Somewhere along the line in my military career I got to attend the Law Enforcement Thermographers course in Victoria BC. It was in its infancy as a course/job stream for LEO's and they were using first generation IR cameras. A lot of what they did was not in airborne applications as there wasnt many Police air units in Canada at that time, so the course was focussed around hand held units the same as firefighters use to go into a smoke filled building to find people. The course was run by Joe Carignan and Charlie Stowell, both with Law Enforcement backgrounds, Joe with the RCMP and Charlie with the DEA.
I thoroughly enjoyed the course and I found out a few things about the law with regards to using Infrared to find suspects. I also got to give them a perspective of how to optimize the sensor for the job that they were doing. We seemed to be able to leverage each others strong point to make the course a lot of fun and a great learning opportunity.
I'm sure that its progressed a lot since the late 90's. If you get a chance to take this course I highly recommend it.
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