“What happens to the footage? Who gets access to it? Are the police going to release the footage when it makes them look heroic and bury it when it doesn’t?” Santa Monica is not yet using one, but many other departments are.īut police use of drones raises “all the same questions body cameras raise,” he said. NBC News got a demonstration of the Lemur, a hardened quadcopter that can break glass, push open doors, fly into buildings and allow police to talk to barricaded subjects in hostage situations. Tactical drone use is also expanding as the technology improves. The Los Angeles Police Department, which operates a fleet of helicopters, does not use drones for 911 calls - although officials there say they use them in limited circumstances in tactical situations. Over the past two years, the program has spread rapidly around Los Angeles - Beverly Hills and Redondo Beach have adopted it, in addition to Santa Monica, as have a dozen or so other departments nationwide. The first-responder program got its start in 2018 in Chula Vista, near San Diego, where drones can cover the entire city after officials obtained a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly outside a pilot’s line of sight. Police have long dabbled with drones, but using them to respond to 911 calls is relatively new and rare. … For us, breaking the faith, using it irresponsibly - any benefit that we would get will never outweigh the benefits that it gives us.” He added: “This technology is in its infancy. “We don’t randomly fly over the city looking for people doing anything wrong.” “We respond to 911 calls for service,” said Lashley, a former art director at a Chicago advertising agency. Their proliferation is also likely to prompt fears about risks to privacy and a renewed debate about the balance of power between ordinary people and their government.
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That insight allowed officers to respond much less aggressively.Īt a time when law enforcement agencies face a crisis of legitimacy amid a series of high-profile murder cases against officers, police say drones could make a huge impact by defusing potentially violent situations. On at least three occasions, it provided responding officers with critical, otherwise unobtainable information - that what looked like guns in the hands of subjects were not real firearms. In Santa Monica, the drone camera was the only witness to a brutal robbery, and one of two suspects was apprehended and convicted.
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The drone’s powerful camera can provide a view of several square blocks, or it can zoom in close enough to read a license plate. “It’s a fundamental change in the way that we can bring policing services to our city,” said Peter Lashley, a veteran of the force who often pilots the drone from a screen-filled command center inside the police station.
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