The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office held a townhall at the Frenchtown Community and Event Center to talk about their drone pilot program and address community concerns on Wednesday night, April 29.
“We appreciate everyone for taking time to come out tonight,” Sheriff Troy Goodnough said to the crowd of 50-60 people. “We look forward to the open dialogue and the opportunity to address any concerns you have and have some good conversation about the project.”
The townhall began at 7 p.m. with an explanation of the program by Capt. David Raymond. He explained how Flock DFR drones will be used by first responders to evaluate a scene before police, fire, and ambulance services arrive. He said the drones can be used to evaluate a scene and help first responders evaluate how much personnel they need or whether it’s a false alarm.
The program is a trial run, lasting only a year, to see whether it will have any significant benefit to the sheriff’s office. Goodnough said the drones are free for the duration of the trial.
After the presentation there was a question and answer time, where several Frenchtown residents expressed concerns about the possible abuse of surveillance technology. There was also a protest outside the community center against the use of drones before the townhall.
“Because there have been a lot of instances, especially with other places they use Flock cameras, like en masses, there have been instances of officers using it to stalk ex-girlfriends and stuff like that,” said protestor Darion Binder of Taylor, referring to a recently-published article by the Institute for Justice.
“And the last thing I want to be doing is sitting on my patio and start getting pinged by, you know, rubber bullets or tasers, because that’s what North Dakota does,” said protestor Kim Giarmo during the evening’s Q&A period, referring to a law in North Dakota that allowed police to arm drones with “less than lethal” weapons in 2015.
Goodnough explained that there is accountability in place to address cases of misconduct.
“So, if there’s an allegation of, I’m just going to use the word misconduct, or somebody that violated our policy, there’s an investigation conducted,” he said. “It goes through the different layers of the organization, then it comes to me. If there’s five officers on scene, the five officers will be part of the investigation. And if the pilot conveyed information, then he or she may be part of that investigation as well.”
— Contact reporter Connor Veenstra at CVeenstra@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Monroe County Sheriff’s drone program sparks privacy concerns
Reporting by Connor Veenstra, The Monroe News / The Monroe News
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