The NYPD has more than tripled its use of drones in the last year, most recently deploying them 13 different times to monitor public protests last month, according to police data.
Between April and June of this year, the department deployed drones 143 times. Before that, it had never deployed drones more than 50 times in a three-month period, the data shows.
Police handed over drone footage from protests in Times Square and in Bay Ridge last month to prosecutors to use as evidence in criminal charges against 158 people, officials said.
The NYPD’s drone fleet has doubled in size since the program was launched five years ago – from 13 drones then to 30 today, and will continue to expand in the coming years.
New Yorkers attending large-scale events and celebrations are now likely to spot drones hovering overhead. They are being used to scan for sharks off summer beaches, make rescues during storms and capture the scenes of police shootings, police said.
Prosecutors have historically used NYPD drone footage during the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and as evidence in other cases like robberies, according to Oren Yaniv, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn district attorney. NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry, who oversees the department’s new technology, says he hopes one day they will be saving lives by dropping flotation devices to struggling swimmers, and delivering the overdose prevention drug Narcan to people in drug-induced medical distress. Daughtry even said he is researching having drones respond to some crime reports.
But as the NYPD looks to use drones in new ways, some civil liberties activists say they see it as an undemocratic violation of privacy. They, along with a tech policy expert interviewed by Gothamist, point out that no agency outside the NYPD oversees or regulates how the department uses information gathered by drones.
“This is a local police department that increasingly acts like a national intelligence agency,” said Albert Fox Cahn,…
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