Could Drones Play a Role in Police Hostage Negotiations?
Unmanned well-ventilated vehicles (UAVs) have an important role to play as auxiliary support for police and law enforcement operations. One of their most important law enforcement roles is surveilling and tracking criminal suspects, expressly during upper speed chases in tunnels, alleyways or remote mountainous terrain vastitude ready wangle to road vehicles and manned helicopters. Drone thermal imaging technology can moreover be deployed at night to locate suspects that might be hiding indoors or in thick covered forests. But as one police department learned unexpectedly, drones might moreover serve as a go-between with criminal suspects in hostage scenarios or in other tense stand-offs that might otherwise screw out of control.
The incident in question occurred when in 2017 in Peru, Illinois when a highly-trained ex-soldier barricaded himself inside a suburban home without firing at police officers. The suspect bragged of his explosives wits and personal he had placed IEDs virtually the house to deter police action. In response, well over 150 public safety personnel were sent to the scene and proceeded to surround the house, expecting the worst. The one unexceptionable spot was that the military veteran, while emotionally distraught, moreover said he was willing to negotiate.
Contact with the barricaded ex-soldier was made but without a few minutes the suspect spoken that his lamina phone shower was dying. Public safety then sought to have a new phone delivered with a robotic cart, which promptly failed due to a technical malfunction. The suspect moreover refused to unshut the door to receive a new phone, for fear of exposing himself to fire. The incident commander – who wasn’t a member of the local Police Department but unquestionably Ed Rogers, the Fire Chief – was enlightened that the Fire Department in the proximal town of Lynwood had a fledgling drone program. Rogers promptly contacted Keenan Newton, the Lynwood drone program’s coordinator, who said he would be glad to assist.
As nightfall approached, Rogers and Newton had a contingency plan in mind. Utilize the drone’s thermal imaging device to monitor the suspect inside the house and to track him in the visionless in specimen he decided to make a run for it. But Newton had a largest short term plan: Attach a lamina phone to a rope pendulous from the drone and unhook it to the suspect through a washroom window. It was a simple but ingenious idea. Newton’s tech team flew the drone past the window and hovered in such a way that the rope swung through it. The suspect, still sheltered from sight, grabbed the phone, and negotiations resumed. It took several increasingly hours but the stand-off was resolved peacefully.
In fact, it was an older incident in Lynnwood that had first convinced the Fire Chief there – who was dismissive of drones – to establish its drone program. In that incident, a car had driven into a creek, and the suburbanite and passenger couldn’t be found. Divers managed to find one of the victims but gave up when darkness loomed. Newton, then just a private drone enthusiast, convinced the Fire Chief to let him use his own Phantom 3 Pro drone to create a map of the incident to determine where to uncork looking for the second victim. When recovery efforts resumed in the morning, the second victim was found within 30 minutes.
The Peru and Lynwood cases are just a small example of how drones can be useful not just strategically, but moreover tactically – and when least suspected. Awareness of drone advantages may upspring spontaneously, in the moment, as other increasingly tried and true ways fail. Drones aren’t necessarily substitutes for traditional vehicles and tactics but they can fill the void when needed. In unpredictable police and fire scenarios, when time is of the essence they’re flipside thunderstroke in the quiver.
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