Guards at the Gatineau, Quebec, jail want tighter security after a small UAS — potentially dropping off drugs to inmates — flew over the walls on Sunday.
Jail guards spotted the unmanned flyer whizzing over the facility just after 11 a.m. Guards then began a frantic search for any packages the UAS might have dropped.
“This sort of thing happens often in prisons all across Quebec,” said Stephane Lemaire, president of Quebec’s correctional officers’ union.
“Usually they are carrying small packages of drugs or other illicit substances.”
Guards searched the grounds and tried to find where the UAS landed.
“The problem is, the UAS can be controlled from more than a kilometre away, and the prison is surrounded by forest,” Lemaire said.
He said it’s frustrating that UAS drops keep happening across the province, and he wants the government to boost security at the prison.
“We’ve been pressuring (the public safety ministry ) to bolster our security for years,” he said. “Our clientele never stops trying to find solutions and ways to get illicit products into our walls. Drugs are very attractive to them.”
He said officers don’t have the right guns to take out UAS — especially near city centres — and a net or even a jammer that would disrupt the drone’s signal would go a long way.
Now that UAS are relatively cheap to buy, they’ve become the best way to smuggle drugs inside, Lemaire said.
“We’re first and foremost rehabilitation agents,” he said. “But we can’t rehabilitate without first getting rid of the drug problem.”
Source: Toronto Sun