I recently participated in a WFAE radio show about law enforcement use of drones, along with a captain from the Winston-Salem Police Department and an advocate from the ACLU. I thought the discussion was excellent, with a nice balance of perspectives. In the course of preparing for the program, I did an environmental scan about how law enforcement officers are currently using drones, and looked for court opinions about some of the legal questions presented by drone use. This post summarizes what I learned before and during the show. Lots of agencies are using drones. I’m not aware of current comprehensive data on this point but I suspect that hundreds of North Carolina law enforcement agencies have active drone programs. My sense is that most of our larger agencies, and some of the smaller ones, use drones at least occasionally. The use of drones in Winston-Salem was discussed extensively on the show. Mooresville reportedly has contracted with Flock (the company famous for making license plate readers) to supply two drones. CMPD recently issued a Request for Proposals seeking a vendor to provide drones that may be used for “rapid deployment in emergency situations, surveillance, search and rescue, traffic management, and crime scene monitoring.” More programs are mentioned below in connection with the specific purposes for which officers use drones. Drones have proven useful. Media coverage of law enforcement drone programs highlights several potential public safety benefits to deploying drones: Catching fleeing suspects. Drones can provide a bird’s eye view of a [...]
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