November 4, 2000 Chuck Perriguey

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by	Joe Godfrey
	Thanks to Florida Highway Patrol pilot Matt Walker for suggesting Officer Perriguey.

About the Author ... Joe Godfrey mixes his love of flying with a love of music. He is an instrument-rated private pilot who flies a 1974 Bellanca Viking based at Palomar airport just north of San Diego, Calif. He composes music for commercials, films, broadcast and corporate media and has composed and produced thousands of music tracks for America's largest advertisers. In addition to writing for AVweb, Joe contributes to The Aviation Consumer and IFR Magazine. He is a director and pilot for Angel Flight West, a non-profit organization that uses private airplanes to fly indigent medical patients. He is married and lives in Leucadia, California. So far, Joe is the only AVweb staff member who has logged time with Ella Fitzgerald and conducted the London Symphony.

Charles Perriguey, Jr. was born in Glendale, Calif. and grew up in nearby San Gabriel. He had only flown once on an airliner when he enlisted in the Marines after high school. He trained at NAS Pensacola in fixed-wing aircraft, then the Marines offered him the chance to fly helicopters and he took it. In Vietnam he flew Sea Stallions and Hueys, acted as a forward air controller and earned a Purple Heart. In 1972, after his service tour, he joined the LAPD. For three years he worked the streets, then in 1975 he switched to the air support division. He's just finishing his 25th year of trailing suspects and keeping ground-based officers out of harm's way.

On February 27th, 1997, Chuck had just begun his airborne shift when he heard a radio call about a bank robbery in North Hollywood. He arrived on the scene as two bank robbers in full body armor exited the building and tried to shoot their way out of the neighborhood. For about 40 minutes Officer Perriguey helped position SWAT teams on the ground while dodging bullets and news helicopters in the air. One suspect committed suicide and SWAT teams shot the other one. For his actions that day Chuck and 18 other officers earned the LAPD's Medal of Valor. Chuck also just finished six years as president of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association. When he arrived at ALEA he found an organization on the brink of failure. When he left last year, the organization had money in the bank and a strong board of directors to keep it going.

How did you get interested in flying?

I graduated high school during the Vietnam era, a lot of my friends were going into the service, and I enlisted in the Marines. I went to MCRD San Diego and about halfway through boot camp I was asked "Would you like to try and be a Marine Corps pilot?" I was approached based on an aptitude test that I had taken prior to boot camp. I said "Sure, why not?" So they sent me to Los Alamitos, which at that time was a Naval Auxiliary airfield. I had a battery of written tests in the morning and early afternoon, and an interview that afternoon, and I was accepted for what was known as MARCAT — Marine Aviation Cadet.

Had you flown up to that point?

Not at all. I had been on a commercial airliner, but nothing in terms of smaller airplanes or getting flight lessons. My dad was part owner of a foundry during WWII. He was drafted three times and excused three times, due to the critical nature of his work. My grandfather had four sons, and only one of the four sons actually saw any military time, so military life was not a big part of our family, on either the maternal or paternal side.

After being accepted and signing all the paperwork I got back on a bus and went back to boot camp. From there I went to Camp Pendleton, and was put in a group to begin OCS training. As fate would have it, in the summer of '66 the MARCAT program was discontinued. So I had to reapply for the Enlisted Commissioning Program, and in August of '66 I went to Quanitco, Virginia, where all Marine officers go for primary training. I graduated as a Second Lieutenant, and spent another six months there at "basic" school. Then I went to Pensacola for 18 months of pilot training, which is where all Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard pilots train. I flew the T-34 and the T-28. I got about 120 hours in those aircraft, then started flying the TH13M, which was a piston-engine helicopter like the [Bell] 47G. After about 40 or 50 hours in the TH13 I moved to the CH-34 — the civilian equivalent is the [Sikorsky] S-58. In August of '68 I passed, got my wings and went to New River, North Carolina and transitioned into the CH-46. That took until December of '68, then I went to Vietnam. When I got there I got an opportunity to join a UH-1 squadron, and I had always wanted to fly the Huey. So I did that transition in country.

Then I was reassigned as a forward air controller to the 2nd Battallion, 4th Marines, who were stationed in the DMZ up near the border, and for the next 100 days I called air strikes and targets for the B-52 drops — what they called "arclights" — and I got to call in Naval gunfire and artillery gunfire, so it was a pretty interesting tour. It was quite active in the DMZ, and we did some creative things, too. We worked with A6s with what they called CPQ, which was high-altitude, all-weather bombing. We had a transponder with us in the field and we would brief the pilots on our location and elevation, and the offset from us to the target and the target's elevation. They would plug that into their computer and acquire our transponder, and the computer would calculate the release point for the bomb to hit the target.

It sounds pretty primitive. How accurate was it?

Very accurate. Sometimes we'd drop one bomb, make some adjustments, and hit it the second time. We combined that system with regular bombing missions. At night, the Vietnamese would use the light from the fires that the bombs were making to move. We could see them, then we could call in more air strikes. After that 100 days I went back to flying gunships, and support missions for some special operations people. During one of those I received the Silver Star and the Purple Heart.

What earned the Purple Heart?

I got in the way of some rocket-propelled grenades. They were shooting at us, we were shooting back, and the shrapnel from two or three of their RPGs entered the cockpit and hit me in the arm. The injury wasn't that big of a deal. A few Band-Aids and I was back at it. We wound up landing and picking up the people on the ground that we were there to support — which we normally wouldn't do — we were just a gunship. But when it was time to pick them up we were the only ones there, so we picked them up.

How was morale when you were there?

Morale was still good at the end of '69. We had good missions every day. The Marine Corps was taking draftees, but in the aviation community the people had good jobs, and for the most part they kept their noses clean and did their jobs. We didn't see the narcotics and some of the other crimes that were going on.

Back stateside I was based at MCAS Tustin, where I flew the H-46. My last tour before going off active duty was on special staff with the Wing Commanding General. I was involved in morale, trying to find recreational activities and campsites for enlisted Marines in the wing. After I left active duty I stayed affiliated with the reserves and flew in a reserve CH-46 squadron, and had tours of duty assigned to group staff, and a couple of assignments attached to 3rd ANGLICO — Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company — because of my background with the infantry.

One of those tours was a two-week stint in January, 1985 in Fairbanks, Alaska, on a multi-nation training exercise. It was fifteen years after my Vietnam experience, and I was back in the field again, but this time I was controlling a whole new generation of aircraft; A-10s and some of the more sophisticated strike fighter aircraft in the inventory. I made it up to Lieutenant Colonel in the flying squadron and was the squadron executive officer, then I had some medical problems and had to drop out of the program. I got off active duty in November of '71, and in January of '72 I joined the LAPD.

Did you join with an eye toward flying?

I did. I knew that I had some experience and I knew that LAPD had an air unit. It was about a third if the size it is now. I joined knowing that there was a good chance that the air unit would grow. But I also knew that if aviation didn't work out that the department was big enough that there were lots of opportunities for other specialties. I went through the academy and was assigned to a patrol division at 77th Street station in south central Los Angeles. Then in November of '75 I transferred to the Air Support division.

That's a competitive process. There's an oral interview, they look at your flight experience, and examine when kind of police officer you've been. Some of the candidates were ex-military pilots, and some were ex-airline pilots that had joined LAPD. In that competition I was lucky enough to make #1 on the list.

Is there a flight test?

No. It's all ground-based. They do ask aviation questions but they don't take you up for a ride.

I got my command pilot wings in January of 1976, and I've been with the unit ever since. This is the end of my 25th year. My assignments have been as a line pilot, division safety coordinator — I had that job for ten years — special projects coordinator off and on for six or seven years. I've also been the division adjutant, which is kind of like a chief of staff.

I've flown both our basic patrol mission which is called ASTRO — Air Support To Regular Operations — and our discrete surveillance operation. We have a military surplus Huey that we use with our SWAT team, our bomb teams and our canine teams. Because of my military background I'm one of the command pilots for the Huey. We have an airplane — a King Air 200 — but I'm not involved in that part of the operation.

I've been a member of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association for the 25 years I've been in LAPD's Air Support. I got active on the Board in the mid-'80s, went on the Board in the late-'80s, and served for six years as the president. The ALEA's position — and my personal position — is that we need access to that type of equipment but we want the equipment to be certified and safe for flight. We want it maintained to a certain protocol, and we want the pilots that operate the equipment to be certified pilots within the FAA system.

Unfortunately — and this is my language — the FAA has abrogated their responsibility to ensure safety in the skies of the United States because they are aware of, and refuse to act on, the fact that military surplus aircraft in the hands of local government can be operated without any maintenance and can be operated by pilots that have no certificates. I find that abhorrent.

The ALEA has asked that the FAA get off the dime and get a set of reasonable rules in place that will allow those aircraft to be operated under Part 91, where all other airborne law enforcement operate, with very few exceptions. The FBI, Customs, the Marshall's office, and all state and local all operate under Part 91. Most pilots in airborne law enforcement are commercially rated, whether they're airplane or helicopter drivers, and most airplanes are certificated.

The percentage of military surplus aircraft in law enforcement is small, but it needs to be addressed. We're asking for a maintenance protocol. We think the FAA should adopt the maintenance manuals that those aircraft used when in service in the military, or adopt other protocols that are mutually agreeable. There's at least one set of those protocols that were developed through ICAP — the Interagency Committee on Aviation Policy.

The factory — Bell helicopter — was participating in training in those aircraft, and that was working out, until the FAA said Part 61.45 precludes you from doing that. Now we're not able to train in those military surplus aircraft to acquire pilot certificates, and we're scratching our heads to figure out why. And it winds up costing local government more money.

What special hardware and software would we find in an LAPD helicopter?

We have GPS navigation for the pilot, and in LAPD aircraft the moving-map vendor has installed a GPS-based Thomas street guide. We have street maps for all of southern California, plus sectionals for the entire U.S. When we get a call the tactical flight officer types in the street address. Let's say there's a burglary in progress at, say 123 West 3rd Street. The TFO types that in and gets the Thomas guide page for that address, with a bipper pointed at the address. Pushing another button gives you a sidebar with heading and distance to target, and arrival time based on your current airspeed.

Let's say that between you and that target lies a big chunk of the LA Class B.

If we can't fly a straight line we'll deviate, but we are able to fly in quite a bit of the Class B surface area, as long as we don't get too close to LAX under the approach paths to the two complexes. They know where our normal patrol areas are in the surface area and we can get clearance into it and monitor their frequencies, and if they need us to move we do. If we need to get close in, under the glideslope, we'll request it; sometimes we get it, sometimes we don't. If we're involved in a pursuit near LAX, we get frustrated sometimes that we can't follow it, but we know they're not going to divert arriving commercial flights, so we do the best we can.

We have a very good relationship with all the local TRACONs. We take them up on flights and show them how we work and where we're flying in proximity to their system. A good example of that is the North Hollywood bank shootout. Burbank tower was controlling that airspace and they were very cooperative with my needs for separation.

How did that day begin for you?

It was an unusual day. My normal reporting time was 9:30 in the morning, and that particular day I was scheduled to report at 7:30 and fly an early shift that takes off at 9:00. And I was only scheduled for one flight that day, and normally I'd fly two. And I normally worked the central part of Los Angeles, and that day I was scheduled to work the west. It's not that I wasn't familiar with the area or the time of day, but they were different from my normal assignment.

I was working with my regular partner, who was a reserve police officer training to become a tactical flight officer. About five minutes after we took off we heard the initial broadcast of a possible bank robbery in progress, and it took us about eight minutes to get there. Flying there we heard that the suspects were heavily armed, an unknown number of suspects, and that they were inside the bank.

Just as we arrived the suspects came out of the bank and started shooting. We got down low to look in the door to see where the suspects were, and they started shooting at us. The was the beginning of about a 40-minute scenario that saw them eventually leave the entrance of the bank and walk around to the north parking lot, and that's where you see them in the video. We could see the officers that were wounded, we could see other officers that were shooting at the suspects, we could see the suspects shooting at those officers and at us.

How high were you?

I like to say I used all acceptable patrol altitudes for the sake of my job. I couldn't go too high, because we had a lot of media helicopters. I almost ran into one of them, who got too wrapped up in the event and forgot about flying duties. So we stayed pretty busy dodging bullets, ENG [electronic news gathering] helicopters, talking to Burbank and the other officers.

How high can an AK47 bullet fly?.

It can go up to 1,500 feet at lethal velocity. And when that bullet comes down it's traveling at terminal velocity, so it can enter the aircraft and kill you. I had a round come down into the aircraft one New Years Eve. It entered through the top and exited the bottom. We didn't take any hits that day over North Hollywood. Only one aircraft did, and it happened to be the aircraft that almost hit us.

We were there for about 15 minutes, watching them shoot at us and others, before it was discovered that they were using armor-piercing rounds. I already knew whatever they were shooting at us wouldn't have any trouble penetrating the thin skin of the aircraft, but that fact did make a difference on how we were deploying officers on the ground.

Then as the suspects split up and started walking I had to fly a long elliptical orbit to keep both of them in sight. The first suspect committed suicide not far from the bank. Then we could concentrate on the other suspect and eventually our SWAT team was able to get a shot. After that we stayed in the area for another fifteen minutes because we thought there might be other suspects in the bank or in the neighborhood. That was based on the initial call that there were three or four suspects, and on reports from people calling in saying 'We can see them running in the neighborhood.'

Hours later we figured out that what they had seen were police officers, who were in all sorts of get-ups. The SWAT officers that eventually took down the suspect were wearing shorts, because they were at the academy working out when the call came and they didn't have time to get into their SWAT attire.

Then we had to make some public address announcements to people that were coming out of their houses.

Were you the only LAPD helicopter in the air?

There was another unit in the downtown area. They asked if they could help, but the sky was already so busy with all the ENG people and I thought it would be safer if we kept them out of there.

We know most of the pilots that are flying those aircraft. We have meetings and discuss the situation, and I think we consider ourselves friends. We're all pilots, we love to fly, it's our profession, and we have that in common. Unfortunately we have different masters that dictate how we act, and the news gatherers have news directors that need to get "the shot." Our perception is that when the pilot becomes an on-air personality, talking to the audience, describing the action, maybe watching the TV monitor in the aircraft, that pilot is no longer devoting enough attention to flying the aircraft. And when they're not on the air, they may be talking to the newsroom about when they're going live, arranging the shot, and their attention is not on communications and collision avoidance. That's the biggest problem.

So we've had meetings and established communications protocols for ENG arrivals at a law enforcement or fire incidents and following those protocols has helped. Nobody is signed to them, there's no obligation in the FARs to comply with them, but generally we get good cooperation. Unfortunately, we are in the process of filing with the FAA on a pilot with one of the local news channels who almost had a collision with one of our aircraft who was lawfully over a pursuit. So it's an ongoing problem, and we don't want to have a bloodbath before some agreement is reached.

We had a midair in the '60s with a traffic reporter that involved five fatalities, and that's when we began using 123.025 as a collision-avoidance frequency, and that's still in use. If you monitor that frequency you'll hear a lot that isn't related to collision avoidance, and LAPD is one of the big violators of that. We talk cops and robbers on the frequency and we shouldn't. It's really for collision avoidance and all of the local entities are working to clean it up. Since we started using the frequency in the '60s we've had only one midair, and that was on a handoff between two agencies over a pursuit. But the record is pretty good.

Would TCAS or TCAD help with collision avoidance or are you too close?

We use TCAD, and the first iteration — made by Ryan — gave us distance and vertical separation, but not azimuth. The second generation gives us azimuth, too, and we're installing it in all of our aircraft. The pilot has complete control of when the alarm goes off. You create a bubble around the aircraft — it may be a mile and a half, or three miles, or five — or you create a vertical separation limit, and if everybody's got their transponders on, hopefully you can get the alert and avoid a problem.

What are your weather minimums?

A ceiling of 800 feet and 2 miles visibility. We can fly in less than that is it's required for an extreme police emergency. We don't fly in the clouds. Our aircraft aren't certified for it, most of our pilots aren't rated for it, and we have to be able to see the ground to do our job.

Were you flying during the 1992 riots?

On the first day I was at the command center acting as air liaison between the incident commander and our division, because of my background in that area. Desert Storm had occurred prior to the riots, and it struck me and most of the pilots that the sky looked like the sky over Kuwait. The smoke from the fires would go up to a certain altitude and flatten out, and it looked like the smoke from the oil fires.

Were you flying during the OJ chase?

I worked earlier that day, but by then I was home watching it on TV, glad I wasn't anywhere near it.

When you get involved in a pursuit, do you take over?

Our division is called Air Support Division, and that's the key. We're a support entity within the department. The vehicle code doesn't allow helicopters to pursue cars, so we don't take over, but we inform the primary unit that we are overhead and can assist. If the pursuit becomes too dangerous for the ground units, they can back off knowing that we will track them — observe what they do. When they stop we'll set up a perimeter and coordinate a search effort to go and arrest them.

Sometimes we'll put a second air unit on a pursuit, so the TFO in the lower aircraft would be coordinating the pursuit on the radio and the TFO in the higher aircraft might be naming streets as they come up. In that case the pilot of the higher aircraft would get any airspace clearances that we might need — as a flight of two — and coordinating with any media ships in the air. That frees the pilot in the low ship to really concentrate on giving the right perspective to the TFO in the low ship.

Besides the street map, what other special equipment is on board?

The FLIR [forward-looking infrared] is fantastic. We first got them in the late '80s, and now we're starting what would be considered the third generation of what's available to the civilian market. The military systems are more sophisticated, but they cost over a million dollars. What we use is in the $150,000 to $200,000 range, and it's great for what we use it for. If a person's hiding under a stack of leaves, or leaning against a wall in a toolshed, or if a car has been driven recently, we can usually see a heat source. Sometimes a ground unit that has lost a car in a neighborhood will call us and we can see all the hot cars and point them out to the ground unit.

Our searchlight is 30 million candlepower. We used to have telephones and I'm not sure we're going to have them in our new aircraft. We could use the phone to call the people who called the police and get more details on the suspects. We have a dual radio system and each radio can access every frequency used in public service, at the local, state and federal level.

We have a public address and siren system. We can use the siren late at night to wake people up when we discover a fire. We can also use it in a pursuit to blast an intersection up ahead to bring traffic to a stop. We can use the light for that, too.

We also have a LoJack tracking device. We don't endorse the system, but they gave the trackers to the department — both the cars and the helicopters — and we do recover a lot of cars with it. LoJack's statistics show that about 35% of the cars are recovered using aircraft.

How much flying do you do in a typical day?

We report for an eight-hour day, plus a 30-minute lunch period. During that time we would fly 2.2 hours, then refuel, do some paperwork, relax, then fly another 2.2. You're usually working a call at the end of the 2.2, so by the time you wrap up it's 2.3 or 2.4, so we're in the air almost 5 hours a day. We don't have autopilots or stabilization equipment, so it's hands-on flying.

Do you have a favorite helicopter?

Because of my Vietnam experience I have an affinity to the Huey. I spent a lot of time in the CH-46. I've got a lot of Jet Ranger time, a lot of A-Star time, and some 407 time. We're using the American Eurocopter A-Star 350B2. Until 1989 we were completely a Bell operation, then we moved to the A-Star, then back to Bell, and back the A-Star. I think we'll probably stick with the A-Star for a while. No helicopter is perfect for every situation, but the A-Star gives us everything we need and a platform to do the mission that we do.

When you joined LAPD there was no guarantee that you would get to fly. Has that changed?

That's still the policy, and it's the policy for most law enforcement organizations. Once in a while CHP [California Highway Patrol] will hire a pilot and put them through the academy for six months before they transfer to the air unit. For a while the Baltimore Police Department would hire a pilot off the street and put them into police training. But most agencies require that you have some field experience with that department before you go into the air unit. Our department requires five years with LAPD, with three years recent field experience. We've got officers with ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years experience on the department before they come to the air unit.

I've got over 28 years LAPD experience and maybe the TFO sitting next to me has fifteen years. That's 43 years of police experience. I've got 25 years in air support, maybe the TFO has another five or ten, so we've got over 30 years of airborne law enforcement experience; handling priority radio calls, directing police cars, keeping them out of trouble, and helping to put the bad guy in jail.

The officers on the ground — between the two of them — may have four or five years experience. So when all that experience overhead suggests that they turn right at the next corner to get the suspect, they usually turn right at the next corner. I think most police officers that have four or five years on the job can tell you that the air crew has saved them from getting killed or seriously injured because of the way they've been deployed by the air crew.