Seattle’s mayor on Thursday ordered the police department to abandon its plan to use UAS after residents and privacy advocates protested.
Mayor Mike McGinn said the department will not use two small UAS it obtained through a federal grant. The unmanned aircraft will be returned to the vendor, he said.
“Today I spoke with Seattle Police Chief John Diaz, and we agreed that it was time to end the unmanned aircraft programme, so that SPD can focus its resources on public safety and the community building work that is the department’s priority,” the mayor said in a brief statement.
The Seattle Police Department previously said it would use UAS to provide an overhead view of large crime scenes, serious accidents, disasters, and search and rescue operations. It had conducted demonstrations of the UAS to show the public their capabilities.
The programme drew strong criticism from residents Wednesday at a meeting of the City Council, which was considering an ordinance giving police the authority to use UAS.
The proposed measure would have allowed the use of UAS for data collection but barred police from using them over “open-air assembly of people” or for general surveillance. The drones would have carried no weapons, but the proposal would have allowed police to use face-recognition software in them.
The police department had purchased two Draganflyer X6 aircraft, which have a width of 36 inches, length of 33.5 inches and stand just under a foot. They are capable of flying indoors and outdoors and carry a camera, according to the company website.
The department had not yet begun using thems but received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.
One of the programme’s key adversaries was the Washington chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued that the UAS were obtained without any public input or discussion.
“We applaud the mayor’s action,” spokesman Doug Honig said Thursday. “Drones would have given the police unprecedented abilities to engage in surveillance and intrude on the privacy of people in Seattle … and there was a never a strong case made that Seattle needed them for public safety.”
Moving forward, the ACLU would like to see the Legislature adopt “very tight restrictions” on law-enforcement UAS statewide, Honig said.
Opposition to the use of drones in the U.S. has come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, including civil liberties advocates and those worried over government intrusion.
On Monday, the Charlottesville City Council in Virginia passed a resolution imposing a two-year moratorium on the use of drones within city limits. The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group behind the city’s effort, said Charlottesville is the first city in the country to limit the use of UAS by police.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security drones do enter Washington airspace occasionally, patrolling the Canadian border east of the Cascade mountains. The two 10,000-pound Predator-B unmanned aircraft are based in North Dakota.
Source: Fox News