Use of police helicopters has become a daily ritual

• IT is completely unnecessary for the police to blight residents’ lives hour after hour, every day, with helicopter patrols over the West End.

Has the right to peace and quiet been removed in some way because of the Covid-19 pandemic? Or have they got some fantasy that we are in a war zone and need permanent air cover?

It is 10pm on a Saturday evening and, as usual, a helicopter has been blasting the peace all day and all evening. There is nothing going on that warrants this.

I simply don’t believe that the number of serious incidents requiring helicopter support has increased so dramatically since lockdown that they are now multiple daily occurrences, and that they always last for hours on end. Or at least, I assume, until sufficient overtime has been clocked up.

Our Cities of London and Westminster MP, Nickie Aiken, has done her best but all she has received is a rubbishy letter from police commissioner Cressida Dick pretending she gives a fig. (When I wrote to Commissioner Dick myself she didn’t respond at all).

The letter was obviously a joke anyway because since promising to limit helicopter use as much as possible it has actually increased. And far from being deployed for emergencies only is now an expensive, pointless, and intrusive daily ritual.

MARTIN KENNEDY
Brewer Street, W1