New Season Brings Targeted Enforcement & Special Projects

Welcome to September and the month where every law enforcement agency has been juggling traffic safety and children returning to school for the past few weeks. It marks the beginning of the fall season, Halloween Safety, holiday stupidity, shopping madness and everything that goes with it until the New Year. It’s a slow acceleration of annual events that present challenges for us every year. Here’s a tip: Get ahead of it now. There’s a lesson to be learned from the retail industry. While most of us get aggravated by Christmas products in October, we can learn from that. If you weren’t planning for kids returning to school back in July, you were likely behind the curve when the time arrived. It’s September now. You should be planning for Halloween Safety and scheduling events by mid-month. By the beginning of October you should be planning Thanksgiving weekend events. Christmas/holiday shopping information distribution and targeted enforcement should all be planned before Thanksgiving and well-launched by then.

Now, with that “warning order” provided, let’s talk about something else—drones, surveillance and warrants. There are two observations to be made about the use of drones for surveillance. First, the term “drone” is all too often considered to only be an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). But think about it—a “drone” is really just a remote controlled vehicle. It can be aerial, submersible or land-based. Please set aside the idea that any laws, general orders, department policy and protocols regarding drones apply only to unmanned aerial vehicles. They apply to every remote control vehicle your agency uses in any setting. Failure to keep that in mind can cause you a great deal of aggravation when, as an example, one use of an aerial drone is challenged and is defended as a “singular incident,” when your agency has used land-based drones for similar or identical purposes previously.

Second, the laws, general orders and policies regarding drone use for surveillance are evolving almost faster than can be kept up with. Sure, we all get informed (or should) of any precedent-setting case law that comes from federal courts, but what about state courts? What about the civil cases affecting liability attached to potential use? How do you keep up? There are two ways to minimize how much of a challenge the evolving laws can have.

1) If you’re planning to use a drone and have some doubt as to the legality of it, don’t do it. It seems prohibitive in a lot of cases, but it’s that simple. If you’re not sure it’s legal, hold off until you can get clarification.

2) Even if the intended use is legal, if you have a personal doubt as to the moral or ethical use of it, then don’t do it. This is almost entirely counter-intuitive to the idea of a para-military structure and chain of command, but if you’re the sole operator of the drone and you’re morally or ethically uncomfortable with what you’re being ordered to do, don’t do it. There has to be another qualified operator, and if there’s not, then your chain of command needs to listen to your reasoning for why you have challenges with the use.

Finally, although a great many urban officers/agencies don’t need to worry about it, for the more rural officers, fall hunting season will soon be upon us. It creates concerns every now and then while patrolling the “back woods” areas and when responding to some of the larger properties depending on topography. Pay attention. Think about it. Those random shots may well be target practice, they may be hunters’ shots or they may be shots aimed to do more harm. Just stay alert.

Lt. Frank Borelli

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