“More relational work on the ground, not remote drones in the air.”<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
By Joe Wilkins<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a hot new phrase bouncing around police departments across the United States: \u201cdrone-as-first-responder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n From small-town Indiana to New York City, cops around the country are embracing autonomous surveillance drones as the latest innovation in policing. While you might hear about the occasional puppy<\/a> found in the woods with a police drone, those feel-good stories provide excellent cover for their true purposes: gathering intelligence<\/a> on peaceful protests, surveilling minority communities<\/a>, and intimidating activists<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though drone-as-first-responder initiatives may not yet inspire the same knee-jerk opposition as Flock surveillance towers<\/a> and data centers<\/a>, fury is clearly growing as a more and more Americans are taking a stand against police drones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Minneapolis, residents are speaking out against the city police department\u2019s plan to partner with Skydio, a private defense contractor that primarily manufactures drones for military forces<\/a>. Concerned citizens packed a City Council meeting to discuss the initiative on Wednesday, filling both the main council hall and a back-up overflow room, CBS<\/em> reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the meeting, over 40 residents took the mic to explain that they don\u2019t want Skydio drones \u2014 or any drones for that matter \u2014 in the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe deployment of autonomous surveillance drones rests on the presumption that the regular people unto themselves are existential threats,\u201d one speaker exclaimed according to local station Fox9<\/em><\/a>. \u201cBut if you accept and normalize that idea that every single person could be an existential threat, then you have already stripped your own residents of any inkling of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The speaker continued, highlighting the fact that Minneapolis has a particularly grim history<\/a> of police violence against Black people. \u201cWe need respect for our individuals and shared humanity,\u201d they told city council members, \u201cmore relational work on the ground, not remote drones in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That movement in Minneapolis seems to be growing following weeks of organizing<\/a> by local activists. Though Minneapolis appears to the be the main battleground for anti-police drone sentiment at the moment, similar concerns have been raised in Syracuse<\/a>, Detroit<\/a>, and Los Vegas<\/a>. At Wednesday\u2019s council meeting, some Twin Cities residents cast local opposition to police drones as one front in the national struggle over civil liberties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One resident, for example, observed that \u201cevery\u201d innovation in police technology is ripe for abuse, a conclusion shared by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a> and the American Civil Liberties Union<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe watched [federal immigration officers] come in here with drones, we watched ICE come here and violate our constitutional rights,\u201d the resident said. \u201cEvery technology given to state and federal law enforcement has been abused.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This seems to be ramping up quickly. It’s funny that the black community is crying foul after defund the police led to this type of technology being needed. And the black community is no doubt a big source of crime where these drones will be sent… It reminds me of a video I just saw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17976,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17975\/revisions\/17976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/americans-raging-police-drones.jpg?quality=85&w=1152\")