I wouldn’t normally say local police waste our money on grossly incompetent staff or services. It’s not like they ever had sex on duty or threw people outside the city in lethally cold weather.

But this plane they’ve been joyriding since 2005 is a ridiculous money pit.

The local police website proudly boasts that their Cessna 182 plane was “directly responsible” for 53 arrests during its initial three-month evaluation. As of 2008, the plane’s operating costs were about $500,000 annually. Now I’m no math-whiz but spending a half-million dollars every year for something that makes a couple arrests a week is obviously a waste of tax dollars.

Responding to critics like me, the police sporadically post an “activity log” of the plane on their website. It’s a feeble attempt to prove this machine offers Saskatoon more than just noise and air pollution.

The latest entry shows that, between Jan. 1 and 6 this year, the plane spent a whopping 32 minutes handling incidents of a supposedly criminal nature. The log labels these incidents under cryptic names like “suspicious person,” “unknown problem” and “assist major crimes.”

A more detailed perusal of these logs reveals the Air Support Unit mainly does two things: It witnesses bad driving and reports any unusual behavior as “suspicious” — things police on the ground already do. The difference is that cops on the ground confront real danger, whereas the ASU floats hundreds of feet above, sheltered from Saskatoon’s notoriously violent streets.

During a ride-along, StarPhoenix reporter Lori Coolican said the only action the plane saw was “a possible drunk driver in a residential neighbourhood, kids goofing around on the roof of a school and a speeding motorcycle.”

Clearly, the ASU is uncovering some serious shit. And I’m so glad our city has a plane to hunt and prosecute such heinous crimes as kids playing on a roof. Maybe the police service’s next purchase should be a bazooka to kill flies with.

Financially speaking, this plane is a total waste. But as we all know, when a show of force proves ineffective, the most prudent solution is to throw more money at it. The police seem to agree.

In 2009 a thermal imaging camera was purchased for the plane for the meagre price of $300,000. Police say SGI footed the bill, meaning that we drivers footed the bill. According to 600 Action News, police use the camera “to track criminals, find missing persons and locate drug grow-operations in the city.” It all sounds impressive on paper but the plane’s activity log, and a thorough look back at local news, reveals no cases where the camera located missing persons or grow-ops.

The camera is useful however at peeking inside the privacy of our homes. So beware: if you and a friend are making hot, sweaty thermal energy tonight, the police could be watching. And if the plane’s binoculars are as good as they say, you should probably reconsider skinny-dipping in your backyard pool.

Taxpayers have already dumped millions into this monstrosity of a plane. In return we get a more invasive and costly police force. But this money could do so much more for a humanitarian project like Station 20 West. These millions of dollars could even start curbing Saskatoon’s AIDS epidemic, by building a safe injection clinic for example.

Either way, putting this money toward the needy — instead of plane maintenance — would lead to greater crime reduction and higher standards of living than we’ll achieve flying a piece of metal in circles every day.

And if we must give this money to police, they could at least reallocate it to more police units on the ground.

I’m led to believe this plane does not fly for the protection and service of Saskatoon. It seems to function more as a way of making our police feel important. But they need to realize that Saskatoon is not a big city. We are not a terrorist threat, nor are we in a state of emergency.

Police, your play time is over. If you really want to fly you should either: join the air force and face real danger, or buy toy planes — they cost less and are about as useful for fighting crime.

And we citizens must remember it’s our civic duty to police the police. When they do something as criminally stupid as buying this plane, we really ought to protest their actions. At the very least, next time you see the plane, feel free to flip it the bird.

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Graphic: Brianna Whitmore/Graphics Editor