Cops Using Drones? Get Ready

(The Root) — Within a decade, thousands of aerial drones could be hovering over neighborhoods across America, surveying traffic or crops, monitoring large crowds, searching for missing children and fugitives and perhaps more. Could the “eye in the sky” deliver major advancements for public safety and a wide variety of industries, or lead to violations of privacy, abuse and overzealous policing, particularly in African-American communities? Concerns about the potential misuse of pilotless aircraft, particularly by law enforcement, are driving debates in state legislatures and Congress as federal authorities aggressively expand the civilian market for the machines. The Federal Aviation Administration has accelerated the licensing of unmanned aircraft based on a mandate from Congress to open U.S. airspace to commercial drone traffic by 2015. The FAA estimates that 10,000 drones could be licensed by 2020. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in March endorsed drones as equivalent to security cameras, saying, “What’s the difference whether the drone is up in the air or on the building?” As an indication of his mindset, Bloomberg has also defended his police department’s practice of stop and frisk, which has disproportionately ensnared black and Latino males and been criticized as a civil rights violation. Fairly… Read full this story

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