Return to site

Public Safety and drones

Personal use drones are meant for recreational fun, capturing professional pictures and videos, and are now even being put to use for public safety. As technology advances, the way public safety remains safe does also.

Typically personal use drones are used for photography and cinematography to get aerial footage. Rather than professionals in the creative and digital world, law enforcement officers look to using drones for another reason.

Drones are becoming more reliable and popular in use. Public safety officers are now looking at this technology to enhance their job and using drones as a tool. Agencies are purchasing this unmanned aircraft technology and working to get programs in place for official use.

Some of the uses officials are planning to have drones for are the criminal cases such as active shooters, capturing crime scene footage, monitoring crowds, natural disaster documentation and more.

By using drones, public safety is likely to increase while also reducing the issues the public has with police officers and violence. In the case of shootings, natural disasters and more, using a drone keeps our officers safe while still giving them the details they need to get work done and fix crisis situations.

Officials are also saying that in the event of search and rescue, drones have a much better capability of finding missing people/animals than a helicopter or men on foot. Through drone technology, we can absolutely enhance a number of reported incidents are resolved.

Drones will also save counties money in the long term aspect due to the simple fact that they are cheaper than manned aircraft such as helicopters. Although search dogs will still be used by officers, drones give public safety a new advantage.

Although there is much optimizing at this program in the works, there are still challenges. One of the biggest challenges that public safety officials face is the use of personal drones by hobbyists, cinematographers, and journalists following along. Not only are unauthorized drones a challenge, but they are also a threat.

In Texas, the Senate passed a bill stating that Texans can soon be jailed for flying their personal drones over certain areas as it’s unconstitutional. However, the House passed the same bill with variations so they must negotiate the differences in legislation.

Another challenge public safety officials face aside from regulating the use of unauthorized drones is capturing images and video at night. Researchers are looking to resolve this issue with the use of infrared lenses for night operations.

This blog was originally published on AbogadoAly.net