as well as during the Moore, Oklahoma tornado and many, many other events.
 
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Hard Truth said:
A broadcast quality drone costs more than that. It isn't legal to use a drone for commercial purposes without an FAA permit, and the permits are virtually impossible to obtain. I don't know whether balloons are legal to use that way.
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Better to ask forgiveness where balloons are concerned. And it isn't illegal for a private citizen to do it...and give it to the news.
 
Hard Truth said:
Excon said:
:doh
The AP also reports this.


So?


The folks here have been telling you why this no-fly zone was put in place yet you refuse to acknowledge it.
Why?

Yes they wanted to keep press helicopters out, not to restrict the Press, which is a claim disproved by the Press on the ground.



It was a safety issue and nothing more.

twit-2.jpg

JJMcNab ~ Twitter
Click to expand...
From your link:
"..On the tapes, an FAA manager is heard assuring a St. Louis County Police Department official that the updated restrictions would allow planes to land at nearby Lambert-St. Louis International Airport but, "It will still keep news people out. ... The only way people will get in there is if they give them permission in there anyway so ... it still keeps all of them out."

"Yeah," replied a county police captain. "I have no problem with that whatsoever."
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You have made no point.
It has been shown several times now in this thread that it was for safety purposes.
Never once has it been shown that it was to suppress the ability of the press to report on the incidences.

Safety purposes is not direct or purposeful suppression of the press to report the ongoing incidences. It has been shown they were allowed above a certain altitude and it is known that they had more than unfettered access on the ground.
That is the hard truth which you apparently can not accept.


Here is another report from yesterday that others may be interested in.

St. Louis County Police says intelligence reported both shots, lasers targeting helicopters in Ferguson, Mo., area - @rlippmann
AirLive.net: ALERT St. Louis County Police says intelligence reported both shots, lasers targeting helicopters in Ferguson, Mo., area - @rlippmann​


So can the bs folks, the restrictions are there and were there for safety purposes.
 
Beaudreaux said:
Hi. Pilot for 30+ years here (Private, multi-engine, Recip, Retract, Variable pitch, Turbo-prop and Jet, IFR ratings, as well as others) - I do know what I'm talking about.
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Then you explained it poorly. TFRs often go up to protect search and rescue operations, or firefighting operations, or the like, but it is absolutely not standard procedure to put up such a restriction every time a police helicopter operates somewhere. (because police helicopters are all over the place, all the time) An understandable mistake, jet pilots rarely actually have to deal with such things.
 
Deuce said:
Then you explained it poorly. TFRs often go up to protect search and rescue operations, or firefighting operations, or the like, but it is absolutely not standard procedure to put up such a restriction every time a police helicopter operates somewhere. (because police helicopters are all over the place, all the time) An understandable mistake, jet pilots rarely actually have to deal with such things.
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Possibly. I'm not a master of verbal rhetoric. Just for the record, I didn't say it happens all the time or even every time a police helicopter is in the air. Please re-read what I said, and I'm sure you will see that what I said was not an all encompassing statement. I even discussed how the local government has to make a case to the FAA to do so and get their approval.
 
...and there was a reason the local government officials concocted the story about their helicopter having been shot at....
 
Henry David said:
...and there was a reason the local government officials concocted the story about their helicopter having been shot at....
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Sigh. Yep it is a conspiracy alright.
 
stonewall50 said:
Sigh. Yep it is a conspiracy alright.
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It WAS a conspiracy, though that word might be too strong for this particular case.

More like "just a plan" to keep the news helicopters out. In the end, of course, the news cameras were still present, just no aerial perspective. Seems silly to me, especially in retrospect.
 
Henry David said:
It WAS a conspiracy, though that word might be too strong for this particular case.

More like "just a plan" to keep the news helicopters out. In the end, of course, the news cameras were still present, just no aerial perspective. Seems silly to me, especially in retrospect.
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Keeping out dangerous air traffic? That seems silly? Did you not see the posts earlier?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_aircraft_accidents_and_incidents

Besides. The media got coverage.
 
stonewall50 said:
Keeping out dangerous air traffic? That seems silly? Did you not see the posts earlier?

List of news aircraft accidents and incidents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Besides. The media got coverage.
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No, the whole thing seems silly to me, and the locals' request for TFR sillier still, and an insight into their insecurity about what happened with Brown.

Personally, considering the way he was throwing his weight around in the convenience store, karma was headed his way. He had it coming. Not a death sentence, but some sort of punishment for his theft and threats.

But the TFR request was silly. The cameras were there anyway, who cares if there are also overhead cameras? Obviously the cops cared, but their reasons were selfish. There was no public safety to be gained by the TFR, only government control. It seems highly likely that nobody shot at their helicopter.

What dangerous air traffic are you alluding to?
 
Henry David said:
No, the whole thing seems silly to me, and the locals' request for TFR sillier still, and an insight into their insecurity about what happened with Brown.

Personally, considering the way he was throwing his weight around in the convenience store, karma was headed his way. He had it coming. Not a death sentence, but some sort of punishment for his theft and threats.

But the TFR request was silly. The cameras were there anyway, who cares if there are also overhead cameras? Obviously the cops cared, but their reasons were selfish. There was no public safety to be gained by the TFR, only government control. It seems highly likely that nobody shot at their helicopter.

What dangerous air traffic are you alluding to?
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News helicopters are under the same FAA regulations and can change altitude and course without warning. Same for police. Not safe when they are sharing the same airspace.

Just think of it this way: who would you rather have the airspace? The news? Or the people trying to handle the riot?
 
stonewall50 said:
What evidence do you have to support your claim?

Restricting airspace because the helicopters are dangerously flown? Or the evidence regarding the death of brown? You know. The evidence that shows he was absolutely not some "sweet African American child destined for doctoral fame" and was instead involved in strong arm robbery and tried to grab the gun of the cop?
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Nevermind grab the gun from the cop he was punching him through the freaking window!

I see absolutely positively nothing wrong with what action the cop took against the criminal.
 
stonewall50 said:
News helicopters are under the same FAA regulations and can change altitude and course without warning. Same for police. Not safe when they are sharing the same airspace.

Just think of it this way: who would you rather have the airspace? The news? Or the people trying to handle the riot?
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It is true that there is at least one instance of a midair between news helicopters covering a scene. But there are many hundreds, perhaps thousands of examples of multiple news helicopters covering the same scene without any midair. That is achieved by way of good communications between the ships, pilots keeping their eyeballs outside the ship, and simple and practical rules to avoid such a thing.

TFR solves nothing, and in case you don't know, the existence of a TFR does not mean that ATC is controlling traffic within the TFR.

So, I'm not sure what your point is here. It seems obvious that the locals wanted a TFR for just one reason, political, and were willing to prevaricate or exaggerate to the feds to achieve that goal.
 
Henry David said:
It is true that there is at least one instance of a midair between news helicopters covering a scene. But there are many hundreds, perhaps thousands of examples of multiple news helicopters covering the same scene without any midair. That is achieved by way of good communications between the ships, pilots keeping their eyeballs outside the ship, and simple and practical rules to avoid such a thing.

TFR solves nothing, and in case you don't know, the existence of a TFR does not mean that ATC is controlling traffic within the TFR.

So, I'm not sure what your point is here. It seems obvious that the locals wanted a TFR for just one reason, political, and were willing to prevaricate or exaggerate to the feds to achieve that goal.
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There has been more than 1. Just google news collisions.

Look. I'm quite frankly sick of the jackal mentality of the news. They don't even report facts anymore. They just say whatever they want and retract it later. They still had coverage on the ground...so why not just use the ground and not the helicopters?
 
stonewall50 said:
There has been more than 1. Just google news collisions.

Look. I'm quite frankly sick of the jackal mentality of the news. They don't even report facts anymore. They just say whatever they want and retract it later. They still had coverage on the ground...so why not just use the ground and not the helicopters?
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I agree 150%.

But the point of this thread is that the locals prevaricated to the feds in their request for TFR, and that little factoid shows the mentality of the authorities, and their desire to at least ATTEMPT to keep the public in the dark about what was happening there. Just that simple--the authorities make stuff up as they please.
 
Henry David said:
...and there was a reason the local government officials concocted the story about their helicopter having been shot at....
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The previously provided twitter image shows what the word on the ground was. So your claim of "concocted" is a manifestation of your own imagination.

Regardless if it was confirmed or not, you still have to act in the best interests of safety, which they did.



Henry David said:
But the point of this thread is that the locals prevaricated to the feds in their request for TFR, and that little factoid shows the mentality of the authorities, and their desire to at least ATTEMPT to keep the public in the dark about what was happening there. Just that simple--the authorities make stuff up as they please.
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That isn't what happened.
You are doing nothing more than talking made-up nonsense.

It was for safety purposes and the press still had access on the ground and in the air.
 
Excon said:
The previously provided twitter image shows what the word on the ground was. So your claim of "concocted" is a manifestation of your own imagination.

Regardless if it was confirmed or not, you still have to act in the best interests of safety, which they did.

Nonsense. If somebody had fired on the police helicopter, especially if they had hit it, there would have been pictures plastered all over the media, along with comments from the police pilots fired upon. They would have maximized the event in the media.





That isn't what happened.
You are doing nothing more than talking made-up nonsense.

It was for safety purposes and the press still had access on the ground and in the air.
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Nonsense. The TFR was political in nature, nothing more. Not safety. The TFR was brought to us to "protect the POTUS". Safety is what the public spin is, but the facts are that political considerations, "national security" is what they are all about.

Government at all levels operate in the world of "lie and spin", and this is a small example of just that. Numerous news helicopters operate over spontaneous public events like that all the time with seldom an accident.

Safety you say---:lamo
 
Henry David said:
I agree 150%.

But the point of this thread is that the locals prevaricated to the feds in their request for TFR, and that little factoid shows the mentality of the authorities, and their desire to at least ATTEMPT to keep the public in the dark about what was happening there. Just that simple--the authorities make stuff up as they please.
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Yea. Why would they want to keep the public in the dark?

http://abcnews.go.com/US/protesters...ire-destroyed-michael-brown/story?id=25718679
 
j-mac said:
In non conspiratorial news, "Earlier this week we found out that sources close to the proceedings in Ferguson believe that there won’t be any state level murder charges forthcoming against Darren Wilson stemming from the shooting of Michael Brown this summer. Now the Washington Post is claiming that an anonymous source familiar with proceedings at the Justice Department don’t see much hope for a federal level civil rights case against the officer either."

No federal civil rights charges expected against Darren Wilson « Hot Air

So there's nothing there....Move along.
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Deep Throat? :lol:
 
Henry David said:
I agree 150%.

But the point of this thread is that the locals prevaricated to the feds in their request for TFR, and that little factoid shows the mentality of the authorities, and their desire to at least ATTEMPT to keep the public in the dark about what was happening there. Just that simple--the authorities make stuff up as they please.
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Did that stop reporting from the ground?
 
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