NEWARK — The 42-year-old Vietnam-era OH-58A Bell Kiowa helicopter, a U.S. Army hand-me-down, came at a very good price. It was free.



So the Newark Police Department took two—one to operate and the other for spare parts.



And that's when the bills started to fly.



Newark's police helicopter looks new and is loaded with state-of-the-art equipment that can keep an eye on the crime-ridden streets below. But an examination of public records shows the city, beset by budget problems that have forced layoffs and cutbacks in police staffing, has spent more than $2 million to refurbish, maintain and operate the aging aircraft, which does not fly all that often.



A spokesman for the police would not respond to questions about the helicopter or its total cost to the city. However, documents obtained by NJ Advance Media under a series of public records requests show maintenance contracts alone approved by the Newark City Council in the past five years alone have totaled $1.13 million, including a $81,000 emergency appropriation.



At the same time, flight logs provided by Newark show that the helicopter, which is based at a hanger at a Kearny heliport, is frequently on the ground. Taking to the air typically on Friday and Saturday nights, it usually flies patrols for about four hours a night. It was also deployed for newly elected Mayor Ras Baraka's inauguration in July.



Among the maintenance bills was a $27,412 invoice to strip, apply corrosion coating, prime and paint the aircraft and new rotor blades cost that $143,386. Those costs did not include annual storage and hanger fees of $3,600, insurance premiums of $30,000 a year, or the $961,000 that has been spent on pilot salaries.



Some of the helicopter costs were covered with Homeland Security grants and drug forfeiture funds, records show. But much of it appeared to have come out of the city's pocket.



Newark Police Director Eugene Venable did not return calls to his office. A spokeswoman for the mayor referred questions back to the police department.

The cost of 'free'

The story of Newark's aviation unit raises new questions about the hidden costs of a controversial U.S. Department of Defense program that in recent years has provided billions in surplus military gear—ranging from M-16 automatic rifles and night vision scopes, to computers and machine tools—to police agencies across the country for the asking.



The program came under fire last year after police in Ferguson, Mo., responded to demonstrators with armored combat vehicles and tactical armor following the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer, opening a national debate over whether weapons of war belong in police arsenals.



For some departments, the equipment giveaway has been touted as a valuable free resource, providing underfunded agencies with badly needed trucks, boats, tactical gear and weapons they might not otherwise be able to afford. The only upfront cost to law enforcement agencies is shipping.



Training, maintenance and repairs of the surplus military equipment, though, is the sole responsibility of the agency receiving the hardware, which may be nothing for a set of tools, but nothing inconsiderable for something that flies.



Newark first sought to acquire a patrol helicopter through the defense department's so-called "1033" surplus program in 2002, recalled Anthony Ambrose, then chief of police and the city's acting police director, who said his goal was to find a way to combat the growing epidemic of stolen vehicles and carjackings.



"My main thing was to stop the number of car chases, and people getting hurt," he said.



From its vantage point high in the sky, a helicopter can follow vehicles fleeing from police pursuits without detection, effectively ending the chase on the ground until a suspect finally parks and gets out—thinking themselves home-free before officers move in for an arrest.



The drawback is cost. New helicopters typically carry a hefty purchase price. Even small ones may be priced upwards of $1 million and much more, and used ones are still not cheap. Anything acquired from the defense department, however, is free, which has created a long waiting list for available aircraft. Newark had to wait three years for its request to be filled.



A Defense Logistics Agency spokeswoman said 577 helicopters have been distributed under the program since 1996, many of them early model Kiowas identical to the aircraft received by Newark. The military variant of Bell's 406A JetRanger, the OH-58A Kiowa was an Army workhorse during the Vietnam War, used as an observation and scout helicopter, but has since been phased out of active duty by more modern models.



While Ambrose said he knew even a free helicopter would cost the city money, they had crunched the numbers and the department already had an officer on the force with a commercial helicopter pilot's license.



"A helicopter can reduce the crime rate 7 to 14 percent. The downside is the cost," he said. "But if we only stopped carjackings, we would be getting our money's worth."



Still, maintenance expenses for older military aircraft are not insubstantial, experts say, even if the airframe is free.



"When you get military, some of those aircraft have been flown hard," said Daniel Schwarzbach, a senior Houston police officer and executive director of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association.



A military Kiowa OH-58A similar to the aircraft acquired by Newark police. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Defense Department)

Military helicopters released to law enforcement agencies as surplus may not be able to fly, or have missing doors, hatches, cowlings, instruments, and even engines.

“You can refurbish them, and they look pretty good when you do it,” Schwarzbach said.

Yet new paint and an engine overhaul is only the beginning. A pilot himself, he noted there is equipment a police aircraft requires that is not part of the inventory of a military helicopter, even when new—such as spotlights, special radio and communications equipment, and thermal imaging devices.

“It can get expensive,” Schwarzbach acknowledged.

Taking flight

Documents show the initial aircraft was delivered to the city in 2005, shipped from the U.S. Army base at Ft. Drum, N.Y. A second one, to be cannibalized for spare parts, was received in 2007.



Given the call sign of Able-1, the first helicopter received a full makeover. Its once-olive drab body was painted in the gleaming black-and-white livery of Newark's police cruisers. It was equipped with a gyro-stabilized night vision system that allowed pilots to see in the dark, a Lo-Jack receiver to track stolen cars, a "Night Sun" SX-16 spotlight able to illuminate an entire city block, and a GPS navigation system able to place it over a specific address.



At first, the helicopter spent a lot of time on patrol, according to former chief pilot Kenneth Solosky, who was hired by Newark after his retirement from the New York Police Department, where he served as operations commander for the NYPD Aviation Unit.



"We flew five days week, five to six hours a night," he recalled. "We often got involved in vehicle pursuits. And Newark has a lot of car chases."



Solosky said if a precinct commander had a burglary spike in a neighborhood, the helicopter would be deployed to keep watch from overhead.



But by late 2010 under then-Mayor Cory Booker, the city's mounting budget problems forced the layoff of 167 cops. Then-police director Garry McCarthy soon grounded Able-1 to save money and turned the helicopter over to the State Police, which has its own sizable fleet of aircraft.



"We had it for a short time," confirmed Capt. Stephen Jones, a State Police spokesman.



Such cost-cutting has not been uncommon with other police aviation units around the country. The Phoenix Police Department last year announced plans to sell three of its nine helicopters, in a bid to save $3.3 million. The Tupelo, Miss., police department last year said it would turn its Army surplus helicopter over to the state, citing the cost of annual maintenance and limited use for the aircraft. In fact, one of the helicopters operated by the New Jersey State Police is another military surplus OH-58A given up years ago by Camden County because of the cost, officials said.



Soon after Newark grounded its helicopter, though, a sharp rise in crime led law enforcement officials to reconsider when Samuel DeMaio took over as police director in 2011.



DeMaio said not only can a helicopter get anywhere over the city in minutes and see what is going on in the dark, it gives commanders the ability to avoid dangerous pursuits in a tight urban setting.



"I wanted it back," said DeMaio, now the police director in Bloomfield. "Carjackings were way up and we asked to get it back."



The Newark police helicopter after it was brought back into service.

Grants and drug forfeiture funds were expected to help underwrite the return to flight status. The expense was still the main drawback, which meant a limited patrol schedule, he said.

DeMaio pointed out the more an aircraft flies, the more it costs. Some components and engine parts measure their life by hours. An engine may require overhaul every 3,000 hours. Rotor blades need to be replaced in time. Even a routine inspection and engine compressor wash can mean a $600 bill.

“Once it goes up, the clock starts running on equipment and then they have to bring it in for overhauls and inspections,” DeMaio said. “At most, we had it flying 20 hours a week, and then it would have to go down for a time for maintenance.”

By August 2011, Able-1 was back flying again in Newark.

Groundhog?

These days, it remains in apparently limited service.



Flight logs provided under the public records request by NJ Advance Media show it is not a constant presence over the city. When it is sent aloft, the helicopter patrols the city's rail yards, Port Newark, and at times may be directed to focus on certain precincts for crime-stopping initiatives, unless called to respond to an incident. It was also deployed in July to honor slain Jersey City police officer Melvin Santiago in a gravesite flyover.



But unless the flight logs provided by the department were incomplete, the records show the helicopter did not fly at all for the first six months of last year.



Police records show its operating and maintenance costs in 2013 were $224,281, due in large part to the replacement of its rotors. For 2014 through October, those costs came to $86,869, the police department reported —not including insurance or salaries.



Currently there are two pilots—one on the payroll as a police officer who is paid $103,005 a year. A retired officer serving as chief helicopter pilot is paid $47.89 an hour to fly, records show.



A police department spokesman would not return calls or emails questioning the flight records or current operational expenses.

Rutgers University professor Wayne Fisher, former chairman of the New Jersey Police Training Commission, said there is no question that a helicopter is a useful resource for police to have available.



"It's purely a fiscal issue," he said. "The question is whether the agency has the financial resources to maintain it."



He noted, though, that Newark's police department, though, has a lot of operational needs—both in personnel, vehicles, and other equipment likely to be used more frequently than a helicopter.



"I'm just not sure it justifies the cost," Fisher said. "I'm hard-pressed to believe that the expenditures necessary to maintain a helicopter is a prudent use of finite resources for the Newark police department."

Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.