As drones, both large and small, increasingly pose a terrorism threat to big cities like New York, the NYPD is moving for the ability, and right, to take control of an unmanned drone before it can induce damage. At the United Nations, the NYPD showed off the latest of a fleet of drones it uses to keep people safe. However, other people’s drones are increasingly the real direction of the city’s counter-terror planners.
“A drone big or small, even with a modest payload, in an area with the urban density of New York City, you have a gigantic problem on your hands,”
stated NYPD Counterterrorism Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner. An unmanned drone projected from Yemen into the middle of Tel Aviv over the summer killed a man in his sleep. The drone provided with a modest payload of explosives, slipped right via Israel’s defenses.
In New York, police have a wonderful network of detectors, which can pinpoint the site of any unpermitted drone and the person using it. There is also technology to take control of the drone and turn it around away from a group of people, but local police can’t use it. It’s against federal law, leaving New York cops powerless to protect the city against this emerging threat.
Weiner and the NYPD have been lobbying Washington for the right to take control of an unmanned drone before it can cause any damage.
“We desire to open that up and to make sure we have the capability – the authority before the incident happens, we’re not just responding to the calamity,”
Weiner said. Kaz Daughtry, Deputy Commissioner of NYPD Operations, approved.
“God forbid if we see a hostile drone our command centre will spot it, and we should be able to have that ability to take that drone down immediately from our command centre,”
he stated. But they don’t, and only an action of Congress can change that. Only certain specialized teams of federal agents have the lawful authority to take control of a suspicious drone and force it to land.
They are on the ground right now because the United Nations General Assembly is assembling, but when the meetings end, that team will leave New York. For now, the NYPD is on its own.
