{"id":2295,"date":"2013-10-10T13:41:59","date_gmt":"2013-10-10T19:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=2295"},"modified":"2013-10-10T13:41:59","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T19:41:59","slug":"feds-waste-1-2m-on-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/feds-waste-1-2m-on-drones\/","title":{"rendered":"Feds waste $1.2M on drones"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Carl Campanile<\/a>, New York Post
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

The federal government wasted more than $1.2 million on unmanned drones that have been misused or mothballed by local police departments, investigators found.<\/p>\n

A report by the Justice Department\u2019s Inspector General\u2019s Office raised questions about how the federal grants were awarded and whether municipal law enforcement even needed them.<\/p>\n

The audit detailed the story of how the Gadsden Police Department (serving an Alabama city with a population of 40,000) spent $150,000 from a federal grant in 2007 on a drone to help crack down on the sale of methamphetamines.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Gadsden authorities attempted one surveillance mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, Gadsden Police Department officials stated that during the mission the ground-control station lost communication [with the drone], causing [it] to collide with a tree,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

Officials blamed the area\u2019s landscape of hills and valleys for the communication mishap.<\/p>\n

Investigators also said the Gadsden cops never obtained a required operating certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration.<\/p>\n

The device is currently grounded in a storage facility and its future use is up in the air, Gadsden police officials told auditors.<\/p>\n

The department declined further comment Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, police in North Little Rock, Ark., spent $84,000 in federal funds in 2008 to buy a drone for surveillance of high-risk drug- and gun-crime neighborhoods. Five years later, the drones haven\u2019t been used for law-enforcement purposes, despite test runs and training.<\/p>\n

The Miami-Dade Police Dept. bought two drones in 2007 to monitor life-threatening crime scenes such as hostage crises \u2014 but neither has been used. A drone was once activated to monitor a suspect who barricaded himself, but the mission was aborted when he willingly surrendered, a Miami-Dade spokesman said.<\/p>\n

The spokesman said there are strict guidelines for drone use. The drone must be operated remotely by a certified pilot and must remain in eyesight at all times.<\/p>\n

In response to the findings, Justice Department officials said they have tightened the requirements for drone funding and use by local police.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Carl Campanile, New York Post click here for original article The federal government wasted more than $1.2 million on unmanned drones that have been misused or mothballed by local police departments, investigators found. A report by the Justice Department\u2019s Inspector General\u2019s Office raised questions about how the federal grants were awarded and whether municipal law […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[168],"class_list":["post-2295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-drones"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/drones.jpg?fit=421%2C479&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2297,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295\/revisions\/2297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}