Are SWAT teams training this?
One of our SWAT members is at a training and sent me this email today.
"Lt,
Greetings. Got a thought for you. I'm at a team leader school and they brought up the discussion point of what do we do if the suspect has a drone. One of the things they talked about was having some sort of jammer signals to basically disable the drone. Another thing they discussed was potentially “dog fighting” with one of our drones. Basically crash our drone into theirs to take it out of the sky. Just a couple of things to think about. Thought I would pass it onto the professional. "
I simply replied, "nope". I'm sure you could argue officer safety and other exigent circumstances (especially if being used as a weapon) in taking down a drone. However, a drone that is just flying above a SWAT call is not illegal in my state and I would prefer not to be the department that makes case law.
My answer would be for SWAT to wait for a battery change before initiating a plan. Less calls from the FAA that way.
Definitely great conversation. The world is seeing how effective a Mavic and an explosive can be, and that will hit here at some point.
But, unless it actually poses a threat, I don’t think I would address it. The battery only lasts so long. Have a team ready to deal with it once it has landed.