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Police Recording Confirms NYPD Flew At a Drone and Never Feared Crashing
Jason Koebler (3528235) writes An air traffic control recording confirms that a New York Police Department helicopter flew at a drone hovering near the George Washington Bridge earlier this week—not the other way around. What's more, police had no idea what to charge the drone pilots with, and never appeared to fear a crash with the drone.
Two men were arrested Monday on felony reckless endangerment charges after the NYPD said the two flew their drone "very close" to a law enforcement chopper, causing the police helicopter to take evasive maneuvers. Air traffic control recordings suggest that only happened after the chopper pilot decided to chase the drone.
Two men were arrested Monday on felony reckless endangerment charges after the NYPD said the two flew their drone "very close" to a law enforcement chopper, causing the police helicopter to take evasive maneuvers. Air traffic control recordings suggest that only happened after the chopper pilot decided to chase the drone.
Let's give them MORE taxes and resources to use against us.
So when are reckless endangerment charges going to be filed against the pilot? He intentionally steered his craft towards an object that they admit through their own filings presented a risk of a crash.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Gotta keep those conviction numbers up to justify your DHS endowments. What matter if you destroy a few lives in the process?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Just when they say someone fell down the stairs, or resisted arrest. I wonder what the penalty will be for lying...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
helicopters ride on a LOT of air. the cops could have just gotten over the drone and slapped it down.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
/// Drone hovers lazily next to the river ///
NYPD: It's coming right for us! *BANG BANG BANG*
Every drone is an imminent threat.
Sounds to me like the police need to seize those ATC recordings as part of their investigation into this incident. When the police have the evidence in their possession about what happened, then they'll let us know what evidence they want to let us see in accordance to what verdict they want the outcome to have.
Anything else would be prejudicial and could not be supported as factual evidence from a free world.
I guess every story has at least one.
No, you twit. They're bad guys for lying about it.
Charge them for what they did do, not make shit up about what they didn't do. This isn't hard.
No, they're bad guys because they falisified a fucking police report.
Have we seen an instance where they have not lied to cover any of their questionable actions in the last decade or so?
No, the local cop saw someone speeding, chased him down, and then charged the person with drug possession after tossing a dime bag in the back seat after pulling them over.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
How do these rules deal with the possibility that you cannot gauge the distance? For an object in midair the only available measure of distance is the size of the object. A drone is much smaller than any object you're usually encountering in steady flight (another helicopter, say). Hence you're going to significantly overestimate the distance. Or so would be my thought. Please educate.
There is no information that the drone tried to ram the helicopter, you are making that up. What information we do have indicates that the helicopter rushed the drone then gave chase when it left the area. From this the police charged the people with reckless endangerment because their helicopter got close to the drone. If there was reckless endangerment it was on the part of the police.
Baring other details being released IMO this isn't much different than the police arresting photographers photographing them for wiretapping or violating their privacy and other such nonsense. The police created this situation deliberately so they could charge the guys. Not much different than the video's of them screaming stop resisting while they beat someone unconsciousness that isn't resisting.
The cops who falsified their reports are going to jail, right? If I am found falsely testifying under oath, that's my sentencing. What? They'll get off with a slap on the wrist and *MAYBE* a week's paid vacation? I wonder why citizens distrust police in this country.
So would flying them over a large body of mostly unoccupied water be ok? Like perhaps a river that's 2/3 of a mile wide?
It is legal because there is no Law against it.
Everything is legal that is not prohibited by a Law.
Laws are a blacklist, not a whitelist, just like the Constitution is a blacklist of things government is not allowed to do, not a whitelist of things Citizens ARE allowed to do.
No, they're the bad guys because they (to use the car analogy) saw someone slightly speeding, pulled in front of them, jammed on their brakes in such a way that the guy couldn't avoid crashing into them, and wrote it up in the police report that the guy started chasing them and crashed into them unprovoked.
In short, they lied on the police report to make it seem as though the drone operators were at fault when the police were. Were the drone operators doing something wrong? Possibly. But if they were, arrest them/charge them with what they actually did wrong, not what the police did wrong to come up with something to charge them with.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Filing a false report is a very serious charge as a civilian -- it should be even worse when a couple of cops do it. Lets take a look at this, false arrest, filing false reports, just generally conduct unbecoming, big payout to those falsely arrested.My hat is off to those folks over at the FAA. We can count on the FAA to be honorable and straight shooting, about the only Federal Agency that still cares about doing their job right.
One of the helo officers claims this thing went from 0-2000 ft in 2 seconds. I'll believe that out of a model rocket, or maybe a Diamond Dust with a tuned pipe, but not out of a quadcopter loaded down with a camera. This officer was likely exaggerating what he saw for effect.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
The US Constitution is not a black list it is a white list. It is a document stating which powers The People give the government. This idea has been lost on many people, and I believe is the source of many of the problems we see.
You're a god damn idiot, trying to tie this to sex education in schools and labor unions. Not everything wrong in the world is connected to the handful of issues that literally define your identity. An identity made for you by the likes of the Heritage Foundation, Freedomworks, and Americans For Prosperity ( and dozens more ).
I swear, for most of my life I've tried to be gentle when it comes to politics and religion, but look what that's got us. People like you who troll forums and try to find every opportunity to regurgitate the propaganda you're too stupid to see through.
Next time you feel like stretching the current topic into a place where you can insert a not-so-witty, not-so-clever comment on big-guvment or unions, just SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
What law were they breaking? And why weren't they charged with that? Why did the police lie so that they could charge them with something else?
The drone pilots may have been legally in the wrong, but that does not justify the police lying.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I'm listening to the recording of the radio communications. The drone was over 2000' altitude. At first, the cops in the helicopter aren't sure what they're seeing, and they first think it's a fast-moving aircraft in a vertical climb, over the East River. It has red and green lights, like aircraft do. They ask La Guardia ATC radar what they're seeing. ATC isn't seeing it on radar. Then they get closer and see it's a drone of some kind. In a few minutes it's over the George Washington Bridge, miles from the East River.
Once the guys who were operating them were caught, the cops are on the air discussing what to charge them with. The cops on the ground call them "tiny little toys". There's some discussion of "if it's over 1000', it's reckless". The cops aren't quite sure what to charge them with.
The FAA can certainly have them prosecuted. They were operating a drone in class B controlled airspace. That's serious, and dumb. Here's the New York City airspace chart. (Yes, there's actually a VFR corridor over the Hudson River; it's permitted to fly along the river at up to 1300' altitude. There used to be one over the East River, too, but after some jock slammed a light plane into a Manhattan apartment building by going too fast there, it was closed to VFR traffic. These drone operators didn't stay in the VFR corridor, and probably had no clue where it was anyway.)
The drone guys were lucky. LGA has two intersecting runways, 4-22 and 13-31. The one in use depends on wind direction. The approach to 13 and the departure from 31 are over where the drones were operating. LGA happened to be using 4-22 that day. If the other runway had been in use, there would have been a large plane in the area ever 45 seconds or so.
+1 nicely stated
People have been killed by remote controlled model airplanes an several occasions
In Australia the doctrine is Police do not give chase, EVER! If the suspect's car starts speeding, they have strict protocols in place to back off, radio in the situation and follow from a safe distance
Studies have shown that chasing only escalates the danger to property and the public. So the correct response, is to radio in for support and do everything to protect life and property. They can't really outrun a radio.
There was a recent, going back a few years now, chase that took five days from when they first attempted to stop a car, to the actual capture. There were gaps, but police had photos, videos, registration plates and descriptions of the suspects. They knew it was only a matter of time before the suspects would be caught.
And guess what, not a single shot was fired
the Constitution is a blacklist of things government is not allowed to do, not a whitelist of things Citizens ARE allowed to do.
I get your sentiment, and support it, but I must quibble on a minor point: The main body of the Constitution is a whitelist of duties the government is charged with, and the means for doing so. The first ten amendments, The Bill of Rights, is a blacklist of things the government is forbidden from doing without a constitutional amendment. The 9th and 10th amendments specify that the Bill of Rights, being a blacklist, is not to be interpreted as a whitelist of citizen rights.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Helicopters might not be nearly as robust as you assume. They might in fact be very touchy, and prone to a wide variety of damage.
And what if that down-draft flips the drone over and it catches an eddy? It could easily get blown up by air being forced down, even if most of the time it would get blown down.
If you're assaulted by the police, they'll most likely charge you with assault.
Just because there are no law that forbids flying RC aircraft over a populated area
But there is. 14CFR91 is the basic regulation of aviation. It applies to:
No exemption for unmanned aircraft. And aircraft are defined as:
That includes "drones". As for the "VFR separation rules" some others keep mentioning, here it is:
Now, if the drone operator did a 180 to fly back over the helicopter, then the drone pilot broke this rule. Was he breaking any other rules prior to that?
The bridge is a pretty tall structure, and I think New York City constitutes a congested area. If the drone was not higher than the bridge by at least 1000 feet, he's breaking this rule.
What about the helicopter? Continuing:
Since the helicopter pilot was in contact with ATC, one can assume that the FAA was ok with this.
In short, helicopters have a different set of rules than other aircraft, and drones are covered by exiting regulations.
Just as there are no explicit law text forbidding reversing in ones car in a parking space -
I really can't figure out what you are referring to here. What is "reversing in ones car"? Sitting backwards? Or parking on-street opposite the flow of traffic?
The US was beginning to move in that direction several years back. My memory is a bit foggy - it seems like California was leading the way, and maybe a couple of New England states. Time frame would have been the latter half of the '90's. Then, 9/11/01 happened, and cops were given carte blanche. At some point, fleeing and evading the police was made a felony, so that a cop could just shoot to kill anyone who attempted to flee.
IMHO, giving chase is often justified - but no one can justify chasing a bad guy into and through a school zone, or a hospital zone at insane speeds.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You are absolutely right. I should have thought a bit more about my comment, because it is absolutely both a white list and a black list. Thanks for pointing that out!
Do these drones keep a log or recording of their flight path? That would be interesting to present at the trial.
Even under the FAA's proposed new stricter definition, what these guys were flying was NOT a drone. It was a model aircraft.
Ãoe(1) capable of sustained flight in the atmosphere; (2) flown within visual line of sight of the person operating the aircraft; and (3) flown for hobby or recreational purposes.Ã
As a model aircraft, it is outside of FAA flight rules. (The FAA published suggested guidelines, but these do not carry any enforcement weight as they are only recommendations.)
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing for money.