NYPD drones Eve’s-dropping
Will help Finest keep eye on Times Sq. crowd
The NYPD will be buzzing in the New Year with its new fleet of drones, officials said Wednesday.
The remote-controlled eyes in the skies will be deployed above the scores of revelers expected at Times Square on New Year’s Eve, NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan said.
“If we put them up, we can monitor the large crowds, the traffic flow,” Monahan said on “Good Day New York.”
The drones won’t be hovering over anyone’s heads, but go up in a cordoned-off area and attached to a cable tethered to its operator.
“If it comes crashing down, it will be in an area where there is nobody,” Monahan said, referring to concerns that drones sometimes slam into buildings and could drop from the sky onto an unsuspecting crowd of people.
The NYPD unveiled its new fleet of “unmanned aerial vehicles” Tuesday, claiming that the 14 drones would be used in rescue missions, inaccessible crime scenes and hostage situations.
Monahan said a drone would have proven invaluable in the search for autistic teen Avonte Oquendo in 2013. Oquendo’s remains were discovered three months after he left his Long Island City, Queens, school.
“He walked into a very deeply wooded area,” Monahan recalled. “It took us days to search it. We had to cut down thickets all over the place. Now we can send the drones into that area and with its thermal sensors, if there is any heat in that area, we would know where to look.”
Civil rights advocates have shot down the department’s use of drones, claiming that there is nothing preventing the NYPD from using the remote-controlled fliers to spy on citizens.
Monahan said the drones would never be used that way.
“There is a concern that they will be used all over the place,” Monahan said. “No. They will not be used to surveil people and are not going to be weaponized. Absolutely not.”
Any photo or video footage caught by the drones will be held for 30 days and deleted unless it is needed in a criminal prosecution or a court action, Monahan said.