By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

Shelby County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Dennis Blackerby swiped his finger across the iPad screen mounted on the dash of the office’s newly acquired TH-67 Creek helicopter as he detailed the route he and Capt. Jeff Hartley prepared to fire up the aircraft’s engines.

“We can basically fly the helicopter from right here. We’ve got all the maps loaded onto the device,” Blackerby said as he fastened himself into the TH-67’s pilot seat at the Shelby County Airport on Dec. 16. “Technology has come a long way.”

A few minutes later, Blackerby lifted the chopper off the ground, made a few passes in front of the airport’s terminal and then soared into the sky for an about 45-minute flight around Shelby County.

The Sheriff’s Office acquired the TH-67 in June through the federal government’s 1033 program, which grants law enforcement agencies access to unused military equipment for a yearly fee.

If purchased new, the helicopter would have cost about $1 million, but the Sheriffs Office acquired it for nothing more than the $900 annual fee to participate in the program, Hartley said.

“We picked up this helicopter from the Army down in Fort Rucker, Alabama, in June. We’ve been flying this aircraft since August,” Hartley said. “Right now, we’re going into the holiday season, (and) we’ve got a platform we can use to help shoppers feel safe in their community and in the shopping centers around Shelby County.”

The helicopter is fitted with a high-intensity spotlight, allowing the airborne deputies to provide assistance to their counterparts on the ground in search-and-rescue, vehicle pursuit and other incidents. The aircraft also will serve as an asset to the Project Lifesaver program, which the SCSO utilizes to locate and recover Alzheimer’s and dementia patients who have gone missing.

“It’s a very big tool and resource for the Sheriff’s Department because it adds to what the deputies have always done. We can just do it from the air,” Hartley said. “Shelby County is 800 square miles of territory, so it’s a lot of territory to cover. We can cover the entire county in probably an hour.”

The SCSO had an aircraft several years ago, but the TH-67 provides greater capabilities than the department’s original helicopter, Hartley said.

“Sheriff (John) Samaniego had a much larger vision in mind when he decided to create an air unit,” Hartley said. We can use this any time of the day or night.