I don't know how I feel about this to be honest. On one hand I can see the benefits of reduced costs. Why fly up a helicopter if a drone can be used in its plac

I don't know how I feel about this to be honest. On one hand I can see the benefits of reduced costs. Why fly up a helicopter if a drone can be used in its place? Why send police to patrol high-crime areas if a drone can do that much more safely without any casualties? Then there are the downsides. > The LAPD is not the military. With these new tools at their disposal, the police could use drones to overstep their boundaries as police. > If the drones are equipped with any kind of tactical ability (firing ammunition or firing a taser) this could result in innocent civilians being targeted by drone strikes. > Drones would allow for extremely affordable surveillance which in turn would mean the fears of a state becoming a surveillance state (even worse than it is now) would be realised. > Regulation. Who is going to regulate the use of drones by the LAPD? Who decides what the purpose of a drone being used for is and are there processes in place to prevent abuse? Who regulates the regulator? > Remember what happened when SWAT teams were introduced? They were meant to be for only serious crimes and then look what happened. Before we knew it, SWAT teams were being deployed at relatively peaceful protests, they were being used to evict people out of their foreclosed homes and they started being used on people accused of copyright infringement. Are we going to see something similar to that of the Kent State shooting in the 70's only this time drones will be used? I think the downsides far outweigh the benefits. The police are becoming far too militarised for my liking. Although many refute these claims, you only have to look at what tools police have at their disposal nowadays compared to what they had 20 years ago. We've gone from cars and pistols to high-powered machine guns with heavy rounds and tank-like vehicles.