Drone 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.
A couple of years ago, I probably would have argued with you but now I'm 100% on board with the approach described in this article.
> Unlike Baltimore’s aircraft, Brookhaven’s machines won’t fly unless an emergency is reported. Their cameras won’t film, or even point down, until they are at the scene. All footage is destroyed after 30 days unless it is being used in a criminal investigation or for training purposes, and all the flight logs are public.
IMO, this is a completely reasonable approach that provides a pathway for better engagement, less ambiguity and a more authoritative perspective than bystander recordings that may be selectively edited for clicks. Body cameras are great, but they miss perspective of watching the officers.
Letting the police install video cameras and microphones inside your home would also have many benefits. They could catch burglars, or call an ambulance if you have a heart attack. What could go wrong?
Yeah 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.
no, helicopters in LA (and "eyes in the sky" in general) don't contribute at all to effective policing or safety. they actually entice showboats to create a spectacle so they get on tv. this creates more public danger. and there have been a number of chases where the suspect was lost even so.
but all you need in these instances is an incontrovertible photo of the suspect and the car/license plate, witnesses of the crime, and effective investigation, just like any other criminal case. the helicopter is there for cops to show off and waste disproportional money better spend on investigation.
first responders are trained to assess situations quickly, so "situational awareness" has very marginal benefit (not zero, but also not much) in all of the use cases you cite. the extra overhead is simply not worth it in most cases. like legged robots, drones are a technology looking for a market, but there really isn't much market out there.
we don't need more surveillance tech. we need more dogged and trustworthy investigators and first responders.
You shouldn't be down voted. While using drones for spraying fire retardant in urban areas is rather fanciful with current technology, the drone as first responder concept makes total sense for observation. The drone operator can brief the human responders while they're en route so that they arrive fully prepared to deal with the situation. The Campbell, CA police department recently started such a program.
And no one is seriously proposing mounting weapons on civilian drones. That is essentially already banned by ATF and FAA rules.
Why not just give them brutally omniscient unlimited power over us, by your logic that would be radically beneficial to our health and safety. You’re starting from the misguided idea that police actively save people from crime’s dangers, and speak nothing to concern for giving power to armed thugs over us besides cheering it on. Just baseless copaganda and shameful to see celebrated.
How does the logic work that giving more tech and power and resources somehow reduces power
Those who rush to analyze objective stats on this fail to recognize how little oversight and accountability there is for police, numbers often don’t meaningfully exist. Like asking for numbers from China, it’s just a bow to authority. The critical analysis and objectivity of that is performative.
It'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?
Sounds 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.
This 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
I 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.
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.
> 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.
I 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?
Drones 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.
Well, 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.
I'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.
I 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.
This 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.
Didn’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
[+] [-] davidu|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] brightball|2 years ago|reply
> Unlike Baltimore’s aircraft, Brookhaven’s machines won’t fly unless an emergency is reported. Their cameras won’t film, or even point down, until they are at the scene. All footage is destroyed after 30 days unless it is being used in a criminal investigation or for training purposes, and all the flight logs are public.
IMO, this is a completely reasonable approach that provides a pathway for better engagement, less ambiguity and a more authoritative perspective than bystander recordings that may be selectively edited for clicks. Body cameras are great, but they miss perspective of watching the officers.
[+] [-] flashback2199|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheeseomlit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clairity|2 years ago|reply
but all you need in these instances is an incontrovertible photo of the suspect and the car/license plate, witnesses of the crime, and effective investigation, just like any other criminal case. the helicopter is there for cops to show off and waste disproportional money better spend on investigation.
first responders are trained to assess situations quickly, so "situational awareness" has very marginal benefit (not zero, but also not much) in all of the use cases you cite. the extra overhead is simply not worth it in most cases. like legged robots, drones are a technology looking for a market, but there really isn't much market out there.
we don't need more surveillance tech. we need more dogged and trustworthy investigators and first responders.
[+] [-] nradov|2 years ago|reply
And no one is seriously proposing mounting weapons on civilian drones. That is essentially already banned by ATF and FAA rules.
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|2 years ago|reply
How does the logic work that giving more tech and power and resources somehow reduces power
Those who rush to analyze objective stats on this fail to recognize how little oversight and accountability there is for police, numbers often don’t meaningfully exist. Like asking for numbers from China, it’s just a bow to authority. The critical analysis and objectivity of that is performative.
[+] [-] titzer|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MilStdJunkie|2 years ago|reply
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|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] revolvingocelot|2 years ago|reply
Er, what? Who do you think is showing up shortly after the drone does? Who do you think the drone reports to?
[+] [-] dingledork69|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ticviking|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tade0|2 years ago|reply
https://www.wired.com/2009/04/army-tests-new/
[+] [-] greesil|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dronekiller|2 years ago|reply
Got you covered
https://www.anduril.com/
[+] [-] rch|2 years ago|reply
I could imagine drones delivering flash-bangs and the like to fleeing suspects, and all the associated risks.
[+] [-] optymizer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Glant|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|2 years ago|reply
Remember DevOps? 5 Whys style analysis helps here - systems analysis
[+] [-] Quillbert182|2 years ago|reply
It seems unfair to judge someone’s actions based on that of their neighbors.
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsaferite|2 years ago|reply
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 [2] 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|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unethical_ban|2 years ago|reply
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|2 years ago|reply
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|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helloSirMan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LinuxBender|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] K0balt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soupfordummies|2 years ago|reply