Miami police applie for FAA approval for UAV

Terrorists and other U.S. enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq — and in Pakistan, too — worry about U.S. UAVs tracking them from the skies. Soon, South Florida bad guys may have that same concern. The Miami Dade Police Department has asked the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for permission to use a small UAV for law enforcement. The department says that if granted permission, it would employ the drone only in “tactical” situations that present danger to officers on the ground. According to the FAA, Miami is one of only two big city police departments in the country that have applied for the needed permits, Houston being the other. “It won’t be used for patrol or for traffic,” said Detective Juan Villalba, Miami-Dade police spokesman. “It would be used in SWAT team situations -like someone barricaded in a house, or where a hostage has been taken. It might be used to try to determine how heavily armed a person might be. It will not be armed itself.”

The Palm Beach Post’s John Latingua writes that the FAA is saying that Miami residents should not expect to see drones in the air over Coconut Grove, Coral Gables or any other inhabited area until the technology advances. “Unmanned aircraft would need to have the same ability to see and avoid other aircraft that manned craft have, and right now the technology does not exist to meet those criteria,” said FAA spokesperson Les Dorr. Dorr said the Miami-Dade police may get a permit to test a drone over an uninhabited area, such as the Everglades, but that in order to use the drone in police work over an urban area — especially a busy air corridor like Miami-Dade — it would need yet another permit, which will be hard to come by. “We have a responsibility to protect the public, both people on the ground and other aircraft,” Dorr said.

The drone that caught the eye of the Miami-Dade police is the MAV — Micro-Air Vehicle — made by Honeywell International. It weighs fourteen pounds without fuel aboard, is powered by gasoline, is radio controlled and operates in the air more like helicopter than an airplane. “It can hover and go straight down or up for example,” Villalba said. According to Honeywell, the MAV can fly at a maximum of 10,500 feet, at a top speed of 50 knots her hour, can be carried in a large backpack and can be deployed in five minutes. “We wouldn’t fly it to the site of a problem,” said Villalba. “We would drive it that site, deploy it and then pack it up and drive it back to wherever it was being stored.”

The FAA’s Dorr said he believed the Houston Police Department had applied to test the MAV over ranchlands far from the city. Villalba said the Miami-Dade police hoped to get the permit to test the MAV over the Everglades sometime this year. He said he understood the second permit, which would allow its use in law enforcement operations, might be tough to come by.Already, civil liberties organizations have raised doubts about the possible use of such craft for police surveillance, which could violate the privacy of citizens. Villalba reiterated that the police would not use the drones except in SWAT team operations. “Some people have referred to it as a spy craft, but it won’t be used for anything like that either,” Villalba said. “It will be used to protect the lives of officers.”