Drone Drops Drugs Onto Ohio Prison Yard

Okian Warrior sends a report from CNN about an incident last week at a prison in Mansfield, Ohio, where a brawl broke out after a drone dropped a package of drugs into the prison yard. Prison staff had no idea at the time what caused ~75 inmates to gather and fight, but surveillance tapes clearly showed a drone hovering over the yard and dropping a package that turned out to contain tobacco, marijuana, and heroin. A spokesperson for the prison said this was not the first time they've had an incident involving a drone, but they wouldn't go into specifics.

Comments

Re:Hmmm

[neilo_1701D]

Even with the relatively high value of the cargo, it is still hard to see how the person who delivered it could reasonably expect to be paid for it.

Doesn't have to be a payment. "Deliver this package into the jail, and we don't hurt your wife / children / etc". Coercion can be a wonderful motivator, too.

Makes me think about North/South Korea border

[KatchooNJ]

I wonder how long it will be before someone tries to fly a private drone into North Korea. No doubt they will try to shoot that sucker down, but this somehow made me think of that situation.

Re:Makes me think about North/South Korea border

[ponraul]

The DPRK already flies "drones" with cameras over the border. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/wo...

Re:Makes me think about North/South Korea border

[StikyPad]

I wonder how long it will be before drones are more heavily regulated than firearms.

Re:Hmmm

[gstoddart]

Even with the relatively high value of the cargo, it is still hard to see how the person who delivered it could reasonably expect to be paid for it.

You don't watch many movies, do you? Or missed the whole thing where the Mexican cartel guy had a tunnel excavated under the prison and "nobody noticed"?

As much as it sounds like a Hollywood fantasy, it's not like people in prison have no contact with the outside world, and don't have a lot of time on their hands to come up with new ways to work around the system.

Hell, you could do a Tarantino plot about the shit you could drop into a prison yard to create unrest.

Hell, have one drone drop in a bag of weapons and have another with a long zoom televise the the gladiatorial games which ensue.

It really was only a matter of time until drugs and other stuff started getting dropped into prisons. People have been doing low tech versions of this for decades, if not centuries.

Prisoners are a capative audience...

[__aaclcg7560]

Must be a test run of Amazon's new delivery service. I hope that the home service delivers to the door and not drop packages willy-nilly in the yard.

Can we please stop...

[Anonymous Coward]

...calling hobby kit remote controlled planes 'drones?'

Please?

Re:Can we please stop...

[TWX]

RC Aircraft isn't as ominous sounding as Drone. So no, as long as the word brings ratings to the news stations they'll continue to use it.

Re:Can we please stop...

[Spy Handler]

Drones are to RC aircraft what dogs are to wolves. They are almost the same and have 99% identical DNA, but there are a few key characteristics that set them apart.

First, drones require little to no flying skills on the part of the operator. Think RC helicopters from >10 years ago, very difficult to fly and maintain (especially piston-engine choppers, which you had to have if you wanted any kind of serious flying capability). You had to be an expert to not only fly one, but also build and service it. Nowadays you buy a quadcopter and it's ready to go, literally right out of the box with zero setup or adjustments. Modern electronics and gyros means you need no skill whatsoever to fly; just push the throttle and hold it and it hovers.

Second, some drones have autonomous capability. With built-in GPS and advanced algorithms, they fly themselves. You punch in pre-programmed waypoints and the drone will fly there, loiter and drop a payload or take pictures or whatever, and fly back to you. It's not remote controlled anymore.

Third, "drone" is easier to say than "RC model aircraft", which is a mouthful and requires explaining what RC stands for if you're writing a news article.

Re:Can we please stop...

[drinkypoo]

Can you please stop starting comments in the subject line?

Anyway, how do you know that it wasn't a drone? A $250 plane, $50 battery and about $400 worth of assorted electronics including a Pixhawk autopilot module, a lidar, and an airspeed detector will get you 30+ minutes of flight time out of a fixed wing aircraft which can definitely carry and subsequently drop a cargo weighing a pound — and handle its own takeoff and landing. Is that enough like a drone for you? Remote telemetry costs more.

Re:Hmmm

[wbr1]

I have been to prison. The payment occurs other ways. Could be mailed.. could be visiting room hand off. Could be a guard taking the money out for a cut. Very rare is extortion of someone on the outside. This ain't hollywood.

Re:Hmmm

[NatasRevol]

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

Drop small packets of heroin all over the yard. From 30 different drones. All at once.

Just for the LOLz.

Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[XxtraLarGe]

They can't even keep drugs out of the prisons WITHOUT drone delivery. The entire war on drugs has cost the U.S. untold billions of dollars and what do we have to show for it? We'd be much better off as a country if everything was legalized and the money currently spent on drug war law enforcement/court system/prison system was spent on drug rehab for those who actually developed a problem.

Re:Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[cyberchondriac]

I agree for the most part; maybe not quite so much where the really hard stuff like heroin is concerned, and their addiction has led them to commit violent crimes. The war on weed is certainly stupid, as are the ridiculous restrictions on sudafed because of meth cookers.

Re:Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[Ichijo]

As alcohol has proven, most people use drugs responsibly because there are social and economic pressures to do so.

Except when cities encourage irresponsible alcohol use.

Re:Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[ai4px]

except when the taxing authorities get too greedy! Taxes on cigarettes in NY cause people to smuggle them in, and in the case of one man selling singles, the cost was his life. Making a coveted thing legal is great and I wholeheartedly agree. Thinking you can tax it at a high rate is really no different than making it illegal... the result is a black market.

Re:Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[SydShamino]

I live on a residential block behind a few bars. If they had less parking, there would be more people parking in our neighborhood. We got the city to create a residential parking zone, with towing for non-residents, but it's only for one block; drunks could just park deeper into the neighborhood and walk a little further. And the thing about drunks walking home at 1 AM from a bar is that they are obnoxiously loud, like to urinate on whatever they happen to be near, and occasionally toss a brick through a car window just for grins.

So no thanks, I'd rather have mandatory parking on site. If you want to stop drunks from driving, catch them as they pull out of the parking lot. Or build cities to better support public transportation, and have that transportation run late enough into the night to service the evening crowd. Or legalize Uber and let their drivers///suckers deal with puke in their cars.

Re:Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[The-Ixian]

If you could alter meth to be less of a "keep you up for days" thing, the judgment would be a lot less impaired. The impairment comes from lack of sleep and the hallucinations that brings.

Tone down the super amphetamine aspect but leave the enhanced sexual pleasure aspect and you have yourself a real drug there...

Re:Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[alvinrod]

Actually, you still see benefits when decriminalizing harder drugs as Portugal has done.

It would be far better to spend the massive amounts of money it takes to house non-violent drug offenders in prisons on rehabilitating them in environments where it is cheaper to do so and won't make them want more drugs. Additionally, legalizing these drugs means that they generate taxable revenue which can be spent on rehabilitation programs and reduce the amount of money that needs to be spent on drug enforcement and housing prisoners, which has a nice side effect of allowing law enforcement to spend time dealing with other crime.

Re:Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[Lumpy]

Or how about cops get off their asses and do their jobs and hang around the parking lot. Spot drunkard dave walking to his car, stop him.

Take away their cars and guns and force them to be civil servants they took an oath to be. So few cops get killed in the line of duty each year there is NO reason for them to be armed at all times.

Re:Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[drinkypoo]

Take away their cars and guns and force them to be civil servants they took an oath to be. So few cops get killed in the line of duty each year there is NO reason for them to be armed at all times.

I don't think the problem is the guns, I think the problem is the mentality, and hiring people with that mentality on purpose. And that mentality is that "civilians" (like the cops are, though they think otherwise) are a lower form of life.

Re:Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[swb]

maybe not quite so much where the really hard stuff like heroin is concerned,

The problem with that is that from a pharmacology perspective, opiates aren't even as dangerous as alcohol. You can be on a maintenance dose of opiates for the rest of your life -- it's actually the preferred treatment for addiction via methadone or buprenorphine maintenance.

The problem with opiate use usually involves IV injection and addiction to the "rush" that comes after injection and the need to consume increasing amounts to get that rush. Combine this with illicit supplies of unknown potency and you end up with overdoses.

Alcohol is nasty, toxic stuff, but we (mostly, if you ignore the alcoholics, drunk drivers, domestic violence, the college students that die from alcohol poisoning...) manage to make it work because we have a couple of millenniums worth of experience with it and have elaborate laws, social customs and norms that basically keep most people from getting hopelessly addicted or dying.

There's no good reason we couldn't teach people how to use opiates on demand and avoid physical dependence.

I even question why it would even be bad if someone was addicted to some maintenance-type dose of an opiate. We expect people to take anti-depressants basically forever, yet no one crows over how "addicted" they are to them, yet these are people who take a drug every day because it makes them feel better. Why would it *matter* whether the drug they took was fluoxetine or oxycodone? It's not like fluoxetine is side-effect free, either.

Re:Another indication of the failed war on drugs

[fafalone]

It's sad the people still have this breakdown in logic and their emotions overwhelm them when it comes to "seriously dangerous" drugs like heroin or crack. Just what part of the problem with these drugs do you think is ameliorated by prohibition? If anything, it's even more critical that these drugs are legalized:
-Cocaine and heroin represent the vast majority of global organized crime and related violence. The exact same points about never stopping other substances apply even harder here. Doesn't matter how "bad" the drugs are, you're never ever going to stop global organized crime from reaping billions upon billions of dollars through prohibition.
-Locally, it's these drugs that are responsible for the large majority of secondary crimes against non-involved parties, such as robbery and property crimes, to fund addictions. People aren't robbing and stealing for their pot or MDMA habits, which I assume aren't "really" hard by your standards. These crimes aren't committed because of the drugs inherent biological response pattern in an addict (unlike alcohol, which DOES make violent behavior more likely), they're committed because prohibition results in a cost structure that puts maintaining a habit very difficult without wealth or crime. Alcohol and cigarettes are cause dependence just as strong in an addict, and I guarantee if an addiction to those cost hundreds of dollars per day, you'd see the exact same related violence.
-Even when it comes to "really hard" drugs, there's simply no evidence that legalization would lead to increased addiction, because do you really think there's thousands and thousands of people just waiting to go out and get addicted to heroin if only it were available from a doctor or pharmacist? It's legal to possess all drugs in Portugal, and they have no such usage spike. When you redirect money towards education and treatment and provide an environment where there's no fear of arrest for admitting you're a user, usage rates actually drop.
-With the financial and other aspects of acquisition, addicts are unable to hold jobs for a variety of reasons, and as heroin maintenance programs in other countries have shown, a steady cheap legal supply returns these people to functional, contributing members of society that can hold down jobs. And obviously there's health benefits associated with a legal pharmaceutical supply like OD prevention the most well known.
-People like to talk about "the children"... what kind of world do you want for yours if they wind up experimenting? A felony where getting caught twice or violating probation requirements means a lifetime of stigma. Interacting with dangerous criminal gangs to get an unknown product. Prison. Stigma attached to getting help. There is ZERO evidence that if we just crack down harder we're suddenly going to win the war on drugs and heroin, meth, and coke will vanish from the world, so no matter how much you wish that were the case, you're stuck with the reality that drugs are everywhere and kids experiment. If my kids made that mistake, I'd want them to get a safe product from a medical professional and be provided with non-abstinence-based education and have stigma-free access to well funded help and not be labeled a criminal and tossed into a cage and branded for life if they get caught. What do you want for yours? "a drug free world" is NOT an option.

Re:Hmmm

[mark-t]

And with that, you then just call the cops.... if someone is actually capable of hurting your wife and children if you don't do what they say, they are also capable of doing so even if you do... The reality is that in that situation, you are completely powerless to determine your family's future, as much as one might wish it to be otherwise, and the smartest thing you can do is get help, if you can summon it. If someone is willing to be so morally bankrupt as to do such a thing in the first place, why would you think they should be somehow morally obligated to be telling you the truth about not hurting your family if you do what they tell you?

I realize that the emotional pressure in such a situation can be enormous, but in actuality, maintaining a clear and rational mind in such circumstances is still ultimately your best course of action.

Re:EMP

[The-Ixian]

Hmmm... I hear sound waves are also effective against drones...

contraband cellphones are persistant problem

[peter303]

They always seem to find some in comphrehensive sweeps. Smaller old flip phones hide better. Getting them charged can be an issue in some prisons. So I presume outside communication is universal.

I remember a wardens petitioning the FCC for a jam-zone. But the FCC universally denes such requests, Plus the legal workers like using their phones anywhere.

Re:contraband cellphones are persistant problem

[wbr1]

Many prisons are starting to use stingray type devices. If they cannot jam, they will track. Enough data points from called persons will easily track down the potential owners of a phone.

http://www.ibtimes.com/new-tec...

I was never a gang member, but due to my background I was the 'fix-it' guy. See if you can make a soldering gun out of pencil and an AC adapter. Then use it to desolder parts from devices to fix others...

I was a fair hand at this trade, and because it was pretty harmless, most of the guards ignored it. I was however trusted, and often phones came to me to either fix a busted charger/charge port, or for flip phones with a hard to conceal charging base, wire in a different charging mechanism. Those were fun jobs. Far better than replacing the thermal fuse in a fan coil.

Re:Hmmm

[tlhIngan]

It really was only a matter of time until drugs and other stuff started getting dropped into prisons. People have been doing low tech versions of this for decades, if not centuries.

Heck, I'm surprised prisons haven't started putting up nets to prevent this. Especially after a helicopter (full size) was forced to land in the middle of a prison yard in Quebec so two inmates can escape.

Drones mirror the Internet

[kheldan]

Just like the Internet, they're a wonderful, innovative, imaginative idea originally developed by inspired, educated minds, created with the full intention of being something helpful to mankind.. and just like the Internet, are now being twisted and perverted into something to aid and abet acts of stupidity and criminal activity.

I like these precise little drones, I think they're pretty damned cool, really, especially since I saw the earlier videos of whole fleets of them, flying in complex, dynamic, ever-changing formations, like some aerial court dance; it made me wonder what incredible things can we do with this? But then people had to get their hands on them, and do stupid things with them, and now criminal things with them. Now they're going to be on a downward slide towards being illegal for the average person to own, or at least so highly regulated that you may as well not bothers. Nice going, people, great job fucking up something cool for 99.99% of us yet again.

Re:Radio jamming needed

[The-Ixian]

I guess the low-tech solution would be to just cover the open yards with some kind of mesh.

Re:EMP

[jklovanc]

Is it possible to fashion an 'EMP gun' to at least direct the majority of the pulse at a target?

And then that pulse hits parts of the security system and it goes offline.

Maybe just a jammer to interrupt either the GPS signal (or more likely) the remote control signal.

It is against FCC rules to deploy radio wave jammers. The FCC won't even allow prisons to jam cell phones.

Re:Radio jamming needed

[plover]

Aside from the illegality of jamming radio frequencies, drones can be programmed to guide themselves to and from a destination without requiring an operator to fly them via real-time radio control. Jamming would be a very expensive solution that would be completely irrelevant before it was even deployed.

Re:Hmmm

[digsbo]

They don't claim to offer drone drops to the prison.

Re:Hmmm

[davester666]

sure. go to the FBI with that story: "Some guys I never met before, and don't have a picture of or know their name, came to my house and threatened to kill my family if I don't do this illegal task. I want witness relocation".

your savings will run out before you get it. and you probably will die [either of natural or unnatural causes] before you get it.

Re:Hmmm

[Outta_the_way_peck!]

Any drone capable of handling the kickback from a gun is going to be easily spotted.

Re:Welcome to Club Med...

[barc0001]

You mean "healthcare", "lodging" and "food". Haven't been paying attention to the medical neglect in the prison system I presume? Or the roach infested prisons, and the prisons handing out green bologna sandwiches and moldy bread?

It's like the good old days from a Dickens novel in some cases.