Every police force in a medium to large city uses a helicopter to fly night surveillance with a spot light to aide in finding and seeing perpetrators. The capital cost, fuel and maintenance for this operation is very expensive. So much so that in periods of financial tightening of city budgets this may have to be suspended. There has so be a better, less expensive and safer way to provide this valuable service...

The Military employs drone (unmanned) aircraft to fly surveillance missions and provide air support for our troops around the world. There is a company in France that developed a model version of this technology that has two cameras and can be controlled with an iPhone. This should be fairly easy to scale up and make capable of improved flight and maneuverability. Flir and other companies make miniature surveillance cameras that have iR and night vision capability.

Take these two technologies and put them together and you would have a small, drone-operated, night or daytime flying surveillance surveillance unit. A passenger in a police patrol car could remotely (even with an iPhone) control the drone chopper as they drive through neighborhoods. This would have the advantage of the police cruiser being able to see from above first hand (with IR or night vision rather than a spot light). Thus avoiding having a helicopter pilot try to describe the scene to them. This would be orders of magnitude less expensive, safer and far better than the use of an actual helicopter.

At the end of their shift, two police officers land their Drone Surveillance Chopper in a local park, put it in their trunk and drive back to the police station - Job Well Done!