Just Keep it in Mesa County,,,,, Orr Look to the skies in Mesa County for the police drone frontier By Nancy Lofholm The Denver Post GRAND JUNCTION — From inside a nondescript white van — except for two odd antennae poking from the top — an officer with his eyes glued to a dashboard computer screen issues commands. Left. Right. Pitch up. Pitch down. Ready for takeoff. Another officer is at the ready, cradling what looks like a grown-up toy. It has 3-foot-long wings tipped with neon green and a carbon-fiber fuselage with a camera that swivels on its nose. Its tiny engine emits a crackling noise that sounds like bacon frying. The officer takes a few loping steps and flings it into the sky over a goathead-studded field in an area where an elderly man has gone missing. As it gains altitude and buzzes off into the blue, whoop-whoop-whoops erupt. Its another successful launch of the Mesa County Sheriffs Departments fixed-wing drone. And its another pioneering step in the use of what law enforcement officials prefer to call unmanned aerial vehicles. Mesa County is the only law enforcement agency in Colorado and one of only two in the country actively using these devices — with the blessing of the Federal Aviation Administration — to aid in search and rescues, to help reconstruct crime scenes and apprehend suspects, to investigate deadly accidents, and to get a helpful birds-eye view of fires. Aerial photographs taken from the drones have thus far been submitted as evidence in three homicide cases. The department chalked up a first recently when it received FAA permission to create a crime-scene video that was accepted as evidence in a jury trial in a neighboring county. It did help to see it in its entirety rather than in still shot after still shot, said juror Jeannine McElveen of Gunnison, who had no idea the video broke new ground. The drones also have been used to assist when a fire gutted a historic church and when a gas leak exploded a house. They have been used to map out fatal accident scenes and create 3-D images of homicide settings. When it comes to flying the skies with law enforcement drones, as well as navigating the complicated and evolving regulations covering their nonmilitary use, Mesa County has become the go-to source for departments around the country. Mesa Countys fixed-wing Falcon and its baby copter Draganflyer have been featured in National Geographic, Time magazine and drone trade journals in the past year. The phone rings daily in the office of the departments unmanned aerial-vehicle program director, Ben Miller, with how-do-you-do-it questions. We are helping to write the rules. We have been telling the FAA what works and what doesnt work, Miller said. More than 80 other law enforcement agencies around the country have applied for FAA approval to operate drones, but most are waiting for the technology to improve and for the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 to carry out a mandate that will integrate unmanned aircraft into the National Airspace system by this time in 2015. In some places, there is a public perception of nonmilitary drones being just one more way for the government to spy on citizens. Across the state on the Eastern Plains, the town of Deer Trail has floated the idea of giving residents permits to shoot unmanned aerial vehicles out of the sky. But in Mesa County, where the drones regularly fly, they are generally viewed as a benevolent law enforcement tool. Were delighted with the drones over here. We find them quite beneficial, said Lois Dunn-Susuras, chair of the Mesa County Republicans. Miller said education has been key. The department has information about the drones and their uses on its website. And when the curious stop to ask questions during drone flights, the operators oblige. The Grand Forks County Sheriffs Department in North Dakota is the only other local law enforcement agency in the country with an operational program. In Colorado, FAA-approved drones are at the University of Colorado, which uses them for gathering meteorological data and agricultural surveys, and the U.S. Air Force Academy, which does drone testing at the Piñon Canyon Military Operations Area near Trinidad. Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957, nlofholm@denverpost or twitter/nlofholm Read more: Look to the skies in Mesa County for the police drone frontier - The Denver Post denverpost/news/ci_24347100/look-skies-mesa-county-police-drone-frontier#ixzz2iHwc2QOg Read The Denver Posts Terms of Use of its content: denverpost/termsofuse Follow us: @Denverpost on Twitter | Denverpost on Facebook
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 18:33:02 +0000
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