28 August 2021

Drone Report #2: Police Reporting Tactics After The Damage is Done When They Could No Longer Deny It

Here's one incident of an air-collision - in off-limit airport space in Toronto - that is part of a bigger story:
> This may sound like an open and transparent response by the York police about its irresponsible drone piloting, but this admission about the incident at the Toronto airport was prompted by the Canadian government's report on the incident, which was released eight days after the accident.
> If this had been a "civilian" drone, the public would have been informed immediately and regularly updated with progress on catching the perp. But this was a cop flight, so the cops acknowledged the flight when they could no longer deny it, and only because they were now the subject of an investigation by another government body.
> The report also points out NavCanada, which oversees the country's civil air navigation system, was not made aware of the drone flight nor the York Police's interest in sending a drone up into the airport's airspace to engage in an investigation.
> It is indeed illegal to fly a drone within three nautical miles of an airport. This ban on operation can only be temporarily lifted with the explicit permission of NavCanada. Obviously this didn't happen. . .
> Supposedly, everyone is just waiting for the TSB to conclude its investigation. And then there will be more waiting while the York Police engages in its own investigation. Possibly in the next few weeks or months, the news will have cycled often enough someone can fire off a press release late in the afternoon just ahead of the next convenient bank holiday.
 
SPOILER ALERT:
Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised.
Maybe someone will get rung up for being completely irresponsible on top of actually violating federal laws.
But I doubt it.
When a citizen does it, nothing can get the police to shut up about it.
But when the police do it, no member of the public can get them can get them to start talking, much less treat their own internal law-breaking as seriously as they treat law-breaking by outsiders.

Filed Under: airplanes, canada, drones, police, surveillance, york regional police

 

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