America
Crooks Employ Drones in High-Tech Crime Wave
The technology is too new for any real regulation. So thieves are cashing in.
W BY ANDREW HENRY
hen police near the mexico-california border received a report that a strange object had fallen from the sky and crashed in a supermarket parking lot, they weren’t quite
sure what to expect. What they found was a six-propeller remotely piloted aircraft — a drone. But what really got their notice was what they found
beside the drone: six rectangular pouches stuffed with methamphetamine. The packages had been taped to the fuselage in an attempt to use a drone to smuggle drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. The revelation that crooks are going high-tech and employing drone technology to facilitate their crimes is suddenly on the radar of U.S. police.
12 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2015
TROUBLE IN THE AIR Police search for evidence after a drone (right, top) flew close to the White House in January. Right: a drug-carrying drone.
Another attention-grabbing moment: The Secret Service
was on high alert after a red-and-white plastic “quadcop- ter” crashed onto the White House lawn in January. The culprit turned out to be a man living a mile away
who lost control of the drone after he flew it out of his apart- ment window. He was apparently unaware it is illegal to operate a drone within the District of Columbia. In response to the incident, DJI, the company that
makes that 2.8 pound drone, quickly distributed new soft- ware that prevents its aircraft from flying inside Washing- ton, D.C., airspace. As both of those run-ins with drone incidents illustrate,
law officers nationwide are beginning to realize the very drone technology they hoped to adopt to fight crime can also be used against them. Indeed, in some jurisdictions
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