Despite that, its a dangerous thing to happen. I am aware of how unlikely it is for the current US Government to use the drone offensively, but once you have a massive fleet of drones flying over the US, patrolling "troubling" neighborhoods constantly, the temptation to use those abilities rises significantly.
I hope that Congress takes action to outlaw this practice, but I have little faith it will happen. It seems like everyday the country is falling further into the pit of becoming an authoritarian police state.
Also police helicopters are operated by local/state forces. This is a federal agency which is way out of its jurisdiction.
Let's be honest, the country is voting to become an authoritarian police state. US voters have historically had a flirtatious relationship with strong authoritarian style presidents. Trump just more openly so than others. When you look at voting patterns over the last 40 years, it's pretty clear we've been trending in this direction for quite awhile.
I mean, they could. And firefighting planes could be rerigged to disperse chemical weapons, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them existing.
>Also police helicopters are operated by local/state forces. This is a federal agency which is way out of its jurisdiction.
I'm guessing it's on loan. It's hardly unusual or questionable for the feds to provide assistance to local police during periods of extraordinary crisis. However justified the people of Minneapolis may be in reacting this way to yet another police homicide, what else are the local police supposed to do now except try to restore order using whatever tools are available? Including drones that can provide immediate information about hotspots, crowds, fires, etc.
This is not the case and has never been the case. Presidents have different interpretations of executive powers. Trump clearly has an extremely authoritarian take on where the President sits in our government.
This is plainly obvious for everyone to see and a very non-controversial observation.
https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/Local-police-...
But really, there's little difference between a lot of civilian and light military aircraft. The Bell 206 that your local news station probably flies around was developed as a military helicopter.
I'm not an American but have lived there in the past for many years. It has always baffled me how Americans are willing to blame the left or the right instead of the system as a whole. Maybe because if they did so, they would be undermining the very foundations that their country was built on.
The second R in reduce, reuse, and recycle. /s
for example: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...
Who is President is very much matters. You clearly see this in the Reagan/Bush/Clinton years, where mass incarceration was in vogue, at the direction of the Attorney General (William Barr), who is part of the executive branch, leading the charge.
As for Blackhawks I’ve never seen them used by police forces, those in civilian use are not surplus military helicopters or even the UH-60 but rather it’s civilian version the Sikorsky S-70 which are used by fire departments and search and rescue crews.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-rap...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/spies-in-t...
"There was an armed standoff with police,[5] who lobbed tear gas canisters at the building. The MOVE members fired at them and a gunfight with semi-automatic and automatic firearms ensued.[32] Police went through over ten thousand rounds of ammunition before Commissioner Sambor ordered that the compound be bombed.[32] From a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Philadelphia Police Department Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two one-pound bombs (which the police referred to as "entry devices"[31]) made of FBI-supplied Tovex, a dynamite substitute, targeting a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof of the house.[29]"
Police helicopters are modified civilian aircraft and yet they have been used by the police, through improvised means, to bomb people. The drone over Minneapolis is a MQ-9 reaper, aka "predator B", hunter-killer UAV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper
"In 2006, the then–Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General T. Michael Moseley said: "We've moved from using UAVs primarily in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance roles before Operation Iraqi Freedom, to a true hunter-killer role with the Reaper."[6]
The MQ-9 is a larger, heavier, and more capable aircraft than the earlier General Atomics MQ-1 Predator; it can be controlled by the same ground systems used to control MQ-1s. The Reaper has a 950-shaft-horsepower (712 kW) turboprop engine (compared to the Predator's 115 hp (86 kW) piston engine). The greater power allows the Reaper to carry 15 times more ordnance payload and cruise at about three times the speed of the MQ-1.[6] "
It's almost like it's some sort of systemic problem
To look at a related question, where do you draw the line between stakeouts and planting GPS devices?
The question should not be some sort of line-drawing based on looking at the narrow capabilities of a particular device or practice change. It needs to be a look at what those capabilities do to the current balance of civilian rights and responsibilities, and whether we wish to live in a world of robotic surveillance and law enforcement.
I suspect it's not actually the case and there was some amount of calculation of the ex-officer's risk of flight, the likelihood that he would further offend, and the need to get some forensics, autopsy, and preliminary tox screen results.
In other words, if a civilian under the same set of facts would have also been arrested 4 days later, I'm fine with it. One criminal standard for everyone. Union rules don't have any place superseding criminal laws (and I haven't seen anyone presenting credible evidence that they do).
https://www.army.mil/article/180593/last_uh_1_huey_a_42_year...
2) Trump's authoritarian interpretation of these powers is pretty obvious and not really controversial. I think this is an obvious fact that requires little explanation.
SAR, medevac, fire fightings etc. are all roles that the Blackhawk is perfectly suited for and all for which it has dedicated variants.
As for law enforcement use again I don’t see a problem with it, the use of them is mostly restricted to very special cases (FBI/DEA etc) due to cost of both the aircraft itself and the operational costs.
The Mexican federal police is indeed essentially an army at this point since they engage in paramilitary operations against the cartels.
On the other hand Cobras have no use other than to spray a target with their auto cannon or missiles.
So I was really curious what police force in the US or anyone is operating attack helicopters.
The UH-1 was developed as a medevac helicopter for the US army.
> Studies have found similar levels of depression and PTSD among drone pilots working behind a bank of computers as among military personnel deployed to the battlefield.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/life-as-a-dron...
Is it that they are flying a UAV that was originally designed for military use?
Or is it that they are flying a UAV period?
What if it was a new UAV, designed just for law enforcement? No problems then?
Presumably this UAV has no weapons on it, so I'm unsure what the problem could be unless we just flat oppose former military equipment being used?
It's safer and cheaper to fly a UAV than a manned vehicled - helicopters crash routinely and need multiple crews to keep them on station for extended duration. If it was a decommissioned military UAV that's being repurposed - then the tax payer has been saved a great deal of money as well.
So, what specifically is it that we don't like about this situation?
That’s what the riots are about after all; I don’t think anyone needs it to move quickly, they just need acknowledgement justice is needed and will meaningfully move forward. There was previously no promise of that.
People aren't angry because they responded to the call.
Watch this video in case you haven't:
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/05/29/george-floyd-kneele...
> How is the US a police state?
There's not a simple yes or no answer to this question. But if you sincerely want to understand where people are coming from when they make the claim, you ought to do some research.
I'll give you a head start. Try googling:
"police spying without warrant"
"stop and frisk"
"police perjury"
"police license plate readers"
"police phone data"
Also, check out organizations like the ACLU, EFF and many others who work very hard to prevent the US becoming a police state.
any form of government law enforcement personnel or equipment is drawing anger - regardless of form, function, or origin.
We are talking here about SURVEILLANCE drones.
If you make a given police enforcement mechanism cheaper, it will be used more. What does that do to your average person's sense of privacy/fear/trust? What kind of relationship do we want to have between citizens[2] and its government?
[1] That line is being blurred.
[2] Not subjects
Maybe they extended the 100 mile constitution-exempt border zone: https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone
I suppose in those situations, I'd be grateful for some law enforcement presence monitoring the situation and guiding folks on the ground to the most appropriate places needing the most attention.
Fewer problems. Presumably it would be much less capable. The sister comment[1] lays out how dangerous this UAV is, and how powerful. History has shown that the police/military are eager to gain capabilities, and very reluctant to part with them. If use of these very capable military grade drones becomes wide-spread, using them aggressively against live people becomes more probable. And very easy to do — they're already everywhere.
We should also think about how regulated their use should be! These have the capability to just provide 24h surveillance on certain areas, which would erode citizens' privacy greatly.
George Orwell would be proud (not of what we've become but for his predictions being so damn accurate).
I'd guess this is a Gorgon Stare drone.
https://longreads.com/2019/06/21/nothing-kept-me-up-at-night...
Same scenario w/ a black guy. how long?
Same scenario w/ 3 Cops and a white guy?
Same scenario w/ 3 cops and a black guy?
I'm betting if you could do a study on all these scenarios of 'time to act/prosecute'... you'd find some major biases.
Would they need to do an autopsy or tox screen when there's video evidence from multiple viewpoints and the entire nation has seen the evidence and cops from other cities are calling for arrests? SEriously, this is clear cut. There is no ifs/buts.
3rd degree murder is also a joke, this is 1st degree, you don't kneel on someone's neck while paramedics and a doctor plead w/ you to stop because you're killing him without wanting to kill him, and not w/ someone you've known for 17 years.
This is a failure of law enforcement, and drone surveillance is a lazy band-aid that they're applying to a situation they themselves have caused.
I certainly don't condone rioting, looting, and setting random buildings on fire. But the police created this situation.
"Needing the most attention"? Bah. The only thing the police should be doing in this situation is standing down, admitting their wrongdoing, and accepting punishment. That will do much more to stop the rioting and start healing the police-citizen divide than anything else they can do. But of course that's not going to happen; police as a whole seem more interested in militarizing and acting above the law.
Let's just assume he was at some recent point trained to restrain in this manner and he can prove it. It is very unlikely he would be convicted since he was following his training and was unaware of the danger. If they were to try to convict him, I would imagine the union would be more than glad to back him up in a lawsuit which he would likely win.
Since he was charged, I'm assuming they've reviewed enough to be confident he was not acting within how he was trained.
> So, what specifically is it that we don't like about this situation?
What potential "mission-appropriate" use is a Customs and Border Protection drone performing 300 miles away from the border in a domestic unrest scenario?
https://www.kqed.org/news/11818476/deputies-blunt-force-neck...
This specific situation? Ya, sure, maybe.
What about the rioting, looting, setting buildings on fire, etc. in Berkeley because some students opposed Ben Shapiro giving a talk? How did the police create that situation?
> The only thing the police should be doing in this situation is standing down, admitting their wrongdoing, and accepting punishment.
How exactly are the police being "punished" by my store being looted by people who don't even know why the riot started in the first place, let alone give any damns about someone being murdered by one police officer.
How is people carrying off 6 new televisions, freshly robbed from a local store, going to stop the rioting and "heal" the police-citizen divide?
One significant consequence of that is it’s way easier to ramp up to a larger scale for whatever they might have in mind.
How so? Public spaces have already been ruled over and over to have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Further, the plethora of surveillance cameras sitting in store windows, people's doorbells, streetlight cameras, and more already surveil anyone in any public area.
Is it just these UAV's are more visible so they make you think about it more?
I feel that since drones pose less risk to the lives of their operators, the desire to use them will be greater.
Unfortunately I feel this is the direction most political conversations go as-of late. Talking right past each other.
To claim the other side has an utter refusal to engage is not just unfair, it's a perfect description of exactly the behavior you have just engaged in yourself. It would be more apt to substitute "utter refusal to engage" with "utter refusal to accept my opinion as fact".
I am the GP poster above. I thought I asked some provoking questions about why we have a problem with a former military drone (presumably demilitarized) flying over a city to conduct surveillance during a time of civil unrest.
Instead of thoughtful responses, this question has largely received criticism and claims that I support state violence. I haven't a clue how this is considered reasonable discourse - and it's no wonder the country grows further and further apart politically.
The ongoing militarization of state level police forces without the democratic consent of the governed for a start?
most unmanned drones used today have a far higher history of 'unintended forced landings' than most other military craft -- when you use planes that have a high risk of crash over metropolitan and suburban areas, the human risk multiplies.
The US military has 'lost' about 400 'large' drones between 2001 and 2014.
To put that 400 number into perspective, the US had 5 or 6 major airliner crashes between 2001-2013, and about 400 accidents (including non-crashes and minor incidents) over the period of 2004-2013.
I'd rather have any fighter jet in production right now over me than anything General Atomics had designed.
Here's an older WaPo article from 2016. From 2001-2016 400 military drone crashes occured. Military incidents are harder to find out about, otherwise I would have used that number.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/drone-crash...
>I feel that since drones pose less risk to the lives of their operators, the desire to use them will be greater.
absolutely true -- but don't let that make you think that loss-of-personnel is the most important metric for whether or not a mission flies.
This comment sounds like it's about attack drones. I concede that it's not necessarily about attack drones; a surveillance drone operator might facilitate and witness a lethal attack, and in that sense "cause" the destruction.
Was my parent's home. We were south of Fargo, outside of the city dike. Fargo is very, very flat farmland. Our house was 40' above the river. The top of the city dike was around 43'. We melted down the ice, put down a sheet of plastic, and then built a wall of sandbags. Bonus, it was very cold, so you essentially had to bag and place the sandbag before the sand froze. We put around 10k sacks around the house -- and saved it. Nothing like paddling a canoe to my brothers to resupply fuel for the generators powering the sump-pumps that handled the water that seeps in.
We got very, very lucky. The weather froze the ice a few inches thick and it stopped rising. Had water reached that last bag, Fargo would have been a giant swimming pool.
Just playing devil's advocate - but this is democratically consented to.
Your elected politicians have specifically allowed the sale or transfer of retired military equipment to state and local police forces, for multiple reasons but the least-of-which was cost savings vs. scrapping all the prepaid equipment.
Similar, but admittedly not quite the same, to the sale of demilitarized Humvees, tanks and fighter jets to civilians. Or NASA owning and operating former US Navy F/A-18's, B-52's and more... war machines now repurposed for peaceful training and aeronautical research.
Oh wait, we have nearly 20 years of the endless war that proves that they will.
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2015/07/l...
We can't allow agencies to borrow equipment and specialists? They should all buy their own, at tax payer's expense?
Would you feel any different if this UAV had been bought by local law enforcement instead of borrowed? If so, why?
I think there's a lot more to it than that. There's also the matter of a lot of war vets becoming police officers, the approach to policing they learned in the military, and their lasting effect on police department culture.
1) The guy was armed and leading a high speed chase
2) I don’t think there is a long, long, documented history of cops murdering the unarmed white guys without any real consequence
Just as a random question, how many people do you think know that these guys (https://longreads.com/2019/06/21/nothing-kept-me-up-at-night...) are flying above American cities
I have a suspicion, being a Senator for 40 years sort of removes you from the concerns of everyday Americans.
These are the same Senators (and Representatives) that vote for these measures. They'll never be the target of these surveillance schemes... and when they are, they throw a huge fit[1] because they're supposedly above all of it. They're the same people who ban guns from the public, but own operate and illegally traffic them themselves[2].
They're the same ones that don't have to be strip searched every time they fly, but I digress...
[1] https://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/03/13/pelosi-alle...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/2...
Are you living in the same country as me? The “governed” love this stuff, and keep voting for the people that do it. Civil liberties has always been something that has to be achieved through anti-democratic means.
I've been saying for ages that these overseas actions are proving grounds for testing malicious tech - for it's eventual deployment against US citizens.
I guess it’s not too surprising that you would want to keep an eye out for rioting.
Missiles would be a whole new level of messed up, though.
Same goes for the policing. The amount of separation between the police and the policed, demographically, politically and so on is hard to defend.
I replied to your original comment, indicating my belief that the issue is substantially more complicated than your framing suggested, and briefly explained a couple reasons why. I have several more, if you honestly have any interest.
Your reply was to claim it is just about your property rights - the only relation to my comment was the response hierarchy. I honestly still don't see how that's not a refusal to engage.
One point:
> claims that I support state violence
Well, what do you call what's going on? (I do also consider intrusive surveillance a form of violence, but understand why some think that's dilutive to the term.)
If this form surveillance makes it so I don't have to listen to as many helicopters outside my downtown widow, I'm all for it.
Mass surveillance of any kind is unacceptable, especially in a civilian context
https://i.imgur.com/Ijzt56t.jpg https://i.imgur.com/FR0qla3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/KDvP5Du.jpg
I'll have to dig up some of the 'end of days' photos where it almost breached the wall. You had to buy flood insurance early on... which was pricey, but covered a lot of the supplies. It was several thousand dollars for the 2009 construction.
We had 3 '500 year' floods. 1997, 2009, and 2011. The Red river flows north, which is an oddity. Lots of snow, with folks redirecting water caused some new records. Grand Forks was flooded out in one of those years - Fargo almost fell. By the time the third major flood happened - we were ready.
https://i.imgur.com/jhAIMMn.jpg
We set up a series of hesco bags and filled them directly. Worked great, and they came and picked up the bags to be reused in the Bismark flooding. Sand doubled in price each time... and the city really wanted this property on the cheap... so that last run took hours but cost about 20k. (yikes) After that, the city built a permanent dike that protected the property.
There is. Police disproportionately kill black men, but there is ALSO a long history of cops murdering unarmed white men.
Yeah, but it's not a risk to the government. The government is very good at weaseling out of responsibility for killing bystanders with little more than a settlement check. When people acting on behalf of the government get killed then that's when government gets held accountable.
Pervasive cheap surveillance which needn't be attached to a very expensive mobile weapons platform or be limited to just cameras could be a birds eye view of everyone's lives. Good justifiable benefits are obvious. With enough surveillance crime becomes really hard to perpetrate. We can pick out all the drug dealers and make tons of arrests before people adapt. Petty stupid crime like breaking into a car means the eye of Sauron sees you and follows you back to your house. Acts of violence that don't take place inside buildings could prompt an immediate response at least as fast as the cops are capable of dispatching a unit. Acts of violence within a unit could be detected by mikes outside on street corners if we were even more surveillance minded. Perhaps we can train it to detect the sound of a person being beat. I don't like people getting hurt do you? Acts of terrorism or mass violence are even more important to prevent. With enough smarts maybe we can flag people likely to go postal or at least notice what is happening 30 seconds before the shooting starts. 30 seconds before instead of 2 minutes after might make a HUGE difference in body count.
As great as that sounds I'm sure you can think of 100 more dystopian use cases. It doesn't do us much good to treat cars as faster horses and not bothering to consider the implications.
Of course they'll eventually call them "non lethal payloads" :P
The interesting things that could be done when you have a line of sight to these things, a little bit of knowledge of RF modulation and have nothing left to lose…
edited for clarity
I want a government that trusts us and respects our rights (e.g., non police state) and that helps to provide for the poor and vulnerable (e.g., healthcare).
I don't see any conflict between these goals. Our medicare providers are not flying drones and kneeling on necks.
I’m also not sure where what you describe exists and how it’s implemented. I am curious to learn if anyone has any sources on such a place: great healthcare, highly involved citizens and low government intervention in daily life. And no, I’m not being sarcastic, I am sincerely wondering about it.
The New York Times States
> By the end of the night, the authorities said they had arrested nine people, some of them accused of carrying banned weapons. But no major violence was reported.
People remember the consequences of sitting idly by during the rise of fascism. The proper response to fascist light is anger. Almost all the people were able to do this without getting arrested let alone setting buildings on fire.
> How exactly are the police being "punished" by my store being looted by people who don't even know why the riot started in the first place, let alone give any damns about someone being murdered by one police officer.
When order breaks down people a minority take advantage. Everyone knows why the riot started in the first place. You are justly angry about bad behavior but how angry were you when black person after black person was murdered? If you don't want order breaking down punish all the guilty especially officers who murder the citizenry.
There is no cause to review how he was trained or how his actions comport with said training except to prevent it from happening again. There is no scenario which allows you to knowingly cause the death of your fellow citizen without just cause. A police officer is "a normal person" the same laws that apply to me apply to thee. If those whose job it is to enforce the law treat another officer differently it is corruption and cowardice. Cowardice is a character flaw not a justification.
“We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
It took 8 minuted for him to die 3 minutes of which he was unresponsive while people warned the cop and asked him to stop. The victim informed the murderer of exactly how he was being murdered and asked him to stop. He called out for his mother then stopped speaking at all while he died in silence. The method he was being killed would have been completely obvious to anyone who possessed a pair of lungs or understood how breathing worked.
Nobody gives precisely one hot damn what manner of training he received. It was obvious he was murdering his victim to a human of ordinary capability. The logical conclusion is that he didn't care or wanted to murder him.
It would include at least:
Police-state policies. Examples: laws against voluntary drug use, policies like stop-and-frisk, our incarceration rate, restrictions on contraception, etc., seem particularly in your face. Historically, the military draft. I'd oppose these.
Basic public-safety policies. Examples: Laws like speed limits, or driving while intoxicated, or some limits on gun ownership (e.g., folks with a history of violence shouldn't have machine guns). These will always annoy some people, but I'd support most of this.
Environmental and business regulations. These really make some folks mad. But I'm strongly in favor of clean air and water, solvent banks, safe working conditions, etc., and think regulations here are really important.
Social policies. Many people were/are violently opposed to school integration, affirmative action, gay marriage, etc. But I think we have a moral imperative to view and treat { blacks, women, gays, jews, ... } as real people, and history has shown that we won't do this on our own.
I certainly can see some cases where there are overlap between these. Example: government needed an army to enforce school integration. But, mostly mostly these are orthogonal, and lumping these into one "big government" bucket just makes it a muddy issue.
I could be wrong.
The corporate Empire has been built and it's occupying the lands of 280 million Americans.
It's Rome 2.0 and the Rubicon isn't as clear, but it's already crossed.
---
Minneapolis is in a de-facto state of war, there is no police presence in numerous areas currently, and locals have already setup their own road-blocks and community defense forces.
The Minnesota State Police have been arresting more reporters since CNN and targeting them with tear gas canisters and rubber-bullets at point-blank range. The MSP doesn't respect the Governor, and John Harrington and/or Matt Langer should be disciplined. That is, unless they want a full rebellion.
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1266715217398030336
There does seem to be bias in media coverage and therefore society outrage or lack thereof.
i was expecting to see a raised home on the pic, not a better way to fill sandbags. oh well.
> Philadelphia Police Department Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two one-pound bombs (which the police referred to as "entry devices"[31]) made of FBI-supplied Tovex
If you look at the aerial view, you can spot the neighbors homes that did not make it and the edge of the city dike now in the back yard. Many houses flooded. Heartbreaking when you saw folks trying to have a fire truck flood their failing dike with clean water rather than have the sewage/etc fill the house.
