Police helicopter

A police helicopter banked over the water in Trailer 2, close enough to read POLICE across the engine deck and VICE-DALE along the flank below the cabin windows.

The helicopter fills the right-hand side of the frame at 2:27.30, banked over golden light on the water. The body is white with a yellow pinstripe and a green band along the bottom of the fuselage. POLICE is set in dark green capitals across the engine deck behind the cabin. Lower down, on the flank below the cabin windows, runs VICE-DALE in the same green capitals, and between the two sits a gold star badge in a circle, the kind a sheriff’s department uses. The badge has an eagle over a ringed seal; the ring carries lettering that does not resolve at this size.

Below the cabin, a dark angled strut carries a skid: this aircraft lands on skids rather than wheels. One rotor blade sweeps across the frame with a yellow-painted tip, and the rotor head is visible above the cabin; the blade measures grey near the hub and yellow further out, and the figures are on the sighting record. Through the side window a figure is just discernible in the cockpit.

The helicopter is not alone in the shot: to its left and lower down, outside this crop, is the wooden-decked speedboat, and that boat has a page of its own.

Two more sightings are held for the class rather than for the lettering. In the fourth Grassrivers press still the helicopter hangs over a swamp chase: white on top and dark underneath, with a sensor ball under the nose and a figure standing out on one skid, too far away for any marking to read. And at 15:43 of the Extended Look it is a dark shape with skids seen from below, the smallest crop this site publishes, placed by the police chase on the road beneath it and not by anything written on it.

GTA 5 flew its police in the Police Maverick, a skid-equipped light helicopter of this outline, which the GTA Wiki traces to the Eurocopter AS350, and that is the counterpart in shape. The wiki goes further and calls this helicopter a Police Maverick too, with our Grassrivers still as its picture. No maker’s badge is legible on any of the three frames, so the name sits below as an attribution and not above it.

How to recognise it

• POLICE in dark green capitals across the engine deck behind the cabin
• VICE-DALE in the same capitals along the flank, below the cabin windows
• Gold star badge on the fuselage between the two, eagle above a ringed seal
• White fuselage with a yellow pinstripe over a green band along the lower edge
• A figure just visible in the cockpit through the side window
• Skid landing gear on an angled strut
• Main rotor blade pale near the hub and yellow further out

The frame it comes from

The frame is Trailer 2 at 2:27.30. It is 3840 by 2160, and the vehicle occupies 1152 by 1328 of it. Also in it: Vice-Dale County and a wooden-deck speedboat.

How this was measured

These figures come from the dataset, not from the prose above. We measure everything and claim what counts. How we work

What we still do not know

• Nothing, now, about the name: VICE-DALE here and the corrections badge in Trailer 1 give the same jurisdiction, and it has its own page at Vice-Dale County. What we still do not know is how a county force comes to fly this over Vice City water.
• The type and the manufacturer. No maker’s badge is legible.
• Whether this is the same airframe as the news helicopter in the press pack, in a different livery
• Everything measured: top speed, handling, whether it can be flown