POLICE DENY HELICOPTER DREW A PENIS IN THE SKY ON PURPOSE

Gordon Bird, 53, of Ancells Farm in Fleet, Hampshire, says a police helicopter circling overhead woke his two-year-old daughter around 23:00 GMT on Monday, November 2, and that its flight path later turned out to look like a penis on tracking maps. The National Police Air Service says the crew was searching for a vehicle that had failed to stop for police, and denies the shape was deliberate.

Bird told the BBC he was still up and happened to have his computer on, so he checked the chopper’s track online. He said he was “shocked” by what he saw.

“I happened to have my computer on, I hadn’t gone to bed, so I just looked it up on the tracking,” he explained.

The map, from ADS-B Exchange, shows a tangle of lines and loops. According to the tracking data, the helicopter made the main part of the outline above Blackbushe Airport, then circled over Ancells Farm before heading back to its base at Redhill.

Bird laid out his own timeline. “The actual buzzing around our estate lasted for 15 or 20 minutes, the actual drawing of the phallus… took about half an hour, and the overall flight, as per flight radar type websites, show it as being an hour,” he said.

He said that when helicopters pass over his house it “vibrates” and the windows “rattle.” He was not furious, he said, just unhappy about how the time was spent. “I’m not angry, I am upset at the waste of resources,” he said.

NPAS, which provides aerial support to police forces across England and Wales, rejected the idea that anyone was drawing anything. It said the crew was “orbiting the locations they were directed to as part of the search for a vehicle that had failed to stop for police.”

The service told the BBC the crew had been checking “specific roads, junctions and areas identified by officers on the ground.” It added that its flights “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.”

In an email to Bird, NPAS said it understood the “frustration” of having his young daughter “disrupted” and that it was “unfortunate that the flight path shown on public tracking apps resembles a particular shape.”

The flight date comes from UPI, which also reported the service’s line that the search was in support of Thames Valley Police.

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