The NYPD’s terror guru said Monday that most drone sightings have been determined to be crafts flown by innocent hobbyists — or to actually be planes, helicopters, meteor showers or even planet Venus.
“There is a little bit of virality associated with how this thing has materialized and grown,” said Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner, head of the NYPD Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau. “There is a lot that we know but there is also stuff we don’t so I think part of that vacuum is being filled by a lot of fear, frankly.”
Weiner said that based on what the NYPD has determined about drone sightings in the city and what federal and New Jersey authorities have thus far learned about sightings over infrastructure facilities and military bases in the Garden State and elsewhere there is no reason to believe a foreign government is spying on Americans or that there is a nuclear or chemical threat.
“There is definitely information that we wouldn’t have awareness of, even classified information, potentially,” Weiner said. “So I’m not going to ever say something is impossible but that just feels very inconsistent with the information we have from federal partners.”
Federal authorities have downplayed the threat of the drones and said there is no danger.
But some Republican lawmakers and leaders — as well as President-elect Trump — have urged the federal government to take more decisive action by shooting the drones down.
On Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for expanded surveillance and drone detection systems for the tri-state area.
The NYPD for two years has been pushing for legislation that would give the nation’s largest police force mitigation capabilities including disabling drones as they are in flight or tapping into its signal and returning it to its operator, something only the feds can now do.
Weiner said there are about 300 to 400 drone flight a day — many by licensed operators but others not. Those numbers have remained steady in recent weeks, she said, but there has been a “strong uptick in reporting,” which she said makes sense given the media attention.
Over the weekend, for instance, there were about 120 drone calls made to 911 or 311, more than for the entire month of November.
“Most of the actual drone detection is stuff you can buy at Home Depot,” she said.
She noted that police on Sunday found a drone at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It belongs to a company that is based there, which had left it in a parking lot weeks ago and had not flown it.
On top of that, she said, some civilians are pointing red lasers at planes they believe to be drones while others have used their hobby drones, available at stores like Home Depot, to check out the so-called suspicious drones.
“And so then you can create the pubic safety threat that you’re trying to investigate,” Weiner said.
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