NYPD will deploy drones to respond to 911 calls in 5 NYC precincts: officials

Due to the dense packing of people in NYC, there are very few places that allow you to have any kind of open flame, including in a barbecue or grill. I think the requirement is that your grill has to be at least 10 feet from any flammable material, including building walls, other furniture, and pretty much anything not made of concrete or metal. You can't do it on a terrace or a balcony either. Almost nowhere in NYC do you have a 10 foot radius with nothing flammable in it.

Bingo!

I do love the very imaginative scenarios posted to this thread. Drones and chasing dangerous suspects! Drones gathering evidence and filming the crime scene! These are great. In reality, the police are always going to favor enforcing things with high revenue/effort ratios, which don't put their own skins at risk. Essentially, milking non-violent people who can be fined for something and are likely to pay the fine, while ignoring violent people and thieves. If someone was getting robbed in front of me and I was standing there filming it, cops would probably ignore the robbery and go after me for "interfering with an investigation" or something.

unfortunately, completely agree.. here in the US West Coast in a high crime urban area.. seemingly half the adult population are involved in stupid, confrontational, selfish and haphazardly illegal actions every day of the year. Then a uniformed duo rolls up, no one will talk to them. The boundary line between "thats my important-thing-I-want" and "where is my sh*" is impossible to determine between argumentative and low-language skill adults.. meaning your car, bike or phone (as noted above). Secondly, small-time people discover that they can call law enforcement on people they don't like, and law enforcement figures this out due to years of experience and responds with no-responding.

Meanwhile, a legal, certified and identifiable citizen with stable contact info, decide to have a wood fire. The politically conscious local city council has decided that due to air quality, it costs FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS for a ticket for a wood fire. Tickets cost pennies to issue.. bingo - revenue source. Repeat as desired.. there is a lot of desire.

More than half of cities in this part of the country went bankrupt due to drastically reduced local sales tax. Their primary financial liabilities are uniformed services, mainly police and fire.. If the uniforms can make their own money, saves some ugly confrontations from the union at election time! more anecdotes possible..

There is one hundred percent chance that the outcome described above is happening with new drone remote services IMHO

Seriously.

This is a new way to harass. And it is illegal ("gross misdemeanor" in WA, at the minimum) to do so.

A whack with a baseball bat, a slammed door, or even a good punch will take out the drone, though. I suspect that you're right and the intent is to be able to pursue people who are on foot with a helicopter-like device.

Yeah, good luck with that

Maybe in the short run but I think you underestimate surveillance tech firms' ability to extract revenue from governments.

If this technology proves even a little bit useful, I expect that ten years from now, cities will be spending double digit percentages of their police department budget on per-unit subscription fees for these drones.

The political and economic incentives for this type of technology are strong in a state without surveillance oversight.

Especially if there's additional revenue potential for the city ( think traffic enforcement and license plate readers)

Next we'll be seeing ai powered antisocial behavior monitoring as a service for live events. I simply cannot wait /s

How so? How are drones supposed to arrest people?

Do you understand the current differential between NYPD capability and action taken? You need to understand that NYPD and cops in general aren’t primarily challenged in their service by their means to execute on it (though you can also find measures suggesting so, and thus needing more funding and powers)

For ex they put a load of cops in the subway system, at huge cost, and the results were roughly the same level of crime given overall crime rates falling (and falling just slightly), with no evidence available of increased presence preventing crime, seemingly no impact, except for catching more fare evasion (recouping single digit percent of cost of the program). It was celebrated in gov and by the police as a success and they’re continuing their program. They use the program to divert a proliferation of these fare evasion cops stationed all over the city to other things like emergent protest suppression outside the subways.

To talk about “zero second” extreme case police response capabilities.

The only things stopping the NYPD from sending an officer to any location in the city within ~90 seconds are their own cowardice and laziness.

The NYPD has an incredible level of capability to do things. They just don't think your life (or your stuff) is worth using it.

Also, the NYPD's average response time is now over 15 minutes.

You mean potential positives. It's not difficult to imagine police doing all sorts of amazing things. But the reality of costs and safety keeps those ideas in fantasy land.

In your example, costs and safety would mandate that the 90 seconds would first be spent determining whether an officer is needed then an additional 5-8 minutes will be needed to respond. There will be fewer beat officers as they will need to hire a crew of drone operators.

New police tech always follows a pattern. They say it is to improve existing proceedures, to make them faster/safer/better, but in the end the tech breaks free of old paradigms and gets used in the "bad" ways everyone predicted. Tasers were meant to be used only instead of guns, but now are used on non-threatening people who simply refuse orders. Speed/traffic cameras were to free up officers for other tasks, but cops do as much traffic enforcement as ever before. The cameras are used by companies for revenue. Drones are pitched as being the faster responce, going ahead of officers on foot. In a few years they will be the only response. They will be hovering outside our bedroom windows scouting for wrongdoing.

It is the tech cops dont want, the stuff we must force upon them such as dash/body cameras, that tends to promote the public good in the long run.

But shouldn't you still deploy a police officer at the same time in case it is actually something?

If you send a drone and wait for a dispatch, you wasted several minutes of time just to make sure there is something.

Ultimately what matters most is what incentives the police have. If they have bad incentives, fancy new tech won't actually be used for public benefits

Perhaps a healthy society doesn't have as much crime, criminality, prisons, mass shootings, overdose epidemics, homelessness, or inequality.

Maybe, I dunno, people should have healthcare, prescriptions, mental healthcare, housing, community support to succeed and build a pleasant life, and fair wages.

Healthy societies don't have all that much crime, but the unhealthy ones build walls, prisons, and gates to "contain" it without addressing it.

Only people who don’t understand how crime works say this. Ask Europe how well their criminal justice system is working out right now.

Spoiler alert: it’s mostly falling apart, because it turns out there are people who should not be able to roam free in society.

I mean come on man you saw what happened in Honduras, mass arrests of criminals with indefinite sentences, and criminals suddenly did not want to be criminals anymore. Germany is having a political crisis because criminals don’t face consequences. They “rehab” and go back to committing crime because there is no downside.

Except to give Casey Neistat a ticket for avoiding obstacles in the bike lane.

https://youtu.be/bzE-IMaegzQ

Candy Crush is still around due to a dedicated NYPD playerbase