Mechanized extensions of the police force will soon be buzzing through North Dakota skies, taking down any non-compliant suspect via rubber bullets, Tasers and tear gas.
Bill HB 1328 allows North Dakota police to equip drones with any “less than lethal” weapon. Oddly, the bill was initially intended to ban the weaponization of police drones, but at the last moment the state house committee allowed Bruce Burkett of the North Dakota Peace Officer’s Association to amend HB1328 to permit pretty much anything besides a firearm.
The new bill has brought about a level of controversy. Some feel the airborne attack route is a step in the right direction, while others don’t quite agree with it.
“This is one I’m not in full agreement with,” said Rep. Rick Becker, the Republican sponsor of the original, unmodified bill. “In my opinion, there should be a nice, red line: drones should not be weaponized. Period.”
Some companies have already outfitted drones with less than lethal weapons. CUPID, the Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone, remotely fires a Taser.
However, according to HB 1328, there could be a far greater range of less than lethal drones to include aerial batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray, sound cannons, water cannons, and any other non-firearm weapon available to police.
(This article was a submission from freelance writer Brent Rogers)
When it comes to ‘drones’, the general public is severly & sadly misinformed…
Civilian platforms, like the one shown in the video, have a flight time of about 30 minutes at best. You won’t see these buzzing overhead 24/7 any time in the near future. They will be deployed in individual high-risk situations as needed, exactly like bomb-disposal robots. They are simply too delicate and expensive to use for general survailance.
They also won’t be controlled by your average ‘donut munching street cop’. FAA requirements will demand a dedicated, highly trained & licenced Remote Operator Pilot. This will be extremely regulated due to the low flight ceiling over populated areas.
The more you know… 🙂
This is a slippery slope there’s no turning back from. Considering the bad judgement of poorly trained cops as it is killing and injuring people, imagine the out of control mayhem these things are going to cause! I remember the initial proof of concept testing of this in ND a couple years ago when the Nit Wit Sheriff of one of the counties there salivating at the thought of using one of these responded to a question by a reporter about having probable cause to go flying around people’s private property without a warrant and he cheerfully responded with something like “We’ll get the probable cause by using a drone!”
I can imagine the illegal war on drugs fiasco to escalate way out of control when private citizens start shooting these things down and causing a whole new ‘justification’ then to do 50k an hour Swat Raids as a follow up! REVO here we come!
So now the Police aren’t even going to have to leave the donut shop at all? Who is policing the Police? This is going a bit far, especially in North Dakota. Or have there been massive riots they aren’t telling us about?
As far as I am concerned any politicans/police flying armed drones over civilian populations are real terrorists,
pose a threat to society and should be identified as such, and dealt with accordingly,
drones should be targeted by all civilians-this is an attack on the people of the USA
Not a good idea. Someone will get killed by a less than lethal method deployed by one of the drones, and someone will get very rich suing the socks off that city/State.
That’s not a problem. Totalitarian agenda factors lawsuits in as part of their ‘operating costs’ You wouldn’t believe how many multi-millions a big City like Chicago hands out every year to victims of ‘necessary police state actions in settlements. Money that would be far better served to re-train cops to value We, the people’s lives, instead of being programmed to consider people who disagree with government tyranny domestic terrorists and enemies of the state.
it started with obummer care shoved up our butts….some pencil pusher in an office somewhere, hopefully in the u.s., will decide your medical treatment. coming soon, a similar pencil pusher will decided if he should fire a small exposive from a drone manufactured in mexico to stop your vehicle for speeding and for possibly being involved in a crime reported by another drone a hundred miles away. yeah, the wife and kids will find that humorous.
Any drones I catch on my property will be staying on my property, courtesy of my Remington 1100.
So, let me get this straight, “assault rifles”, that is, semi automatic rifles that really can only be imported, manufactured, bought and sold in the US as “sporting” guns by decree of GCA, are under a full frontal assault by those who have been sworn to protecting our 2nd Amendment and the rest of our Bill Of Rights, and US Constitution? Yet they allow governments to use weaponized drones against US Citizens? Really? Really? I say things tipped for good in this nation after the 2012 election cycle. Before that, nobody would have allowed such an overt attempt to subjugate US citizens by our own government. By this late hour in our nations history, people here act as if they had blinders on and hooks in their mouths. I’m embarrassed for you. You’ve made your own hell right here on earth. Unfortunately, I have to live here too. Thank you for that, really. And this is the fate you’ve designed for your children and grand children to come………..
Just think, some one ( hopefully a trained LEO ) miles away from the scene having control of a drone and just so happens YOU look like the perp they are looking for !!!
Sandman sounding.
Water cannons…really???
Could be opening Pandora’s Box. I can imagine these things being lethally armed for use in this country.
Being a born and raised North Dakota native stuck in the Twin Cities, I will tell there is not a whole lot of streets to patrol.
Krink, is it a coincidence that the first armed attack drones of the new Police State Skynet is in the number one ‘retreatest/survivalist’ State? It’s even more ominous what their County Sheriff there, Brobst(?) said in an interview with the ‘Daily Beast’ In addressing the 4th/A privacy concerns of drones doing random spy fishing over the treetops, he says he doesn’t need a warrant because he’s only using the drones to actually GET probable cause on someone and then get the warrant! (then we can do an asset forfeiture seizure)!
That’s exactly like saying hey You look suspicious, so with the new drone technology, we are going to follow you not only in the public venue to observe your behavior, but now even in the privacy of your own back yard, and with new video/Flir/radar enhancement peeping devices, eventually in your bedroom! All for good crime prevention for public safety!!! For more on this see my article in Survivopedia.com on Police Drones comiing up this Saturday.
Those drones should be “hitting the streets,” courtesy the well-aimed shots of a few goose guns.
If I am being shot at by an armed drone spitting out rubber bullets (which can, definitely, kill you–at a rate of about 1 death per 18,000 rounds with manually or semi-auto fire. An M240B, fires around 800 rounds/min. That means it would kill about every 22 minutes.*) I have the right to shoot back–at the drone. I don’t see any clearer example of self-defense when someone sitting in Minot in a closet filled with killer drone equipment is attacking me with deadly force.
If one of them flew low enough over my property and potentially endangered me with their ‘non-lethal’ lethal armaments, make me feel like I, or others around me, are in imminent danger of suffering great bodily harm or death, I have the right to protect myself by shooting them down.
Apparently, the government has never heard of game blinds or other methods hunters use to conceal themselves while they hunt. People aren’t going to stand out in the middle of a field and shoot down the drone. The government will go nuts trying to find who did it; no one is going to turn in their neighbors.
Then the lawsuits about invading private airspace to murder someone will start.
During the seasons when migratory fowl are in ND, they will be prohibited from flying anywhere near them. Nor can they harass wildlife of any type, as it is a federal offense to do either from the air. So, if I want to hide, I just crawl out amongst the migratory birds or kick back with a herd of whitetail deer.
http://news.discovery.com/tech/can-rubber-bullets-kill-you-110815.htm
Good thing it is absolutely impossible to hack into those clones…
…right?
I gotta admit, I saw this in NY, IL or CA, but I never thought ND would be a state that would give in to something like this. Very disappointing. Some boundaries are going to have to be drawn on the use of these things. Like the dude in KY that blew one out of the sky that was in his back yard, harassing his daughters. I’d like to see a follow-up article on that situation. I would have done the same thing he did. Not saying that they shouldn’t be used in ANY case, but there are definite guideline needed.
Boundaries drawn should be that they cannot even get near anyone’s private property without a warrant. Period. And if you think tazers, are bad, which have already killed 29 people this year, wait until they have the brain fart to drop tear gas or use full auto 66 caliber hard breaking pepper balls fired from a high powered full auto paintball gun, or cluster bombs of Flash Bangs, and/or the new 40mm grenade launcher with so called non lethal stun grenades that have maimed more people than they will admit, of course ‘accidentally’, and thus accountability is absent in their deployment. And given the scope of police incompetence even with basic firearms deployment decisions, in the capacity to seriously violate our rights and harm our person, this beastie boy tool will quickly ‘fly’ out of control in its abuse potential. For a bit of expansion on the topic Draino, see the coming Saturday Article on ‘Police Attack Drones’ on the Survivopedia.com website
We are now in big trouble, folks. Make sure you know what your city or municipality is using Your tax dollar wallet for?
The slipped one in in one of my State’s counties and nobody knew about it until they used it to chase somebodyon foot after a car chase. They never causght him so it obviously isn’t that good and it would have been better than a K9 unit which was readily available and would have had a fresh scent? Wonder how many drone trips they made over people’s back yards where they were skinny dipping in their own private pools?