City officials shot down a Maine police department's drone proposal before it could get off the ground.
In a narrow 4-3 vote Monday, the Portland City Council rejected a $45,000 police department program to use drones to locate individuals in missing person searches and standoffs, as well as to reconstruct crime scenes, WGME-TV reports. Search warrants would have been needed to use drones to search private property, and the aerial tools would not have been used for surveillance, according to WMTW-TV. The drones also would not have used facial recognition software.
Although the program wasn't approved during Monday's meeting, the proposal will be looked at again in December.
"I feel really confident in allowing the police to have a drone,” said council member Kate Sykes, according to WGME. “I feel confident that we will have our own internal policies for this, and if something goes wrong, we can come back to the table and figure out what to do next."
Residents who opposed the drone program argued that there was too much room for misuse and abuse, despite police assurances to the contrary.
"This is shady technology that, despite what it's proposed to be used for, can easily be weaponized against residents," said one resident Monday, per WMTW.
That mistrust of drones, however, spoke to a possible mistrust of something else, according to another resident at Monday's meeting.
"Basically, to say we can't trust our police department with this tool is basically saying we can't trust our police department with a lot of tools," said one resident. "This is a no-brainer. Drones are part of what we do."
Others objected to the program's cost. One resident argued that the money could be better spent on education and housing.
While officials might not want the department's drone program to get off the ground, Portland police still have access to the devices. Neighboring departments can lend their drones for officers to use in certain situations.
According to the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, 22 law enforcement agencies in the state used drones. Axon Corporation, which would have supplied Portland police with their drones, says roughly 1,400 U.S. police departments use dones.
"Saying whether or not the police department can purchase a drone is not going to make drones go away," said council member Kate Sykes, who supported the proposal. "We can trust our police on this."
