‘Night sun’: Inside the police’s high-tech helicopter patrols above the eastern suburbs

It’s become the new normal in Sydney’s eastern suburbs – a bright spotlight beaming down on schools, synagogues and homes, the throbbing of an engine and whirring of rotor blades as police conduct nightly patrols from the air.

In December as incidents of antisemitism ramped up in the east, NSW Police’s aviation command announced helicopter patrols of the area would be increased.

On these flights, which this month have become nightly occurrences, police use night vision and infrared technology to monitor for antisemitic attacks – the near-constant presence of the helicopters a reminder to Sydney’s Jewish community of the looming threats.

The presence of the helicopter is having a significant impact in deterring incidents of antisemitism, aviation commander Superintendent Chris Nicholson said. He told the Herald police are using a high-powered light beam to illuminate schools, synagogues and streets at risk of attacks to deter vandals.

“We put our ‘night sun’ over an area and we light it up and that provides the tactical flight officer in the back seat with pure daylight vision of everything inside,” he said.

Nicholson said the operation has no specific end date, and as long as police are hunting for the people responsible for antisemitic attacks – including the discovery of explosives in a Dural caravan – police will continue to fly over the eastern suburbs in the early hours of the morning.

“We will find these people. We will hunt them down, we will arrest them, and the community will return to normal, and this short-term inconvenience will be a thing of the past. But hopefully, what the community will have to remember from this is the NSW Police Force uses every available resource to protect the community in the eastern suburbs.”

Nicholson said these patrols have allowed police to respond to reports of suspicious activity at lightning speed – but the patrols have come with backlash from angry locals fed up with the disturbance. In the last few days cloud cover has meant police have flown closer to homes in order to conduct their surveillance, meaning plenty of people have been woken up overnight.

“I get that it’s in regards to safeguarding us against antisemitic attacks, but unless they have the heads up on an actual threat, I’d prefer not to be kept awake for three hours by the low-flying helicopter with high beam over my house at 3am,” one local said on social media.

For the Jewish community already on edge, the operation in the skies is just the latest way the rise of antisemitism has impacted their lives.

“It’s a reflection of the sad and unprecedented times we are living in that a police helicopter is required to patrol the eastern suburbs at night,” NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip said.

“This is obviously a suboptimal state of affairs, but we are very grateful to NSW Police for the extraordinary resources which are being allocated to protect the community at this time.” Armed guards, private drivers and cameras: Jewish communities spend ‘fortune’ on security

Waverley Mayor Will Nemesh said the community was feeling “justifiably concerned” about “vile and abhorrent antisemitic attacks”.

“Our community shouldn’t have to live under the threat of violence and intimidation,” he said.

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