“Would-be criminals tend to rethink their nefarious plans when there’s an airship hovering overhead”:
They aren’t talking about Gotham, but Los Angeles, and they’re not talking about actual airships, but helicopters — and they’re not really talking about stopping crimes before they start in some kind of precog sense, either, just patrolling hotspots:
The Los Angeles Police Department began exploring the deterrent approach a few years ago with a new model called predictive policing that deployed officers and patrol cars to areas where data suggested crime was more likely to occur.
Criminologists say the use of helicopters is a natural, if highly unusual, expansion of that policing strategy.
So far, LAPD officials say, the stats show the strategy is having a positive effect. Months of data show that the number of serious crimes reported in the LAPD’s Newton Division in South L.A. fell during weeks when the helicopters conducted more flights.