NYPD will use drones to monitor backyard parties this weekend
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Since these drones don't fly themselves and there is a trained officer somewhere at the controls then this surveillance is in fact conducted by a human police officer and should be an illegal violation of privacy.
Frankly if one of these things shows up over my backyard while I'm smoking a brisket for my family I'm gonna moon it and make lewd hand gestures.
My sad guess is that the general rule will change to accept things that can see your property from public airspace as "observable to the public", and that eventually building design and landscaping will change to give you private spaces outdoors if you have money and desire.
If a property is marked as private property then that privacy should offer protection from those who would trespass using public airspace.
So for commercial flights... sure - but there are a whole host of private pilots owners that absolutely can do this.
Ex - how do you think news helicopters work?
Basically, I'm saying that this phrase
> "who would trespass using public airspace"
is non-sense. You can't have public space that is being trespassed on. You can apply some limitations (ex: a pilot's license) but many drone pilots already need to be registered anyways.
At best, you can argue that there was a clear expectation of privacy (aka: the same argument that prevents you from pointing a telescope at the windows of a private bathroom from public land) and make it illegal after the fact, but I don't really believe that the courts will accept that you have the same expectation of privacy in an outdoor area visible from public space (incl airspace) as you would in a bathroom.
California v. Ciraolo (1985)[1]:
> Question: Did the warrantless, aerial observation of Ciraolo's back yard from an altitude of 1,000 feet constitute an illegal search and violate the Fourth Amendment?
> Conclusion: The divided Court found that the observation did not violate the Constitution. Chief Justice Burger reasoned that the Fourth Amendment protections regarding the home had never been absolute: for example, police officers are not obligated to shield their eyes when passing homes on public streets or sidewalks. Since the observations of the Santa Clara officers was "nonintrusive" and "took place within public navigable airspace," their actions were consistent with the Fourth Amendment. "Any member of the public flying in this airspace who glanced down could have seen everything that these officers observed," concluded Burger. The dissenters, led by Justice Powell, argued that this decision was a significant departure from the Court's holding in Katz v. United States (1967) which established a two-part test to evaluate privacy claims.
Kyllo v. United States (2001)[2]:
This case has to do with use of thermal-imaging (without a warrant) to detect if marijuana was being grown inside a house. The court held that it was an unlawful search because it was effectively using technology to peer inside the home without a warrant. While that's not the same as looking into someone's backyard, the opinions have a lot to say about police using technology to erode the privacy of one's home.[3]
[1]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1985/84-1513 [2]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2000/99-8508 [3]: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/533/27/#tab-opin...
https://www.cnet.com/culture/judge-rules-man-had-right-to-sh...
Short of using a rail gun, your projectile is unlikely to reach escape velocity.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoglia/2016/04/13/faa-confi...
(I'm not actually advocating anybody do this.)
And by the way, as has been decided this year (though it might yet be appealed) in the Wyoming border crossing case, even using a ladder to cross through the airspace above private lands is not trespassing.
The NYPD has not historically shown an institutional interest in laws enforced on them, rather than by them.
[1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/about/about-nypd/policy/post-a...
(2) the likely argument from the government would be that open backwards are but subject to the same expectation of privacy as other interior parts of the home. If the cops have a helicopter surveiling your back yard no one says that it's a warrantless search. Why is a drone different?
The obvious answer there is levels of scale, but it's an open question if that will hold up to actual legal challenges
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Riley
The 5-4 Podcast has an episode covering it and they are not light in their criticism of the court's decision: https://www.fivefourpod.com/episodes/florida-v-riley/
The people need to care.
(It's a rhetorical question: the answer is that the NYPD has abject contempt for the communities it ostensibly serves, and increasingly is made of people who don't even live in the city they police[2].)
[1]: https://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2...
[2]: https://nypost.com/2023/06/03/more-nypd-officers-are-opting-...
I think people underestimate how big NYC really is. It is basically a small country.
So yeah, how much funds do the police of Austria or Switzerland get?
according to https://cbcny.org/research/six-fast-facts-about-nypds-prelim..., the NYPD budget in 2023 was $10.8 billion. so, NYC spent about twice as much on police as Austria spent on police plus fire protection, law courts, prisons, etc.
even if they have the same population, it should cost more to police Austria than NYC because Austria has a larger area, so they need to have more police stations and cars.
That's basically saying that all companies are daydreaming about what they'd like to do if only they had more people.
They're not willing to pay higher wages though, while inflation has gone up quite a bit in the last few years.
So yeah, "labor shortage," in quotes.
Incidentally, NYPD is pretty well paid, if you think they need to be making tech salaries…well, I’m not sure where to start with that. Someday this might be more of a tech career (think riggers from shadow run).
I feel like automating and centralizing surveillance for troubled police departments is a bad thing. But then again, it would also be bad to become Megacity One.
When I say "patrol" I mean a citizen who is not on the police side of the thin blue line.
Besides: it's not like we're talking about autonomous drones here, and it's not like a drone can write a noise ticket. I doubt the city is saving any time or personnel by using drones here; if anything, there's likely some sweet overtime (in the form of "drone training") available for cops who pilot these things rather than making door calls.
[1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-ben...
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/nyregion/nypd-drones.html
I also doubt that the tech won’t get better and more autonomous as time goes on, and I would guess that the department is just trying to get early experience on an obvious future trend.
Also, for tracking a suspect in a chase, a drone is surely more economical than a helicopter with two pilots.
A large part of the NYPD's budget goes to wages, in parts because of (1) bloated wages for senior officers, and (2) rampant overtime abuse[3]. Some of that money would be recaptured in the form of income taxes, except that the NYPD has successfully lobbied to exclude itself from NYC's civil servant residency requirements[4].
[1]: https://council.nyc.gov/budget/fy2023/
[2]: https://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2...
[3]: https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/nypd-overspending-on-ov...
[4]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-hir...
> The starting salary for an NYPD officer is $55,910 without overtime. Meanwhile, the required annual income for a person living alone in New York City with no children is $53,342, according to an MIT living wage calculator.
So a police officer starts out barely makes a living wage. No wonder they end up living outside NYC to save money. And then if they manage to save up a down payment, good luck qualifying for a NYC mortgage on that salary.
And note: the NYPD has very handsome perks: it's a 22-years-to-half-salary-pension job that rises to 121k after 5.5 years in the service[1]. The other benefits are worth looking at as well.
Working as a cop doesn't entitle someone to be able to afford a mortgage; millions of New Yorkers can't afford mortgages. Millions of New Yorkers also live in this city while making less than the NYPD does; on a basic civic level, it would behoove the NYPD to live a bit more like the people they're meant to protect.
[1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-ben...
Including overtime seems questionable. It's arguably a "perk" but it damages work/life balance and contributes to burnout. Most people do a ~40 hour work week, comparing that to a police officer doing 50-60 does not seem fair.
I understand the issues with policing as an institution, but average police officers are basically societal janitors, doing a nasty, unpleasant job for very mediocre pay. You aren't going to improve the quality of people hired by making the job even more unattractive.
This is true for every other civil servant in NYC; they haven't quit. People want to live here.
Overtime does indeed contribute to burnout. But overtime use by the NYPD is culturally endemic and rampant[1]; individual anecdotes don't make a trend, but you can look up "NYPD overtime abuse" for widely shared "tricks" among NY's finest for getting paid extra money for indefinitely detaining suspects, conducting calls where they know an arrest won't be made, &c.
Finally: I agree that policing is a nasty, unpleasant job. To a certain degree, it's fundamentally nasty and unpleasant. But the current degree to which it's that way is a problem of our own making: police departments have been happy to absorb the budget that was slashed from mental health and community building programs, all while complaining about the overflowed social ills that come with doing that. I'd rather make the job more attractive by funding those things than dumping more money into the black hole that is the NYPD's labor budget.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-20/nypd-blow...
Because the noise complaints have been decriminalized: https://nypost.com/2017/05/10/nypd-cops-forbidden-from-break...
Consider also the fact that armed officers sometimes shoot and kill people. A camera drone completely avoids this potential outcome.
NY has a privacy law that enshrines a reasonable expectation of privacy in one’s backyard. But I haven’t made any argument around this: I don’t think we should be paying cops to fly drones around, regardless of whether or not it’s a civil liberties issue.
But if the NYPD is really "unaccountable" to the NYC government, well, that seems like a ripe situation for the Feds to step in because the local government has lost control. A PD which isn't accountable to its elected government isn't a PD; it's an armed gang.
We're in agreement!
Also consider that for every noise complaint to the police, there is a complainant - a citizen constituent - who is being bothered by a loud party. But let's forget about those people, their rights to reasonable peace and quiet don't matter? I don't agree with that stance.
Release a bunch of helium balloons, each trailing as much thread as they can lift. Might just tie a bunch and do a barrage balloon thing as a canopy anyway.
I also think it's absurd to think, just yet, that NYPD is going to be using kamikaze drone bombs to take out backyard pits. Where's the fun in that? Cops don't get to crack any heads.
On second thought: Perhaps I should edit this post. LOL.
It would be a lot more fun to build a drone that can drop a net over another drone.
Recording a back yard in NYC, where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy (it’s visible from everywhere), from a drone which has probable cause (a complaint) seems perfectly reasonable.