From Ryan Morgan's 3-24-20 American Military News article entitled "CA City to Use Chinese Night-vision Drones Banned by US Army to Enforce Coronavirus Lockdown":
Police in Chula Vista, Calif. plan to use Chinese-made aerial drones to surveil and enforce the state’s coronavirus “stay at home” orders, and to disperse crowds violating the orders.
The police department has doubled its drone fleet, adding two additional DJI drones to help with its lockdown enforcement efforts, the Washington Examiner reported. U.S. officials have warned against using Chinese drones domestically.
Chula Vista’s drones would reportedly be outfitted with night-vision and loudspeakers.
“We have not traditionally mounted speakers to our drones, but … if we need to cover a large area to get an announcement out, or if there were a crowd somewhere that we needed to disperse, we could do it without getting police officers involved,” Capt. Vern Sallee said in comments to the Financial Times.
The Chula Vista [police department] may also use its drones to relay messages to the city’s homeless, who may have less access to information about specific coronavirus orders.
“We need to tell them we actually have resources for them — they are vulnerable right now,” Sallee said. “It might be impractical or unsafe for our officers to be put into those areas.”
Sallee said the coronavirus outbreak has rapidly changed the Chula Vista’s views of using drones for enforcement methods.
To read the rest of the article, click HERE.
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