By 2027, the NYPD drone program will be repurposed to checking for unauthorized grills, having failed at being a "first responder" to real crime.
What is a drone supposed to do? Take a witness statement? Run into someone who is stealing something? A big part of the deterrent of the police is that threat of violence. A drone telling you "your crime has been recorded now wait for us to arrest you" will work for a few days on the intimidation factor.
I do love the very imaginative scenarios posted to this thread. Drones and chasing dangerous suspects! Drones gathering evidence and filming the crime scene! These are great. In reality, the police are always going to favor enforcing things with high revenue/effort ratios, which don't put their own skins at risk. Essentially, milking non-violent people who can be fined for something and are likely to pay the fine, while ignoring violent people and thieves. If someone was getting robbed in front of me and I was standing there filming it, cops would probably ignore the robbery and go after me for "interfering with an investigation" or something.
I wouldn't say looking forward to it, more, anticipating it and the vast social change that it will bring.
Corrupt police officers are allowed to operate with impunity because there's no pressure from above to stop them, and the pressure that came from below has been crushed by the technological advancements that allow police to coordinate with radios and computers for searches.
It will be interesting to see what happens when that sort of pressure comes back in the form of drones. I figure you'll start to see sentences for police brutality increase after a few cops who are let free get droned a few feet from a courthouse by the vengeful family of the victim.
There might just be enough pressure from above to put these corrupt cops in jail, if only for their own personal safety because it might just stop being safe on the streets for them.
unfortunately, completely agree.. here in the US West Coast in a high crime urban area.. seemingly half the adult population are involved in stupid, confrontational, selfish and haphazardly illegal actions every day of the year. Then a uniformed duo rolls up, no one will talk to them. The boundary line between "thats my important-thing-I-want" and "where is my sh*" is impossible to determine between argumentative and low-language skill adults.. meaning your car, bike or phone (as noted above). Secondly, small-time people discover that they can call law enforcement on people they don't like, and law enforcement figures this out due to years of experience and responds with no-responding.
Meanwhile, a legal, certified and identifiable citizen with stable contact info, decide to have a wood fire. The politically conscious local city council has decided that due to air quality, it costs FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS for a ticket for a wood fire. Tickets cost pennies to issue.. bingo - revenue source. Repeat as desired.. there is a lot of desire.
More than half of cities in this part of the country went bankrupt due to drastically reduced local sales tax. Their primary financial liabilities are uniformed services, mainly police and fire.. If the uniforms can make their own money, saves some ugly confrontations from the union at election time! more anecdotes possible..
There is one hundred percent chance that the outcome described above is happening with new drone remote services IMHO
I know you're semi-trolling (and I kinda agree they will definitely eventually use these for things that are "illegal" like grills and speed checks, etc.)
BUT: Let's think of the positives here. If a 911 call comes in and it will take 5-8 mins to get an officer on the scene but 90 seconds to get a drone there to see what's happening, is that really a bad idea? I think the plan isn't to stop using officers - it's to get a drone on scene so the officers are better prepared when they arrive.
New police tech always follows a pattern. They say it is to improve existing proceedures, to make them faster/safer/better, but in the end the tech breaks free of old paradigms and gets used in the "bad" ways everyone predicted. Tasers were meant to be used only instead of guns, but now are used on non-threatening people who simply refuse orders. Speed/traffic cameras were to free up officers for other tasks, but cops do as much traffic enforcement as ever before. The cameras are used by companies for revenue. Drones are pitched as being the faster responce, going ahead of officers on foot. In a few years they will be the only response. They will be hovering outside our bedroom windows scouting for wrongdoing.
It is the tech cops dont want, the stuff we must force upon them such as dash/body cameras, that tends to promote the public good in the long run.
> They say it is to improve existing proceedures, to make them faster/safer/better, but in the end the tech breaks free of old paradigms and gets used in the "bad" ways everyone predicted.
This new technology will improve existing procedures. How can you oppose it?
This new procedure will use existing technologies. How can you oppose it?
Do you understand the current differential between NYPD capability and action taken? You need to understand that NYPD and cops in general aren’t primarily challenged in their service by their means to execute on it (though you can also find measures suggesting so, and thus needing more funding and powers)
For ex they put a load of cops in the subway system, at huge cost, and the results were roughly the same level of crime given overall crime rates falling (and falling just slightly), with no evidence available of increased presence preventing crime, seemingly no impact, except for catching more fare evasion (recouping single digit percent of cost of the program). It was celebrated in gov and by the police as a success and they’re continuing their program. They use the program to divert a proliferation of these fare evasion cops stationed all over the city to other things like emergent protest suppression outside the subways.
To talk about “zero second” extreme case police response capabilities.
How is this related to their comment? A drone that can start recording crucial evidence before police arrive could absolutely be a deciding factor in having enough evidence to charge or convict someone.
My point in the GP comment is that "recording crucial evidence" does very little to actually stop or prevent crime. It might help after the fact if not for all the policies around releasing serial criminals and not prosecuting "minor" crimes.
In practice, though, the police generally show up after the crime has happened and take statements. In some places outside of NYC, they actually use that information to catch people and prosecute them. In NYC it goes into a black hole.
I am sure the idea they had when they bought these things is the drone carrying a speaker and saying "Police, drop the gun," and the armed suspect will magically drop the gun, but we all know that's not going to happen.
The use I can see is chasing people who run on foot, but there are a lot of problems with that. They can just go into a building to escape, run around a couple of corners, or even just stand there until the real cops arrive and continue to evade arrest the old fashioned way.
It’s a case study of what (nypd) police are capable of and achieve when they have zero second response time and surveillance capabilities
And what the public understands the cost to go toward and why versus what the resulting day to day and bigger picture actions are as a result of the greater numbers and powers gained over the public
Unfortunately, you can't prove the program did not work.
If I purchase a can of alligator repellent spray, and after using it I am attacked by one alligator, that isn't proof the spray failed. If I were to have failed to use the spray, it's possible I would have been attacked by FOUR alligators.
In other words, absent an experiment with a control you can't draw conclusions about the success or failure of a dissuasionary program because you don't know how many things were dissuaded.
You’re welcome to look up the program and the evaluations of its success that don’t come from police and ex-police govt sources and see for yourself. Your impossible standard is useless for evaluating police investment
Ultimately what matters most is what incentives the police have. If they have bad incentives, fancy new tech won't actually be used for public benefits
You mean potential positives. It's not difficult to imagine police doing all sorts of amazing things. But the reality of costs and safety keeps those ideas in fantasy land.
In your example, costs and safety would mandate that the 90 seconds would first be spent determining whether an officer is needed then an additional 5-8 minutes will be needed to respond. There will be fewer beat officers as they will need to hire a crew of drone operators.
Maybe in the short run but I think you underestimate surveillance tech firms' ability to extract revenue from governments.
If this technology proves even a little bit useful, I expect that ten years from now, cities will be spending double digit percentages of their police department budget on per-unit subscription fees for these drones.
The political and economic incentives for this type of technology are strong in a state without surveillance oversight.
Especially if there's additional revenue potential for the city ( think traffic enforcement and license plate readers)
Next we'll be seeing ai powered antisocial behavior monitoring as a service for live events. I simply cannot wait /s
A whack with a baseball bat, a slammed door, or even a good punch will take out the drone, though. I suspect that you're right and the intent is to be able to pursue people who are on foot with a helicopter-like device.
My secret undercover contacts in the NYPD have provided me with advance footage of the new drones that will be deployed throughout the city, demonstrating their innovative scanning technology - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtnHPNlzCz8
Is that some sort of zoning thing in NYC? I know a county around me is already using drones to check for structures/additions that aren't listed for tax purposes.
Due to the dense packing of people in NYC, there are very few places that allow you to have any kind of open flame, including in a barbecue or grill. I think the requirement is that your grill has to be at least 10 feet from any flammable material, including building walls, other furniture, and pretty much anything not made of concrete or metal. You can't do it on a terrace or a balcony either. Almost nowhere in NYC do you have a 10 foot radius with nothing flammable in it.
- charcoal - no roofs or balconies, but terraces and backyards are okay. You do need 10 feet of clearance from walls and fences, but this is less rare than you might think. I’ve lived in two places that met this criteria and have a few friends that did as well
- propane - illegal in most circumstances except with a very small propane tank
- natural gas - legal in all circumstances as long as installed by a city licensed installer.
It’s true that it’s not as common as it is in the suburbs, but essentially every building built in the last 20 years or major renovations ends up including one or more grills.
There's something deeply diseased about a country that spends so much on policing but still has high crime rates and (nearly) the highest imprisonment rate in the world.
Perhaps a healthy society doesn't have as much crime, criminality, prisons, mass shootings, overdose epidemics, homelessness, or inequality.
Maybe, I dunno, people should have healthcare, prescriptions, mental healthcare, housing, community support to succeed and build a pleasant life, and fair wages.
Healthy societies don't have all that much crime, but the unhealthy ones build walls, prisons, and gates to "contain" it without addressing it.
Only people who don’t understand how crime works say this. Ask Europe how well their criminal justice system is working out right now.
Spoiler alert: it’s mostly falling apart, because it turns out there are people who should not be able to roam free in society.
I mean come on man you saw what happened in Honduras, mass arrests of criminals with indefinite sentences, and criminals suddenly did not want to be criminals anymore. Germany is having a political crisis because criminals don’t face consequences. They “rehab” and go back to committing crime because there is no downside.
If they're using drones to race officers to the scene to potentially capture evidence before the human responders can manage to get there, it seems like a good idea. But if the idea is to delay human responders who will wait for the drone footage before moving in, that just sounds cowardly and bad for victims.
The real idea is to get the public acclimated to police drone use by first using them in some mostly-innocuous way. Then in 10 years, they find some other pretense to start attaching weapons. For your protection, of course.
I think there are legitimate use cases -- the main one that comes to mind is replacing the police helicopter "eye in the sky" with a fleet of drones. Cheaper, less personnel involved, and far less intrusive for everyone around it. I'm guessing that will be one of the uses, but they're also likely adopt from military tactics (don't cops love pretending they're soldiers?) and use drones as overwatch at "active scenes".
In my experience, flying a drone in urban environments is a complicated endeavour. Launching them off rooftops makes a lot of sense as it removes a lot of the LOS obstacles, but you have to stay high -- they won't be peeking into windows or chasing you down alleyways. Manhattan (and any area with tall buildings / skyscrapers) would be a no-go zone.
It will be interesting to see how quickly these get lost or stolen, or knocked out of the sky with basic countermeasures.
This is the normal pattern yeah. An american company sells a product to israel's military, who uses it against palestinians. Then the company can use that as a case study of its effectiveness to sell it to american police departments. They have done it with many other weapons and surveillance tools and they will probably do it with that one too.
- These drones are only responding to 911 calls as an additional eye-in-the-sky agent, not performing constant surveillance of the population
- The drones don’t replace agents, they supplement them. Instead of having one agent show up after 5minutes, now there will be one additional eye in the sky giving situational awareness after 60seconds, AND the agent after 5minutes.
- The drones dont fly low/close enough to easily be taken out by throwing stuff at them or even shooting at them
- Should be obvious, but no these drones don’t have weapons and there is no plan for it. (Although I’m sure that other kinds of drones with non-lethal weapons will be a thing in the future)
Sounds like this is a different report of something I've seen elsewhere that actually makes a lot of sense.
Drones equipped with some need-it-right-now type equipment that can be flown to a caller. AED and tourniquet come to mind as items in the load but there was more.
I can also see value in tense situations as drones come equipped with one of the most powerful weapons known to man: a camera. Sure, the bad guy can probably escape from the drone, but while he's doing that he's not hurting anybody.
Until these drones are operated autonomously, it's simply moving cops from on the street to an offshore cubicle employee whose only job is to document a crime in progress so it can be added to the monthly report.
If only _everyone_ had a high resolution instant streaming video camera on them at all times...! The footage at ground level will always be better than from 50 feet in the air.
> Officers used a vehicle called the "bear" to get inside Hamilton Hall [at Columbia University] where many protestors were barricaded. FOX 5 NY's Linda Schmidt got an up close look at how the bear works.
Cops never do anything useful except to extract money from regular people to fund their bureaucracy or harass the underclass to justify their existence. They sit on their assess and only move if it threatens their ego.
> In 2020, for example, the U.S. murder rate saw its largest single-year increase on record – and by 2022, it remained considerably higher than before the coronavirus pandemic. Preliminary data for 2023, however, suggests that the murder rate fell substantially last year.
Just because the rate is lower then 30 years ago doesn't mean it is not higher then 5 years ago.
There is also a lot of people who believe certain crimes are just not being reported, like property theft.
Don’t forget a lot of crimes were reclassified. Like being able to steal up to 900 bucks and it’s a misdemeanor so police won’t do shit.
Not to mention all the Asians who get beat up in SF and NYC. The perps are let go without major repercussions.
Some people just reclassify stuff in an effort to mislead. But on the ground it’s clear.
Crime might have gone down overall but not exactly the case in cities.
SF for example is fine but the places where you want to be for tech are still not exactly safe. I don’t want to live in sunset where it’s fine and safe and travel 40 mintutes to Hayes/downtown/soma (walking/transit). Ended up moving to Palo Alto where I still get my tech fix and I don’t need to worry about fights and getting attacked by homeless or being caught up in some sketchy shit at night, or have my window busted.
I've seen police violence in real life several times and every time it was started and repeatedly escalated by the police. A cop once two-handed his baton into my mouth like a baseball bat then broke some of my ribs stomping on me; I was handcuffed, calmly sitting on the curb, arrested at a peaceful protest.
My mom suffers migraines and fell in tub when we had just moved to America. I called 911 and cop was there within 5 minutes. My mom can’t speak English that well.
I got pulled over once for driving 50 in a 35. I didn’t realize there was a change in the speed limit. I explained this to the cop and that I was just traveling through. He and I chatted about photography (I was going to a state park to take photos) and he told me to have a nice day and be more aware.
Had a lot of encounters with police in SF. Never had a problem. They even helped me when my bike was stolen by giving me a lift.
So idk. I’m an immigrant guy. I’m not hostile and I’m respectful. Also helps that I don’t have warrants and a criminal record.
I’m sure 90% or more of police are good people. Every group has bad people. I work in tech. I know of people who are genius tier and also some who are scammer pos type. The majority are fine people.
If there was a 1 in 10 chance that a police officer would beat me up when I encounter them, I'd avoid police like the plague.
Even if it was a 1 in 100 chance. Police are armed, and have an overwhelming legal upper hand. Police have a position of extreme trust and need to have a much lower percentage of "bad people" than any other group.
The other problem is that police have been credibly accused of tolerating the "few bad apples". If true, then I don't consider them "fine people".
In startups most people are actually fine, but there are wolves as well. People who scam others, lie and steal, use people, etc. And there are VCs and various circles that protect them.
Does that mean we just don't push forward? Your 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 fits here as well.
That's life. If you operate that way, good for you. But I operate in reality.
What is a drone supposed to do? Take a witness statement? Run into someone who is stealing something? A big part of the deterrent of the police is that threat of violence. A drone telling you "your crime has been recorded now wait for us to arrest you" will work for a few days on the intimidation factor.