€465k cost of airport drone probe
COPS blew more than €465,000 on a shambolic probe into a drone alert which paralysed Gatwick Airport.
Sussex Police is facing a backlash over the 36-hour airport lockdown. It led to the cancellation of about 1,000 flights and disrupted 140,000 people’s Christmas travel plans.
A senior police officer claimed there might never have been any drones over Gatwick, although the force later issued a “clarification” saying there were. One “sighting” proved to be lights on a crane.
Sussex Chief Constable Giles York admitted drones reported around Gatwick might have been police devices.
Documents seen by the Sunday Mirror show Sussex Police forked out €489,000 on the search, including €387,000 on overtime and extra bank holiday pay.
They also spent €60,000 to base 10 specialist officers on the site – reduced to four this month – and €14,000 on aid from neighbouring forces in Cambridge and Essex.
The rest of the bill was €5,600 on transport, €4,600 on search equipment and €16,350 on officers’ food and accommodation. The MOD has yet to compile the final bill for the incident. Ten senior officials were deployed to manage the response.
The RAF reportedly used a €3million Drone Dome system which, using a radio frequency jammer, can crash devices in a six-mile radius.
A source said: “Given the shambolic handling of the investigation, it’s astonishing that the public have been left with a €465,000 bill.” Police received 115 reports of sightings around the airfield, including 92 confirmed by Chief Constable York as coming from “credible people”.
The force launched its own drone to search for what officers believed at the time to be aircraft being flown above the runway maliciously.
Mr York made a grovelling apology to a couple wrongly arrested over the chaos, which began in the early hours of December 19.
He defended the decision to hold the arrested man for an extended period – despite his employer saying he was at work during the drone flights.