In a rare move some deem as a violation of privacy, the New York City Police Department announced it deployed a fleet of drones during Labor Day weekend in an attempt to monitor complaints about large gatherings to celebrate the holiday.
Reports show police previously had to work in overdrive during the holiday weekend in the past, which they say has been tainted with violence. Now, NYPD has partnered with the Department of Buildings and other agencies “to tackle non-emergency complaints such as noise,” according to a CNN report, which added that those “complaints are usually a precursor to violence.”
Despite the wide criticism, Mayor Eric Adams says the technology is not being used to spy on revelers, but instead, will help officers and crisis management teams to better respond to any acts of violence.
Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD officer himself, has pushed back against criticism of the policing tactic. The technology isn’t to spy on revelers but to better deploy officers and crisis management teams, he said.
“There are a number of calls of loud music, disruptive behavior,” Mayor Adams said at a briefing Friday. “Instead of the police having to respond and look at those, they’re going to utilize drones from a safe distance, not down, flying into someone’s backyard to see what they have on the grill.”
He continued: “They’re going to utilize the drones to determine, should they send crisis management teams there right away to help mitigate the problem.
But civil liberties advocates have condemned the use of drones to police people during the holiday festivities.
“Pervasive drone surveillance can be easily misused to exploit and discriminate against New Yorkers, putting all of our privacy at risk,” Daniel Schwarz, a privacy specialist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “As the NYPD keeps deploying these dystopian technologies, we must push for stricter guardrails – especially given the department’s lengthy history of surveilling and policing Black and Brown communities.”
Meanwhile, an ACLU report states that police departments have been increasing their use of drones to police citizens. The group says more than one thousand departments use the technology to respond to domestic complaints, among other incidents.
“If the police are sending a drone to every non-emergency situation, just because it might become an emergency situation, they are going to be sending an enormous number of drones flying across American cities and towns with intense regularity,” said Jay Stanley, an ACLU senior policy adviser. “If communities don’t put some brakes on law enforcement’s use of drones, it’s going to become an every day presence in many places. It shouldn’t just be on the whim of a mayor. It should be discussions in the communities that can be helped by law enforcement and harmed.”
