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FAA gives CV police permission to fly below LOS

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The FAA has granted permission to the Chula Vista Police Dept (San Diego County) to fly their drones below line of sight when necessary in an emergency situation. It is the first such FAA waiver issued to a police dept in the U.S.



Mark
 
Interesting:

The newest FAA waiver is for tactical uses in an immediate area. It allows the drone to fly not just out of sight of the operator and it must stay below 50 feet. It also must remain within 1,500 feet of the pilot.
 
Presumably these will start to become more common resulting in "standing exemptions" to public safety entities so that they may operate without waiting for an FAA event/incident specific clearance during emergencies.

Most public safety agencies/entities train to a level of competence defined in a standard developed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) whose title is "NFPA 2400: Standard for Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems". This document was created by stakeholders from all areas of public safety (including police), and includes competencies and skills defined for pre-flight, mission planning, flight, maintenance, training, operator/observer certification, etc.

It goes well beyond FAA 107 and related regs to better define specific skill sets (and ways to measure competency) for the tactical use and deployment of these assets, so that this specific user group has a higher bar to follow, and these resources can be used safely and to best advantage.

The standard can be read online by anyone on the NFPA web site if you have an interest (NFPA.org or search NFPA2400) and anyone can submit comments as the standard is revised on a regular basis (typically every three years).
 
I like this part
“Another example of when it would be appropriate to use a drone in this way is when person with a gun ducks behind a building. “We don’t want to stick our head around a building to see if they are still there,” Redmond said. “We would rather fly a drone behind the building.”
Good point.
 
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The Chula Vista city council approved $37,000 for the police to add one more drone to its program. That's a pretty darn expensive drone.

Mark
 
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I don't know why the police would bother requesting a waiver other than for the reason of "testing the waters". As a "public use" entity their vehicles are exempt from FAR's.
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Yea that was what I thought too. Does anybody understand why LE would need this type of waiver to conduct the type of operations they mention in the article.

My understanding was that if LE used a drone to see what a guy ducking behind a building with a gun id doing that would be exempt as a public aircraft operation.

Frankly even under part 107 allows this for brief periods of time.”Brief” being purposefully vague.
 
Maybe this type of waiver would be requested by the police if it was for training purposes and there was no actual emergency.
 
Maybe this type of waiver would be requested by the police if it was for training purposes and there was no actual emergency.

Except this waiver specifically says it can only be used in emergency situations.
 
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