CHULA VISTA, Calif., - There’s a man pacing back and forth in the grocery store parking lot, evidently agitated, shouting at the sky. Concerned, you ring 911. On the phone, a police dispatcher reassures you that someone is coming over to help—and so is a drone. Soon, you hear the telltale buzz of a drone overhead. Through its camera, someone is watching the agitated man in the parking lot, feeding information back to emergency services. They are also, intentionally or not, watching you, and everyone else who happens to wander into the drone camera’s expansive field of view, Faine Greenwood reports for Slate.
Continue reading original article.The Intelligent Aerospace take:
May 19, 2021 -The Chula Vista Police Department was granted a waiver from the FAA to fly drones beyond visual line of sight as part of the agency's "Drone as a First Repsonder" program. Dispatchers with the agency decide whether or not to fly an UAS out to emergency calls. In approximately 25-percent of the time, the drone arrives ahead of police officers.
According to Chula Vista's police department, drones have been used in 5,400 incidences and played a role in more than 650 arrests.
While deploying a drone ahead of armed police may help aid in de-escalation, some believe a hovering drone arriving during incidences of mental health crisis may exacerbate issues.
“You can’t build a relationship through a buzzing blinking robot on your doorstep like you could with a person,” says Eric Tars, the legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center. “Then you’ve got the subset of the population with mental health crises that involve feelings of distrust for authority and paranoia. If you’ve got drones constantly buzzing overhead … you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to feel like the government is constantly watching you. Because they are.”
Related: How can a drone bring an airport to a standstill?
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Jamie Whitney, Associate Editor
Intelligent Aerospace
