There’s a hot new phrase bouncing around police departments across the United States: “drone-as-first-responder.”
From small-town Indiana to New York City, cops around the country are embracing autonomous surveillance drones as the latest innovation in policing. While you might hear about the occasional puppy found in the woods with a police drone, those feel-good stories provide excellent cover for their true purposes: gathering intelligence on peaceful protests, surveilling minority communities, and intimidating activists.
Though drone-as-first-responder initiatives may not yet inspire the same knee-jerk opposition as Flock surveillance towers and data centers, fury is clearly growing as a more and more Americans are taking a stand against police drones.
In Minneapolis, residents are speaking out against the city police department’s plan to partner with Skydio, a private defense contractor that primarily manufactures drones for military forces. Concerned citizens packed a City Council meeting to discuss the initiative on Wednesday, filling both the main council hall and a back-up overflow room, CBS reported.
