Aerial Drones To Help Cops In Miami

Catoonsis writes "Reuters is reporting that 'Miami police could soon be the first in the United States to use cutting-edge, spy-in-the-sky technology to beef up their fight against crime.' The police force is planning to make use of a small aerial drone, capable of hovering and quick maneuvers, to monitor the Miami-Dade area and alert officers of potential problems. The device, manufactured by Honeywell, is awaiting FAA approval before it can be put into use. This decision is just the latest chapter in the developing relationship between law enforcement and robotic assistants. 'U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been flying drones over the Arizona desert and southwest border with Mexico since 2006 and will soon deploy one in North Dakota to patrol the Canadian border as well. This month, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Juan Munoz Torres said the agency would also begin test flights of a modified version of its large Predator B drones, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, over the Gulf of Mexico.'"

Re:The reason the Predator flies only over desert

[autocracy]

1. The article states that this is "pending FAA approval"
2. This is only like the Predator in that it is a drone. Since the thing is capable of hovering, it's not the same design at all. See picture in TFA.

One Critical Point

[autocracy]

The unit will weigh 14 pounds. This is close to the capsule weight permitted to be launched via balloon with no FAA control. (yay scientific ballooning).

In use in Amsterdam

[Teun]

I don't want to melt an unsuspecting blogger's server so I'll just say search for Amsterdam police uses drone.

In the blog is a link to a BBC clip [bbc.co.uk] showing the drone like used in Amsterdam.
It is build by "Microdrones" in Germany and costs around $2,000.

Re:Car chases are going to get even better!

[jb68321]

I'm going to start tuning into more car chase coverage on the news if those drones are packing a pair of hellfires!

Yes, yes... I'm sure they'll be unarmed, or at least the ones they show you up close.

RTFA. The thing is only 18.5 lb when fully loaded with fuel, and that wiki you link to says Hellfires are at least 99lb, with >18lb warheads. The weight alone doesn't make sense... remember this thing flies/hovers.

More like "Landing airliner collides with drone. 400 dead. Including 10 on the ground. The drone was mistakenly armed with nuclear weapons and exploded when the drone crashed, killing 50,000 more".

I think dropping tear gas capsules would be a lot more likely than sending off missiles/nuclear arms anyways.

And this thing is "designed to fly between ground level and 500 ft," which tells me that it'll be rather easy to keep away from light aircraft. Sure, it can go up to 10,500 ft in optimal conditions, but what good would that do? That'd be an enormous amount of climbing time for such a small vehicle, wasting tons of fuel. Especially in the heat of Miami, they'll probably keep it as low as possible. A 747 or some such large passenger aircraft, weighing between 735,000 and 970,000 lb [wikipedia.org], would probably suffer minimal damage if it ran into something like this anyways. I believe they still do the frozen chicken tests during engine design.

Here's a more informative video and website:
video [honeywell.com]
website [defense-update.com]

I hate the idea of this thing buzzing around, and it sure is ugly, but I think it's silly to think they'll throw it in front of light aircraft, which is the only way you'd really hit it... assuming only the police are using the drone. If some media/photography groups get a hold of this, sure it'll become a huge issue as it'll be everywhere and anywhere without warning. More likely it'll be infringing on your personal space rather than aircraft (ie back yard, parks, shopping areas). But given the crowd down in Miami, unless it's bullet-proof, it won't last very long.

Re:The reason the Predator flies only over desert

[clampolo]

It doesn't sound as bad as I thought from the title of the article. Seems they are just going to use it for tactical situations. So if there is a hostage situation, they can send up one of these things over the area to get a better view of the situation. Seems pretty useful: if you are sending in a SWAT team, you could quickly notify them if someone with a gun jumped out a window and is hiding in some bushes.

The only danger is that they decide to expand the program and start having these things all over the place. Or what if they use them to videotape people peacefully protesting to get a list of "trouble makers" for the FBI to keep tabs on.

Re:Why the Canadian border?

[Reziac]

"Just to top it off, one of the biggest domestic issues here is how to deal with guns being smuggled in from the U.S."

Let me guess, this started with some new Canadian gun control laws that I don't know about?

=======

Back to the rest of your post... Aside from all the reasons you cite as to why this is rubbish, it can be directly harmful to Americans:

There is at least one place where to get from Point A, Maine, to Point B, Maine, the road passes briefly through Canadian territory (probably because the area is nothing but rocks and there's no other practical route). In the early stages of the new border restrictions, there was a case where an ambulance going from A to B was stopped at the border (where the road kinked into Canada) and held for some time while officialdom figured out what to do. I don't recall whether the person the ambulance was sent for died or not.

"...most Americans appear to believe that every border is the Mexican border."

Actually, no. I can't think of a single person I know who isn't appalled by the stupidity of restricting the U.S./Canadian border. However, Officialdom (which seldom represents the actual Will of the People anymore) is certainly trying to make it APPEAR to be as much of a problem as the Mexican border... ...but just wait til NAFTA and the Corridor makes that a reality!! Can't sneak across the Mexican border? So ride a truck north with your buddy, get off in Winnepeg, and trot back across the Parallel at your leisure (being the central Parallel is a couple thousand miles of nothing-much and no major physical barriers).

Re:Car chases are going to get even better!

[c6gunner]

Seriously, I wonder how long it will be before they have to pass a special law making it against the law to shoot these things down?

A special law? Do you have any idea how many existing laws you'd break by shooting down one of these over a populated area? Last I checked the unsafe discharge of a firearm, destruction of government property, and public endangerment are all illegal in most cities/states.

Not to mention that the Department of Homeland Security would probably drop by, looking to "get to know you" in the biblical sense....

Re:ACLU to the rescue?

[scubamage]

They don't, but they are the sole arbiters and interpreters of the constitution. In Katz they ruled that the fourth amendment protects people in any situation where they feel they would have a reasonable expectation to privacy, which can include anything from whispering to speaking guardedly in a phone booth with the door shut. EG: we do have a right to privacy so far as the 4th amendment, and it is also held that a right to privacy is inherent in common law. I believe you are reading the constitution incorrectly - it does not list what rights people have, but what rights the government does not have.

Re:Frog gigging

[Some_Llama]

I would think in the absence of signal it would be designed to keep current altitude and then circle in widening patterns until it got a new signal, i mean they obviously have to plan for sporadic interference anyway, this would seem the most logical design?

Re:Article on one page, not 3!

[phantomcircuit]

Maybe next time you criticize you could get it right yourself? http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1929797920080326?sp=true [reuters.com]

Re:Car chases are going to get even better!

[DavidShor]

"I say cheaper, since it seems classifying drugs as pharmaceuticals would raise the price, just look at the average cost of American prescriptions."

Once a drug is approved for one use (Say... lymphoma or thyroid cancer), loopholes allow for the drug to be prescribed for "off-label" uses. Such prescriptions become legal, but there can be liability issues if something happens to the patient (And these are mostly skirted if there are any studies to back it up).

For example, anti-depressants are often prescribed to treat ADD, even though they were never (to my knowledge) approved for such. In the same vein, there is no reason to assume that Marijuana would be prescribed for back pain, stress, depression, etcs.

Doctors most likely go along with such requests, happy to receive the office pay premium from insurance companies, and secure in the knowledge that Marijuana's non-toxicity mostly protects them from lawsuits. (If this doesn't seem plausible, see how freely amphetamines and pain killers are prescribed, despite far higher risks)

Obviously, people are not going to all go to their doctor to get some weed. But the number of legal semi-legitimate Marijuana users will drastically increase. Once this hits a critical mass, the means of obtaining Weed for illicit purposes changes drastically. Teenagers will begin to steal from their parent's weed stash, instead of buying from dealers. College students and adults will probably start sharing weed with their friends.

With that, the demand for illegal marijuana production most likely will not be enough to cover fixed costs.

"Why, also, do the police need drones? I can see in combat situations where they exist to keep the pilots out of danger (dead technology is worth less than dead people), but I don't see this true in metropolitan areas. I don't think Floridian cities are so crime ridden as to the point where the criminals have an ample supply of shoulder-fired missiles. How many police helicopters have been shot down in Miami in the last ten years?"

And as a Miami resident, I'll say that Miami has somewhat corrupt local government and a large inflow of Federal Homeland security funds. This leads to a lot of wasteful projects.

More seriously, Miami has a serious problem with urban balkanization, where most of the police belong to extremely small cities (Mine has 300 residents) that exist for tax purposes. The unified Miami-Dade police force has a very hard time projecting its force throughout the country for this reason. So it's not hard to imagine that this is meant to counter that.

Re:Car chases are going to get even better!

[Eivind]

Making something a drug makes it more expensive, true. But legalizing it makes it much cheaper. Pot is kinda a special case since it's a common plant that grows by itself more or less in most climates. There's a reason it's also known as "weed".

But heroin, cocain and the like cost orders of magnitude over production-cost. Because they are illegal and need to be smuggled in or produced in secret at significant risk.

There are two sides to this, damage to the addicts, and to society. The damage to the addicts is similar if they take similar doses of the same drug, actually probably sligthly lower if legalized because of less overdoses from unknown-strength drugs etc.

Damage to society is today tremendous.

Street-price is somewhere around $100/g, yeah it can vary WILDLY over the map as supply and demand fluctuates, but it's a guesstimate as good as any.

A junkie may consume 2g/day, which works out to $6000/month or thelike, which he/she won't be able to finance legally unless they're well-off, especially since using drugs ain't precisely likely to boost your earnings-potential.

So, there are various low-level crimes commited, by the boatload. Damages are typically MUCH higher than the $6000/month, because replacement-cost is much higher than second-hand value on the black market.

A junkie breaks into your car, damaging the lock in the process, and steals your GPS-unit and stereo. You pay $300 for a new similar GPS, $200 for a new similar stereo and $100 to have the car-lock replaced. A loss of $600, plus the time and annoyance-factor. The junike sells the equipment to some shady character for $75, if that. Having caused 8 times the damage, comapred to the cash gained.

If he/she keeps doing that, the damages caused over a month, just to finance the $6000/month drug-addiction adds up to aproximately $50000/month or $600000/year

That is the cost of a SINGLE junkie that finances the drugs with petty theft. A gargantuan sum.

There's no reason to think heroin should be very different in cost from morphine, if both where legalized. A single user-dose costs something like $0.75 so we're talking $1200/year versus $600000/year, a rather significant difference.