Are Armed Drones the Next Police Tool?
Typically, police surveillance must be conducted under court order, but drones in public air space may not fall under that requirement. An even bigger issue is if drones might be weaponized to help police control larger areas and provide a quicker response time to problems.
Some might think it a panacea to have an armed drone that would provide a very quick response time, would allow access to many areas that would be difficult to reach, and that would keep officers out of harms way. That is one of the aspects not explicitly considered in new legislation in Tennesse and South Carolina. It should be a critical part of the debate over police department drones.
Tennessee House Bill 1456 (HB1456) sponsored by Rep. David Byrd (R-Waynesboro) and South Carolina House Bill 4425 (H.4425) sponsored by Rep. Wendell G. Gilliard (D-Charleston), would both ban the use of weaponized drones by persons within the state.
But both pieces of legislation specifically exempt state and local law enforcement from the prohibition on deploying weaponized drones. That leaves the door open for police in both states to arm unmanned aerial vehicles with both lethal and non-lethal weapons.
The Tennessee legislature passed legislation banning warrantless drone surveillance in 2013, but the law does not ban weaponized drones. South Carolina has no law governing law enforcement use of drones at all.
Many states currently lack laws prohibiting armed drones, so passage of H.4425 and HB1456 wouldn’t make Tennessee and South Carolina unique. But tacitly approving law enforcement use of weaponized drones by exempting cops from a general prohibition would likely be interpreted as a green light to arm up.
We saw this scenario play out earlier this year in North Dakota. The state legislature passed a bill that drastically limited law enforcement use of drones, requiring a warrant in most cases. The original bill introduced by Rep. Rick Becker banned all weaponized drones. But a police lobbyist named Bruce Burkett managed to push through an amendment in committee making the prohibition apply only to lethal weapons. That means “less than lethal” weapons like rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, sound cannons, and Tasers are now permitted on police drones.
The specter of armed drones, covering the skies and controlled by some faceless, uninvested stick jockey back at the police station is terrifying. While it seems a wonderful way to keep flesh and blood officers out of harms way, it is a scene straight out of the book 1984 where ubiquitous, deadly devices patrol the community, enforcing obedience and “managing” the populace.
It is interesting that areas with high crime have found that getting foot patrol officers up-close and personal, back into the community, has had a huge impact in decreasing crime and allowing citizens to see police as real, live members of the community. This new technology does exactly the opposite. Each and every state should immediately enact laws that will prohibit these “eye in the sky” robots from being armed and able to control the people through the fear and intimidation that they will surely engender.
Source: offnow.org
I see a friggin’ drone over my property, it’s getting shot down!
Funny how there is a democrat that was introducing it along with one other republican. I’m sure that will fail