Police in California arrested a man suspected of burglarizing cars near the Santa Monica Pier over the Fourth of July weekend. And while normally that wouldn’t be a particularly notable event, the story behind it feels like the kind of thing we may start to see more often. Why? The arrest only happened thanks to a drone surveillance program the Santa Monica Police Department first launched in late 2021.
“On July 6th, our drone was returning to the station from a radio call when the pilot decided to go survey the crowd situation near the Pier and beach lots. As he was flying over Lot 1 North (the large lot just north of the Pier), the pilot noticed a male subject wandering through the lot acting suspiciously,” Santa Monica PD said in a press release.
The police statement explains that the drone observed the suspect use a screwdriver and another tool to punch open a lock on a vehicle before climbing inside for about two minutes.
“While he was in the vehicle, the pilot called for officers to respond to the lot,” the statement continued. “While they were on the way, the suspect used the same tactics to break into another vehicle, this time a truck. By this time, the pilot guided responding officers to the correct row in the parking lot. Officers found the suspect in possession of multiple stolen items and placed him under arrest for Vehicle burglary and various other theft crimes.”
Santa Monica PD posted the video to YouTube and Facebook, which shows how everything went down.
Santa Monica’s police drone program, officially known as the “Drone as a First Responder” initiative, has been used in a variety of ways over the past two years, nabbing a home burglar and finding a man who assaulted a 73-year-old woman. But obviously, the program has been controversial given the Orwellian vibes that come with having surveillance drones hovering overhead.
“Widespread police use of drones would be a major change, with implications foreseeable and not,” the ACLU said in a statement last year. “Yet there are strong reasons to believe that such a world may be coming faster than most people realize.”
“It’s important that we don’t sleepwalk into a world of widespread aerial surveillance, that communities think very carefully about whether they want drone surveillance, and, if they decide to permit some operations, put in place guardrails that will prevent those operations from expanding,” the group said.
How close are we to police actually just using the drone to apprehend a suspect? That part isn’t clear. But you can bet it’s not too far off, given the fact that Axon, the maker of taser products, recently acquired Dedrone. Rep. Troy Nehls, a Republican from Texas, recently said in a congressional hearing that he supports putting tasers on drones.
The future is on its way.
