Posted on 03/06/2023 9:58:29 AM PST by nickcarraway
After the Alameda County Board of Supervisors stonewalled then-Sheriff Gregory Ahern’s requests to acquire two unmanned drones for his agency amid public outrage, the county’s top cop quietly dipped into his own $236 million annual budget and purchased them anyway.
Ahern scooped up a pair of AirCover Integrated Solutions’ QuadRotor QR425s for $97,000, using a federal Homeland Security grant and county taxpayer money — almost two years after community members testified for hours against the acquisition. In the process, his office in 2014 became the first California law enforcement agency to publicly acquire a sophisticated surveillance drone.
“There’s nothing secret about what we’ve done,” Ahern told reporters at the time. “This is how our department acquires equipment on a regular basis.”
It’s not the only one.
Remarkably, it wasn’t until Assembly Bill 481 became law in 2022 that every California policing agency was required to publicly report their once-murky inventories, adopt policies for deployment, and ask elected officials for explicit permission before obtaining any new hardware. Agencies are also required to report annually how they used their stockpiles over the past year, with the first of those reports due in May.
In advance of those reports, the Bay Area News Group surveyed local police agencies to get a snapshot of a policing approach that the Legislature found “adversely impacts the public’s safety and welfare, including increased risk of civilian deaths, significant risks to civil rights, civil liberties, and physical and psychological well-being, and incurment of significant financial costs.”
“We know that the purpose of having military weaponry is not to keep us safe,” said James Burch, with Oakland’s Anti Police-Terror Project, an activist organization that works to reduce community reliance on local law enforcement agencies. “It’s to terrorize our communities and to increase capacity for surveillance and control.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailydemocrat.com ...
I guess they need this level of weaponry to deal with traditional Catholics.
Are there manned drones?
Yes, helicopters.
Methinks Mister Burch (he/him/XY-Chromosome) has the local police mixed up with the ATF, DHS, FBI, and IRS.
My somewhat conservative county had a lefty sheriff who was fixated on having a helicopter. He went around the process to buy one.
It partially cost him his job. The first thing his replacement did was sell the helicopter. State police and the next county over have airships to cover as needed by contract.
The police are the standing army the Founders warned us about.
Posse commitatus workaround. Patriot act ensuring the department is
F Ed has better weapons than citizens.
Support the thin blue line on this at you’re own peril.
My town has two helicopters. No idea why - no other town in Connecticut has any at all.
Well, we do have the Sikorsky plant here!
There is definitely a purpose to having air capabilities but it’s no such that every town or county needs them.
My state has a state police medevac fleet. A friend of mine commands one of the units.
They do a great job with life flights and SAR. I assume they are also on call for law enforcement purposes.
Great one!
FMC used to have a test track in Santa Clara (next to the San Jose airport). Saw Bradleys airborn on occasion. 80’s
There must be ordinances against that now. Pun intended.
I have an armored car and it’s fun to drive. It hasn’t harmed anyone since it was used in Vietnam during the war….. The local police think it’s cool, nobody freaks out over it. Must be California types are easily excited.
[I guess they need this level of weaponry to deal with traditional Catholics. ]
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/drone
See definition #3
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