Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front
By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau
December 10, 2011, 6:12 p.m.
Reporting from Washington Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.
Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.
He also called in a Predator B drone.
As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.
But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.
more
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,324348.story
Nothing to fear, right? right?
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)NBachers
(17,107 posts)msongs
(67,395 posts)napoleon_in_rags
(3,991 posts)The technology is neutral, cops using remote controlled planes with cameras in place of their helicopters is not in itself a threat to civil liberties. But what you have here is a technology that's been branded since the beginning as the weapon of choice against terrorists, and as a military tool. So what I fear is this idea getting out there that having US people treated like enemy combatants is somehow the new normal. Its really about the slippery slope it represents.
ProgressiveProfessor
(22,144 posts)There is a sense (see) and avoid requirement to be in FAA controlled airspace. Predator series UAVs can not do that.