They're mounted to point directly forward. It could be easily made to move though if we put it onto a remote platform, but we don't really need it. We've already had good luck in finding ejected MVA patients with it as well as searching for missing persons. Like you said, just move the unit to point where you want.
The police have actually asked to borrow it a couple of times to help find people hiding on them during a foot pursuit.
Before we had the FLIR installed we were using 4x night vision binoculars. Before JesusFreak implies that I'm a liar again let me assure you they were russian military surplus and are true night vision, not some infrared toy.
FLIR isn't as good as you might think in the fog, or blowing snow, or rain as you might think. I might be able to see about 50% farther in fog and blowing snow, in the rain it's almost useless.