Will Paragliding Police Make Beaches Safer in Lima, Peru?

My friends over at the news source Living in Peru posted an interesting story last week about how Peru’s police force is planning to conduct regular paragliding patrols over Lima’s 90 beaches this year.

My first thought– “this is cool.”

My second thought– “is it really going to work?”

For those people who have never been to Lima, there is actually a thriving paragliding business here. In the district of the city known as Miraflores,  paragliding rides are offered on a daily basis above Lima’s Costa Verde (Green Coast). They launch near LarcoMar, a well-known shopping mall that is popular for tourists and also Lima’s residents. After taking off, they then glide over the Pacific ocean and around skyscrapers to the delight or nervousness of their passengers.

Most of Lima’s beaches are located to the south of the city though. I imagine a paragliding police officer could see a lot of things from above and relay information to dispatch. But would this really be an important safety and law enforcement tool?

For instance, I guess from above an officer could see someone drowning in the water and contact a nearby police boat or the boat pulling her or him along (I think this would constitute parasailing to note a confusing distinction). But what if there is not a police boat nearby?

For stopping crime, I’m a little skeptical of how effective paragliding police officers would be as well. From so high up what kind of crimes could they successfully stop?

Probably there’s something I don’t know, but it seems on the surface that paragliding would not be an effective choice of surveillance tactics. It does sound like fun for Lima’s police officers though.

Photo courtesy of GothamNurse on Flickr under a Creative Commons license