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Drone cops are coming for small-town America
- boomboomsubban 3y agohttps://archive.is/9NPZn https://archive.is/9NPZn
- dingledork69 3y agoHow long until they decide mounting guns on these things is a good idea?
- greesil 3y agoDon't worry, they'll start with tasers.
- insickness 3y agoFlamethrower drone can shoot a seven-metre long stream of fire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3_eEO0Cvwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3_eEO0Cvwg
- davidu 3y agoTasers aren't bullets. The narrative on tasers has long-shifted to it being preferred over deadly force. Tasers promote the elimination of police bullets.
- pc86 3y agoNonsense. The line is between "armed" and "not armed." It's much easier to justify adding lethal capability to something that already has the ability to subdue people (and kill them accidentally) than it to justify arming something that is completely unarmed.
- jonathankoren 3y agoTasers absolutely do not reduce police shootings. In fact, they increase police violence. Instead they’re used — frequently in violation of official police policy — as compliance devices. In other words, if you’re found guilty of contempt of cop, you ride the lightning. The problem with cops aren’t the tools. The problem with cops are the cops. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/20/tasers-stun-guns-police-shootings-daunte-wright https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/20/tasers-stun-...
- hellisothers 3y agoDon’t tase me drone!
- Glant 3y agoSan Francisco almost had exactly that. The policy was reversed after about a week of outrage. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/30/san-francisco-police-robots-kill/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/30/san-francis...
- soco 3y agoThe article, the people on SF board, and everybody else seems to confuse remote-controlled devices with AI-powered ones. To me the difference is essential: why I might agree to remote controlled devices carrying out the operator orders (I might), I definitely am very very, but very very very far from trusting an AI with carrying a weapon (I already don't trust humans that much).
- Glant 3y agoImo it's an issue either way. I'm absolutely with you that AI shouldn't have guns, but I don't think police should have any remotely activated guns.
- dingledork69 3y agoI'm of the firm belief that if you want to inflict violence on someone there should be physical risk for those that want to inflict the violence. So that's a no to any kind of remote controlled murderbots.
- oh_sigh 3y agoUsually people protecting the public from violence don't really want to commit the violence themselves. they probably wish they were having a boring normal old day instead of needing to confront an active shooter. So do you think the police were being lame by taking out Micah Xavier Johnson with a remote controlled vehicle, rather than breaching his position personally?
- ImPostingOnHN 3y agoI'm sure that is often the case, and often not the case, judging by the glorification of violence and killing common with police today. It's important to differentiate being brave enough to put yourself in harm's way vs. glorifying violence. Policing requires the first one, not the second. Unfortunately, while the latter is seen often in officers, Uvalde showed us that the former may not be. and speaking for myself, yes, very much so, that domestic drone killing was a dark day for the country and a harbinger of things to come
- ticviking 3y agoAbout 10 seconds after the first one gets shot down.
- rch 3y agoNon-lethal munitions can also be deadly. I could imagine drones delivering flash-bangs and the like to fleeing suspects, and all the associated risks.
- dronekiller 3y ago> How long until they decide mounting guns on these things is a good idea? Got you covered https://www.anduril.com/ https://www.anduril.com/
- itsyaboi 3y agoI don't see any drone mounted guns.
- Tade0 3y agoFunny you should ask: https://www.wired.com/2009/04/army-tests-new/ https://www.wired.com/2009/04/army-tests-new/
- dingledork69 3y agoThe only words I can find to describe this are "dystopian" and "evil". Murdering someone by remote control is just wrong on so many levels.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoUS already does it to civs by the thousands, materially speaking.
- dingledork69 3y agoCan you explain what you are referring to?
- wahnfrieden 3y agoDrone murders abroad
- dingledork69 3y agoOh I thought you meant they already escalated to targeting their own civilians. But yes, absolutely despicable. It's no surprise the US is so concerned about "terrorists" when they seem to be on a fast-track to breeding them.
- optymizer 3y agoWe need EMPs to shoot down drones.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoLrn 2 Yagi Antenna
- davidu 3y agoDrone as first responder makes a tremendous amount of sense -- Police already use helicopters, which are exceptionally expensive, limited in coverage capability, and have disastrous consequences when they crash. But there are huge benefits of 'eyes in the sky' during a crisis. Car chases in LA are often eliminated when there's a police helicopter because they can simply follow the vehicle safely from a distance as the chopper tracks the car. Providing overhead visibility support in advance of police arrival is a huge benefit to citizens during 911 calls. If a drone can respond in two minutes, and police are 7-10 minutes away, that's a massive situational awareness benefit that will save lives. When someone calls for a house fire, having a drone arrive in minutes, potentially with a fire retardant payload, while ground-based fire vehicles arrive 5-10 minutes later, can mean the difference between life and death. At the very least, it provides tremendous information to the fire fighters on the way as to what to expect. They can see the fire before they arrive. Two major life saving improvements for emergency rooms in the last 50 years were radios in the ambulances so that the ER knew what was coming in, and electronic EKG / vitals relay so that doctors had more precise telemetry of patient status. Drone first responder will have many similar benefits.
- titzer 3y ago[flagged]
- nicbou 3y agoThis is not reddit. Pay attention to the community guidelines.
- CrampusDestrus 3y agoYes, when civilian lives are at risk, having complete situational awareness is extremely important
- cheeseomlit 3y agoYeah obviously there are safety benefits. There are also safety benefits to having surveillance cameras on every street corner. And think of the lives we could save if everybody was implanted with a tracking chip at birth so we could instantly know if they're in distress. Sometimes the juice ain't worth the squeeze.
- unethical_ban 3y agoI love good discussion on the benefits and costs to society of putting tracking, cameras, and tools in the hands of law enforcement. I really am disappointed with the low-brow slashdot style "hurr durr what's next, trackers in our necks" level of comment. Is there any way to implement a first response drone that isn't ripe for abuse? Can we put retention limits on the files? Can we require approval from a higher-up before deployment? Can the use be limited to felony assaults or higher? Or would all of that be not enough, and we should intentionally ban drone use by law enforcement?
- nchudleigh 3y agoDrones as first responders seems like a great idea, get info, keep officers safe, even suspects/victims are safer as a result. They are already being used in the field today. But I can also quickly see this slipping into a surveillance state kind of system as drone automation becomes cheaper and more reliable. Drones being sent out for all sorts of minor grievances and being used to stalk citizens. Which is not the sort of environment I want to live in.
- lsaferite 3y agoWell, it sounds like this PD started out with a well informed policy and are being held to that policy. It seems like this kind of very strict policy enforcement AND public disclosure should be codified at the state and federal level.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoThis article is about police in Georgia. In Atlanta, the police are on recording saying they are actively targeting Cop City protesters with baseless charges as punishment to proactively dissuade them from persisting because they’re worried about their ability to turn the public, and because they identified vulnerabilities on their side the protesters could legitimately/legally pursue. The corruption is as incredible as it is typical - the small town ones have the same capabilities and incentives and this is normalized everywhere, it is the same institution everywhere. Remember DevOps? 5 Whys style analysis helps here - systems analysis
- Quillbert182 3y agoThis article is about police in Brookhaven, who, to the best of my knowledge, have had very little, if any, involvement with Cop City. It seems unfair to judge someone’s actions based on that of their neighbors.
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoIt's preferable to the alternative: cash-negative rural departments ("we don't need government", etc) funding themselves. Much rather have a robot policing me than the local ex-quarterback who could just barely be bothered to finish his GED. And yes, I know the retort, "well at least I know that guy". Yeah, ok sure. But does your daughter? Your girlfriend? Your wife's family? Corruption climbs a ladder of familiarity, and you don't ever know where you are on that ladder. That's what makes it wasteful. Drones are a band aid, of course. Until exurbs realize just how expensive they actually are - people insisting on an urban quality of life when they're 90 minutes from a center - this same problem will crop up over, and over, and over again in everything from sewage to schools. That tends to happen when you ignore numbers - you keep ramming into a like category of problems. In a larger sense, from a systems perspective, I guess I am fascinated by those cases where people do this ramming, and where they keep doing it for decades or centuries. What force makes that happen, and can it be harnessed?
- bequanna 3y agoSounds to me like you get your knowledge of rural life from movies/TV. What you mentioned doesn’t at all match the reality I’ve experienced growing up and living in a small town. My rural county has a balanced budget, property tax increases are well below inflation (mine actually decreased in 2022), average fire/ambulance/police response time is well below suburban equivalents. Crime is incredibly low, police write few tickets, roads in great shape and muni services all above average. Our Sheriff deputies are professional. They view themselves as public servants and consistently go above and beyond to assist. The total number of speeding tickets issued in a week for the whole county is in the single digits. The only time they “go hard” is against home invaders, violent offenders and other serious felony-level crime. It is probably comforting somehow for people in cities to paint life in rural areas as behind and backwards but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Out here in flyover country, almost all of us are on the same page and we have our shit together. If you can handle the associated challenges (weather, fewer social opportunities, etc.) the quality of life is through the roof.
- ryandrake 3y ago
- lsaferite 3y agoI find it interesting they are using DJI since they are banned in most US gov't agencies IME. That being said, DJI has a nominally better platform (for the same rough price) for their (this PD) uses than the M300. The M30[1] series is a bit smaller and doesn't have swappable payloads, but it exchanges that ability to have a home-base auto-land, auto-deploy, and auto-charge using the DJI Dock[2]. Mix that with the DJI ability to do control handoff and a city-wide mesh of repeater stations and you have a very powerful aerial support system. The docks could be spread across the city to minimize response time. Those M30s have a camera gimbal with wide-angle 12MP, Zoom 48MP, and Thermal cameras. The software handles automatic subject tracking once they are marked. The whole ecosystem is awesome and terrifying in the lens of law enforcement. [1] https://enterprise.dji.com/matrice-30 https://enterprise.dji.com/matrice-30 [2] https://enterprise.dji.com/dock https://enterprise.dji.com/dock EDIT: I say all of this as someone that owns and flies DJI M300 RTKs drones professionally. I'm also looking at getting systems on the Blue List so I can work with US government agencies.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago> I find it interesting they are using DJI since they are banned in most US gov't agencies IME. No one in China cares about petty crime in Cincinnati. There may be some long-con, APT style hack of local PDs to try to get into something bigger a la The Cuckoo's Egg, but it's probably easier to just bribe Lockheed managers.
- lsaferite 3y agoI was making no value judgement, as evidenced my my personal usage of DJI gear. I was simply pointing out that many US gov't agencies have policies that forbid gear from companies like DJI. It's frustrating that I cannot get contracts for those agencies unless I'm using gear off of the blue list.
- helloSirMan 3y agoI've thought a lot about how drone technology, geofencing via IMEI/MAC address capture and tracking could benefit crime enforcement. (Caveat is all this may seem a bit dystopian. But balance it against the idea that our current model may seem barbaric a few years down the road.) Police violence against those resisting arrest or attempting escape is essentially not necessary if you can tag the suspect with an aerial drone, determine their mobile device's IMEI address (just assume everyone has one), and even affix a low power GPS tag to their vehicle, clothing, or person (think a gorilla glue patch on the arm or leg in a sudden struggle to get free). Then...no need to shoot, no need to crash their car, no need to detain. Watch and document the suspect evading arrest, start capturing mobile communications and get a warrant to review them later, fly overhead and watch their getaway with all traffic violations documented. Arrest them as if you were serving them papers for court some time later with an appropriately sized team. Technology should be being used to solve crime. It is a slippery slope worth traveling for the betterment of society.
- soupfordummies 3y agoDidn’t finish the article but definitely worth noting that Brookhaven isn’t “small-town America.” It’s just a large swath of what would otherwise be called Atlanta if it hadn’t been annexed and incorporated by the City of Brookhaven
- LinuxBender 3y agoI think this is probably alright provided it is not abused. In this case it is currently a mostly level playing field. They can fly over me and I can fly over them. As soon as it is illegal for me to monitor responders with a drone then I will be against this. About the only difference is that I don't have an easy way to combine drones, license plate readers and facial recognition. All I can do is 9 mile range, spotlight and FLIR. Perhaps this will change with time and more drones will be required to have geofencing and some type of police blackout capabilities such as automated temporary flight restrictions around them at which point there will likely be a big underground market for modded drones.
- K0balt 3y agoThis could be interesting in a watching the watchers kind of way if the police departments aren’t in charge of this, And it is a municipal service that benefits all services within the municipality, including situational supervision for law enforcement.