DHS Grants RC 'Copter to Police Armed with Tazer, Shotgun, Grenades

MK-I

Basic UAS unit with CCD TV optics, standard semi-autonomous flight avionics package and turbine or piston power plant.

MK-II

Upgraded UAS with day CCD TV camera as well as FLIR optics package, fully autonomous avionics package and turbine or piston power-plant.

MK-III

UAS with day CCD, FLIR and thermal cameras, fully autonomous avionics and weaponized with either 40mm, 37mm grenade launcher or 12 gauge shotgun with laser designator (military/LE use only.)

MK-IV

Unavailable to non-military users.



Payload Characteristics

Optics:
Sony FCB EX-980 CCDTV, 20X Zoom FLIR Photon 320, Tau UTAM-32 Thermal Camera
Avionics:
Semi/Full autonomous system radio link, Auto Take-off/Land, Pilot Assist Module, 30 hz Laser Altimeter, DGPS system with 2cm accuracy option.
Weapons:
U.S. Military and Law Enforcement consumers have less-lethal/lethal options including single or mulitple shot 37 mm/40mm grenade launcher, 12g shotgun

Airframe Characteristics

Dry Weight: 35lbs (16 kg)
Overall Length: 96 in (243.9 cm)
Height: 29.8 in (75.7 cm)
Width: 17 in (43.2 cm)
Rotor Span: 76.5 in (194.3 cm)
Usable Load: 22 lbs (10 kg)
Cruising Speed: 35 mph (56.3 kph)
Max Speed: 70 mph (112.6 kph)
Max Range: 35 miles (56 km)
Fuel Endurance: Turbine 45 min/Piston 3.5 hrs.






Article:

Tased From Above! New Robot Copter To Begin Patrolling Our Skies

Supplemental:

Tech in development for UAV's...

Murdered Over Open Container Ticket

The recent police-related deaths of 43-year-old Allen Kephart in Lake Arrowhead, California and 37-year-old Kelly Thomas in Fullerton, California have sent shockwaves through the their respective communities. Indeed, both are being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The death of Thomas, a homeless schizophrenic beaten into a coma by Fullerton police, is also being investigated by the Orange County District Attorney's Office. His case is not the first time Orange County law enforcement has been accused of applying excessive force to a mentally ill homeless man.

In October 2007, 28-year-old Michael Patrick Lass was living on the streets of Santa Ana when police stopped him for having an open container of alcohol. At the time of his arrest he was alcohol-dependent, schizophrenic, bipolar, and had a history of seizures.

The altercation that led to Lass's death took place at the Orange County Central Jail, where Lass was sentenced to serve five days after pleading guilty to public intoxication. The day Lass would have been able to leave he felt ill and asked for medical attention. Lass was ordered to leave his cell and after repeatedly looking over his shoulder while being directed by a deputy, he was tackled to the ground and a melee ensued.

"He wasn't fighting or anything and he was already in a contained area, locked in a contained area," Lass's father Frederick, says of the incident. "Immediately there was a second deputy there, a third deputy, a fourth, a fifth, and on and on it went. There was so many deputies that you couldn't count how many deputies were there."

Lass was shocked with a Taser nine times and the county's autopsy said he had multiple contusions on his body, "involving the head, neck, torso and extremities." The struggle was captured on film. "I can remember viewing the film and at one point while they are beating him Michael tells them, 'You're killing me.' Literally: 'You're killing me'," says Frederick Lass.

Frederick Lass sued Orange County and six deputies involved in the incident. Although neither was found liable in that case, Orange County later revised its Taser policy so that deputies would not be able to use Tasers on restrained suspects unless they display "overtly assaultive behavior."

While an improvement, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California says the policy didn't go far enough. Executive Director Hector Villagra sent a letter to Sheriff Hutchens in January 2009 urging still-stricter use of Tasers, pointing to five people who have died since 2005 after being stung with the weapon.

Like the cases of Allen Kephart and Kelly Thomas, the death while in custody of Michael Patrick Lass raises troubling questions about police procedures - and the power of surveillance videos to shine a bright light on the workings of the criminal justice system.

The following video includes graphic violence and viewer discretion is advised.

Written and produced by Paul Detrick. Camera: Paul Detrick, Zach Weissmueller, and Alex Manning; edited by Detrick.

Special Thanks: Frederick Lass.

Music by Audionautix.com.

Go to http://www.reason.tv for downloadable versions of this and all our videos, and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.

6 Completely Legal Ways The Cops Can Screw You

I get into a lot of debates with people about why I am no fan at all of the police. No matter how many videos you show someone of the police beating a homeless man to death or articles about them cutting off bed-ridden granny's oxygen before tasing the shit out her, there are always the same generic replies. That cops are "just people" too, or that these are "isolated" incidents, to not let "one bad apple" spoil the bunch. All well and good until your wife calls the police for help and winds up being arrested and stripped naked in front a few few male deputies I suppose.



As it turns out, what police did there was perfectly legal. The departmental policy does forbid opposite-sex strip-searches, however, this was not classified as a strip-search. They were putting her on suicide watch for replying "now, or ever?" when asked about thoughts of suicide.

So yes, maybe the cops really are just people too. Which makes it all that much more important to not give police the power to pull crap like this in the first place. I don't "hate" the police as individuals, I hate the very institution itself as it stands today. Aside from the thousands upon thousands of supposedly isolated incidents where the police themselves are in fact committing actual crimes while in uniform, blatantly violating the public trust and their authority, it is now the very institution itself which legally violates the liberty of innocent citizens. It is not enough to have done nothing wrong. The police can still screw you over in a number of ways, which are all completely legal. And that my friends, is why I hate police. Not because I have some leftover teenage angst against authority figures, but because we have all become second-rate citizens who must bow before the tyranny and oppression of the police-state.

Let's go ahead now and have a look at this article put out by Cracked.com :

6 Completely Legal Ways The Cops Can Screw You

We are so lucky to be living in an era of law when it's no longer common for, say, suspects to be interrogated with live cobras tied to the ends of nightsticks. Unfortunately, there are still many colorful ways the police can royally screw you while Lady Justice shrugs.

For instance, you might be surprised to learn that right now in the U.S., it's actually legal for the cops to...

#6. Steal Your Stuff

Imagine you had your car stolen, but then fortune smiles upon you and the cops find it after the thief used it to smuggle 200 pounds of cocaine across the border, running over 30 children in the process while sexually assaulting the car itself.

You realize you're going to need to get all of its fluids replaced from a mechanic with a soft voice and gentle hands, but you still want it back, because hey, it's your car, right?

Yeeeah, there's some bad news: It has been sold to buy a new espresso machine for the station's break room.
It's called civil asset forfeiture. You probably already have heard of something like this, where the police get to seize the car and house of some drug kingpin and stick the money in the department's budget (that's criminal forfeiture).

But then there's this loophole where the police can seize anything they suspect has been used in a crime, even if it doesn't belong to the criminal, and even if there hasn't been a conviction.

"Let's take the jet. Those bootlegged DVDs from China had to get here somehow."

Then if you, as the actual owner of the goods, try to challenge it, the burden of proof is on you to prove you didn't know it was going to be used in a crime. That's civil forfeiture.

For the police, there is no legal requirement to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that, say, your TV set was once used by a ring of Dutch pedophiles to view kiddie porn. They can simply take it, without ever giving it back, even if they never formally charge anyone for a crime.

You're Shitting Me!

In 2004, Zaher El-Ali, a Jordanian immigrant and U.S. citizen, sold a truck to a man who agreed to pay for it in installments. Before he could finish the payments though, the man was arrested for drunk driving and the truck was seized. Seeing as the car still legally belonged to Zaher (he still had the title), he demanded it back. The police refused, and possibly laughed.

Because civil forfeitures are so simple, over 40 percent of police executives admitted their budgets depend on cash from them. That means each year, those stations have a quota of forfeitures to fill and technically there is really no stopping them from filling it with YOUR Xbox.

I don't know about you guys, but to me that sounds a lot like leaving a fox guarding a hen house. Not only "can" they do this, but police departments actually have to do this in order to get the funding for shit like tasers and SWAT teams, yeah and coffee makers for the break room.

"Its not like I was pointing a gun at your head."

I am not going to quote their entire article here, but I'll do a little point by point supplemental to add a little more to what they said, as a read-along. Next on their list was...

#5. Guess Your Car's Speed and Ticket You For It

Not only are some police officers supposedly "trained" to be their very own speed-enforcement radar without need of the actual equipment, saving money for coffee-makers instead, but here's another little tidbit they didn't bring up there in the Cracked article. You can also be ticketed for doing the speed limit. You could be doing exactly 40 mph in a 40 mph zone, and a cop can still pull you and give you a ticket for "unsafe speed" if he personally deems the road conditions to not be suitable to travel at 40 mph in your vehicle. Maybe because your vehicle is larger than most, traffic is too dense, roads are wet, it's a little foggy, or whatever else the cop wants to make up.

Next...

#4. Arrest You For Drinking in a Bar

Cracked did a pretty good job explaining that one. Bu8t also keep in mind too, that you can be arrested for DWI too, even if you are not driving. It used to be, that as long as you did not have the key in the ignition, you were safe to go sleep in off in the parking lot. Not anymore. There have been a number of people arrested and convicted for sleeping in the back seat with keys in their pocket. Even defense attorneys who would try to argue that you did not nor had any intention of driving drunk, call the proposition "iffy."

#3. Arrest You For Filming Them

As pointed out in the Cracked article, you can be arrested for filming police. Sometimes even in places where filming police is not explicitly illegal too, so just because you don't live in one of the 12 states where it is illegal to film cops, don't think you are safe.



Also, be sure to check out these two related articles:

Rochester police swarm neighborhood...

Technolgy and police hypocrisy

Now, on to...

#2. Book You For Carrying Condoms

Well, Cracked covered that one pretty well, so let's move on to...

#1. Steal Your Identity

As if the hypocrisy alone weren't enough, the Cracked article doesn't really get into the inherent dangers to using someonelse's identity. First, we have to "trust" that the undercover cop won't go out and run up a nice tab on your credit to pay for tranny hookers in Reno. Even with their best intentions, it doesn't take much to imagine how some administrative slip-up could royally fuck your credit up for years to come. But better that than say, having some hitman for Columbian drug lords show up at your house and set your family on fire. After all, these cops are setting out to create some animosity, using YOUR name. Not hard to imagine that some people might be pissed off enough to come looking for John and Jane Piglover SS #'s 123-45-6789 and 987-65-4321 from Suckerpunch Way, Cleveland, Ohio.

UF student 'Googled' self and didn't like what he found: MyFoxORLANDO.com