GLEN RIDGE, NJ — The Glen Ridge Police Department’s application for a drone, according to Chief Sheila Byron-Lagattuta in a Dec. 15 email, was not approved.
The department had been notified in June 2016, by the director of the Essex County College Public Safety Academy, Rocco Miscia Jr., that an organization called DAPS, an acronym for Drone Advocates for Public Safety, was offering free drones to law-enforcement agencies. While meeting with residents on the East Orange and Glen Ridge border during the summer, Byron-Lagattuta said her department had applied for one.
The application was online at the DAPS website. An OPRA request, by The Glen Ridge Paper, to learn how the GRPD would use a drone, if acquired, was rejected by the borough under the provisions of Executive Order 21, which was signed into law July 8, 2002, by Gov. James McGreevey.
In light of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, the order reads in part, excluded from OPRA requests would be “any government record where the inspection, examination or copying of that record would substantially interfere with the State’s ability to protect and defend the State and its citizens against acts of sabotage or terrorism, or which, if disclosed, would materially increase the risk or consequences of potential acts of sabotage or terrorism.”
The drones were being provided to DAPS by a company named Starfire, which is owned by Matt Sloane.
In a late-December telephone interview, Sloane said drones were becoming increasingly popular with first responders although he acknowledged the device suffers from a poor public image because of its stealth use in military conflicts.
Changes in the law have helped to increase the use of drones, he said, but education was the key to even wider acceptance.
“People use to think they were toys,” he said.
Although Sloane said how a law-enforcement agency would want to use their drone could be determined by making an OPRA request of the application, the device, he said, could be used in jail escapes; accident-scene recreations; mapmaking for search-and-rescues; detection of hazardous materials; and views of fires and areas affected by storms.
In a Glen Ridge pee-wee football championship game late last year at Washington Field, a small drone lifted off from the sideline opposite the bleachers and hovered at midfield, buzzing over a crowd of congratulatory parents and children after the game. It then obediently returned to the sideline.
“Drones have a bad name,” Sloane said. “No one in Glen Ridge is going to be dropping bombs.”
He also said the public should not be afraid that a drone will obtain covert surveillance of the citizenry.
“Drones are loud,” he said. “And with the available technology, you cannot zoom very close with a camera. For surveillance, a hand-held camera is better.”
He advises that any agency acquiring a drone should have a public information session and that it was incumbent upon the agency to have an internal-policy use.
“The Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t determine how they are used,” he said.
Sloane said the DAPS, free-drone program had a bigger response than anticipated. About 150 applications were received and five drones were awarded. He does not know if there will be a second round of giveaways.
Among the recipients was the Atlanta Police Department and Suwannee County Emergency Management, in Florida.
Sloane said a drone is battery-powered and that the FAA requires the operator to keep it within the line of sight while employed.
“There may or may not be a second round,” Sloane said of more free drones.
But a visit to the DAPS website this week revealed that the site has closed down indefinitely with the final words, “Our work has just begun!”
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