re: #68 lawhawk

Drones may prove cost effective as a law enforcement tool in some situations since they’d be cheaper to own/operate versus the helicopters that larger departments around the nation have. Problem is that the drones can’t do SAR and quickly transport officers to remote locations - that’s a job that helicopters are quite capable of doing.

So, that actually works against cost effectiveness in larger departments - departments may end up with both helicopters and drones, with the requisite staffing and gear to keep both going and choose to use drones on some missions saving helicopters for SAR missions.

But the lower cost of drones may open the door to letting smaller departments to get the gear to expand the tools at their disposal for crowd control, tracking criminals (think high speed chases), etc.

The new sheriff of a small Alabama county found that his predecessor had packed away $300K worth of drones DHS had given him. Confusion all around.

(The drones were super-smart, but little more than model airframes with 3 ft wingspans.)