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Seattle Police Want More Drones, Even While Two Sit Unused
v3rgEz writes "The Seattle Police Department is seeking to buy more unmanned aerial vehicles (a.k.a. drones) even as the two it currently owns site warehoused until the city develops a policy for their use, documents released as part of the EFF and MuckRock's Drone Census show. More frightening than the $150,000 price tag? The fact that the drone vendors market the fact that these lease agreements do 'not require voter approval.'" Does your city or town use drones?
Agree that the Drones don't seem to require their vote of approval.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
.......we have superman to look over the streets!
... you can believe in.
I'm not anti-Obama, I'm anti-the-major-parties.
They're all the same shit; both at the State and Federal levels. Neither truly represents their constituents.
Why, yes, almost the entire population is one. The politician needs drones to win an election. Drones that don't ask embarrassing questions and just accept the party line are best.
My wife has a vagina that goes unused but^H^H^Hso I'd like a couple more to play with. What's the issue here?
that they can get a UAV drone for free with a 3 kill streak. They probably didn't know that.
I'm curious why people see this as so much worse than the police helicopters that have been in use for decades. Is it because they cost less money, and thus can be operated more frequently? Or because people associate them with the military?
Better known as 318230.
I can see quite a bit of value for the military use of drones. They put fewer pilots at risk, and it's probably cheaper to train a drone pilot than the a "real" pilot, although I could be wrong.
Using drones by the state department or law enforcement, however, makes less sense. They aren't designed to displace, say, helicopter pilots, and I doubt they'll be doing missile strikes any time soon, so the only purpose they serve is yet another way around those pesky privacy laws.
Well, police departments have started stocking up on all kinds of military and paramilitary gear ever since the federal government started giving away excess or "out of warranty" military equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies. I mean, Texas recently took delivery of a tank. Cost? Gas. And there's pics on the internet of someone being pulled over for speeding by a giant tank.
On one hand, that's recycling and reusing, which is a sound financial principle that reduces operating costs. Given our massive debt load, this kind of thinking should be encouraged. On the other hand, there are disturbing civil rights implications when the police start amassing large quantities of military gear. It's like the old saying "When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." We're seeing increased use of SWAT teams, no-knock search warrants, and violence by our police against the civilian population that simply wasn't present 10 or 15 years ago. I can't help but wonder if it's not just a little because they're being handed military gear by the truckload -- there's no incentive to look for less violent solutions, and that bullets cost less than tazer cartridges.
It's not that civilian law enforcement has access to, or owns, drones, or even that the military is practically giving them away that concerns me... but that there's not much incentive for less-than-lethal weapondry when letal weapons cost less (if anything). It has always cost more to protect something than destroy it. But the police are supposed to be tasked with preserving life -- taking it is a last resort. But when the only tools they're given are all made with the idea of being used against our enemies instead of our peers, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the user's thinking adapts to the tool... not the other way around.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
He probably wants the drones to spy on the contractors digging the new highway 99 tunnel. He's hoping to catch one misstep so - BAM! - he can shut them down!
Or maybe SPD found out there are more woodcarvers than they thought, so they want the ability to monitor them all in case another one goes rogue.
#DeleteChrome
Local records office is full of them. Went there to submit house plans and though I had a go, I found I lacked the skills to even manipulate one to the counter. They seemed to be aimless and uncontrollable which is probably why the local authority had them stored in the one building. I am fairly sure that 150k would be a bargain for a new one. A lot of these were older models and possibly cost as much as that to maintain annually. Fully autonomous advanced models for their day though, so I left fervently hoping that the powers would let them all loose soon during a value-for-money drive.
For the price of one of these drones, you get maybe 2 or 3 cops for one year. Which is more efficient for preventing and/or solving crimes in the public space?
Let's just outsource citizens while we're at it. Who cares about actual people when the objective of the paramilitary complex is to make a sale. Capitalism mixed with armed civil servitude in a budget crisis, what a great idea!
Why buy them before you're going to use them?
This technology is advancing so rapidly that anything you buy *today* will cost half the price in a couple of month's time and be twice as capable.
There's a Moore's law involved here so it seems stupid to tie up capital in something that will be unused and depreciating at such a rapid rate.
Think of all the donuts and coffee they could buy for that money!
$150,000?!?!? P.T. Barnum put it best. Given the actual situation here, which is that the smart snake oil salesman at the draganflyer.com toy store have managed to come up with a way to fleece cities for crappy little radio controlled helis with cameras on them, I'm actually all for this. Maybe I can sell the SPD a reprap machine for $25,000 as a way to fabricate replacement parts for their Draganflyer X6 when they hit a twig and break some parts off it.
We, as concerned budget conscious citizens, point out that these drones can do the work of 10 ordinary beat officers (10,15 whatever the number is irrelevant). This, we continue, allows the county/city/state to reduce the number of officers on payroll. Then we sit back and watch the police union take care of problem for us.
If ya wanna know about the Seattle Police Department ask the black and hispanic community. The black community has for years fought successfully against having a "local" precinct placed in the middle of their neighborhood. Racist pigs. Check Youtube also. The Police have starring roles there.
Well, if you are in Seattle, you only have to worry about the police if you are a minority armed with a sword or knife. In that event, expect to get murdered by cops with guns. I expect the UAVs are probably to locate minorities armed with knives more efficiently.
.22 rifle, you will probably get charged with attempted murder. If you shoot at a UAV, you will get charged with destruction of private property. Yay?
But on the plus side, if you shoot at a police helicopter spying on you sans warrant with a
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
We have like 3 (maybe more for u anal factoid types) Air Force Bases and several airports, and C-5 Galaxies flying overhead all day and all night. Who needs a drone?
... property taxes alone on an American are higher than the annual living wage in many countries. How this can be defies explanation!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
.... after cannabis is legalized in November, but don't spend this money just because you can
Not even a snake oil salesman... a snake oil department!
http://www.draganfly.com/uav-helicopter/draganflyer-x6/
Grant Assistance
The Department of Homeland Security makes grants available to states, local and tribal jurisdictions, and other regional authorities to assist in planning, equipment purchase, training, and exercise needs. Draganfly Innovations will provide grant writing support, consultation, and assistance to qualified agencies.
Contact Kevin, our grant assistance specialist,
Call 1-800-979-9794 or 306-955-9907 (ext. 6111)
They sit on the city council.
Wait until the kids of any age discover how to crash their $100 microdrone Xmas gifts into a Seattle PD drone and bring it down. I am guessing that it will be very difficult for SPD to find them, too.
I have only flown through Seattle and never really spent more than about 6 hours in the city proper (outside the airport), yet I was creeped out by their police as early as 2000 - long before the stories of abuse came out. Here's why:
I'm coming off my flight in Seattle for the first time and waiting for another, when all of a sudden, interrupting the normal announcements, the speakers across the airport are blaring out "DO NOT WORRY, CITIZENS! THE POLICE AND FIRE DEPARTMENTS ARE HERE TO ASSIST YOU." This was over a year before 9/11 so it never occurred to me that some sort of terrorist attack had happened, and as far as I knew, the police in Seattle had done nothing notable to rile up the citizenry. Yet the fact that they felt the need to reassure me every 10 minutes (for 3 hours...) that they're here to help me was the weirdest thing ever.
That is all.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Of course you should not do this, I was just mentioning this as an interesting
scientific fact.
And then make sure the scumbag spends a few years behind bars for accepting advantage.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
as one living within 30min of seattle, this article scares the shit out of me.
Come on mods
I'm not generally antigovernment, but where drones (and the TSA) are concerned, I'm appalled that people are simply sitting back and allowing constant government aerial surveillance to simply go unchecked. Frankly, I hope that people start shooting them down. They have no place outside a war zone. Scott
Finally I can put all the FPS training to use.
So they don't have to pay to train them when they've already been trained.
Therefore you can get UAV pilot numbers up twice as fast for the same training budget.
Operational budget is the cost of continuing to fly the stuff. Not train people.
I guess they have already declared war long ago.
As a proud UK subject (we are NOT citizens), I don't understand the lack of "social belonging" that is shown by so many colonists posters. Is it because by starting with an illegal act and armed uprising the conspiracy of "founding fathers" set a precedent which is still followed by this generation, or is it because a mongrel mix of immigrants from minority cults and diverse cultures has failed to form a cohesive "nation".
The police force should be seen as an integral part of society, and respected as defending the values of it. You claim to be democratic republic, so either you have the laws and constabulary that a majority wants, or you have failed to use your votes to that end.
If you admit that the majority of your society is happy with the current policing policy, but are personally against it, then you should either accept the will of the majority as the cost of the (other) benefits of citizenship (while using your freedom to try and persuade your fellow voters to change that policy), or give up that citizenship and emigrate. If your claim is that the majority of the electorate do not agree with the current policy, then I do not understand how that could come about unless your republic is not democratic.
As a bystander, I acknowledge that I have no right to criticize, but I would like to understand.
nec sorte nec fato
...taxpayers if they are interested in funding more technology for the few to spy on the taxpayers.
Do you want to do whatever the fuck you want, with no regard whatsoever for the wishes of your constituency? Do you want to then get reelected over and over again because only 200 old-ass white people show up at the election to vote straight down the party line?
Sound like paradise? Can't possibly be real?
But wait! It is real! It's local government! Getting in is easy, too! Just wait for an incumbent to die or retire, then take their place in whatever party they came from. Unless you get redistricted, you're now set for life. Congratulations!
Porquoi?
This is just another example of the elites (politicians and certain wealthy individuals) using our tax dollars to ensure we don't take back our country. This is in the same category as the stop and frisk law in New York. Both designed to keep us a little agitated, nervous and good little sheep. And this is happening right under our noses with most folks consenting to these types of actions by these morally corrupt elites.
Drones? Are you fucking kidding me! Didn't the SPD learn anything from the WTO Battle in Seattle or #OccupySeattle? Obviously not. That's OK. I have a 270 degree view from my rooftop here in N Admiral. I can see all of downtown. One question: How long before folks start aiming for them... Don't worry Diaz; I don't own a gun.
My town is far too small to have a drone, but when I lived in downstate Illinois, a town called Quincy had a remote controlled helicopter with FLIR on it back in the early 2000's.They only used it twice that I'm aware of, and that was to find small children who got lost in cornfields.