Despite the fact that a St Paul police drone helped save the life of a 5-year-old autistic boy last week, many feel uneasy about the use of police drones, and concerned citizens and lawmakers made these feelings known as the department attempted to secure a grant for three additional docked drones.
Last week, the St. Paul City Council announced that they will not expand the police department’s drone program at this time, removing the police department’s application for a federal grant from a scheduled vote at Wednesday’s meeting. The grant discussion was removed until “concerns are addressed,” said City Council President Rebecca Noecker.
The police department federal grant request required city approval, but with two members stating that they would vote no and five others abstaining from signalling their intentions, the item was removed from discussion.
Police Drone Use
Despite the grant failure, St. Paul police said they will continue to use their current drone program as they have been.
“This action does not change anything regarding the St. Paul Police Department’s current drone program,” said Nikki Muehlhausen, a police department spokesperson. “It will continue to operate as is.”
We talked about the St. Paul police drone program in the past, and it basically allows officers to dispatch a drone to a scene to provide an aerial view of a situation. It can help officers know ahead of time where a suspect is moving, if they have a weapon or what they are about to encounter. Used correctly, and it can absolutely be a valuable policing asset that keeps the public safe and doesn’t infringe on their rights.
The issue is that these drones are getting lumped in with artificial intelligence and Flock cameras, both of which can be extremely beneficial as well as terrible in the wrong hands. Using a Flock camera to quickly capture the direction of a kidnapper fleeing the scene of an abduction would be absolutely astounding; using the technology to watch the public and track their daily movements is a devastating abuse of power. Proponents of these technologies say they are making our communities safer by allowing police to capture criminals quicker, while opponents lean on a familiar saying by Ben Franklin, who said that “those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” In essence, we should not have our rights violated under the guise of public safety.
Many feel that these drones could be misused in the wrong hands, and we don’t disagree, but so far they seem effective in their use and much more regulated than the Flock cameras. Perhaps it is a wise move to get more answers about these programs before greenlighting their expansion, but we also don’t need to go back to the dark ages because a technology has the potential for abuse. We should be wary of blindly accepting AI, Flock cameras and docked drones, but we also shouldn’t ignore these advancements completely. Further discussion is certainly warranted, and hopefully we find a smart, regulated way to lean on these technologies when needed.
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