Police Chopper Accidentally Draws the Long Arm of the Law

A police helicopter spent up to 20 minutes circling over Hampshire late at night, only for its route to appear on flight-tracking data as a remarkably complete set of male genitalia.

The National Police Air Service has stressed that the shape was entirely unintentional. The aircraft was engaged in police work, not an airborne life-drawing class.

Gordon Bird, 53, of Fleet, Hampshire, became aware of the helicopter after it disturbed his 2-year-old daughter’s sleep at about 11 p.m. on Monday. He could hear the aircraft circling overhead for at least 15 to 20 minutes, so he looked up its tracking data to find out what it had been doing.

The answer, at least visually, was drawing what appeared to be a penis and testicles in the sky over Hampshire. Bird said he was shocked by the image shown on the tracker.

NPAS later issued a statement explaining that the suggestive flight path was an accident produced during a genuine operation.

“The flight was conducted for a legitimate policing purpose, in support of Thames Valley Police,” the statement said.

Officials said the helicopter crew had been “orbiting the locations they were directed to as part of the search for a vehicle that had failed to stop for police.” In other words, the loops and lines were dictated by events on the ground, however anatomically they may have appeared when joined together on a screen.

The service also explained that its helicopters “do not follow defined or predetermined flight plans as they, by their very nature, are dynamic and respond to ever changing, and unpredictable, circumstances on the ground.”

That unpredictability evidently extends to the finished artwork. NPAS maintains there was no intention to create the shape, and there is no suggestion that the crew will face disciplinary action. The flight was simply part of the search for the vehicle, with the resulting outline an unfortunate coincidence.

There is, however, precedent for deliberate aerial doodling. In the spring, the Finnish Air Force confirmed that cadets had been disciplined after using their flight paths to produce similar shapes in the sky.

Flight-tracking records showed that at least four planes involved in an April 13 training exercise followed routes creating the outlines of penises. Unlike the Hampshire police flight, those patterns were confirmed to have been intentional.

For the National Police Air Service, the matter appears settled: legitimate operation, unpredictable route, accidental anatomy. The vehicle search may have required the long arm of the law, but nobody planned for it to look quite so literal.