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UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones

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Re: UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones

#81

Post by Scoundreller »

chrisseaton wrote: post #9
Edd314159 wrote: post #5

> The suggestion there may not have been any drones at Gatwick Airport was a "miscommunication by police", a government source has told the BBC. > During a conference call between ministers, chaired by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, it was agreed the 67 drone sightings were legitimate. ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46670714 ) As much as "it was all a false alarm" would make a killer headline (and clear…

The Police in the UK often say the most ludicrous things in statements, and the basic public speaking skills of the people they choose to put out is often very limited. They always look like they're caught in the headlights while trying to sweatily stumble through reading some words off a page. I'm not sure what institutionally causes this, but it must be something causing it as it's always the same. Remember when re…

Consider the alternative:

A lot of Canadian police forces have “media relations officers”.

IE: armed PR personnel that manage the media.

Even our highway patrol has one. I imagine him racing from accident to accident, lights and sirens, to give/record spoon-fed media updates.

I’d imagine there would be swift discipline if a front-line officer were to give an unvetted off-the-cuff media interview.

Re: UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones

#82

Post by Scoundreller »

clort wrote: post #69
barry0079 wrote: post #10

Not before plastering the faces of an innocent couple nationwide. I think they deserve reparation for this.

Interestingly I heard that 'some media' had published their names yesterday and I thought that was pretty crass. I know several media organisations are that though so its not really a surprise, and I hope they manage to sue them for undue distress or whatever. Today though, the BBC are saying " and from Crawley are saying that they feel completely violated by the media attention". I can't understand what is going thr…

Perhaps they had no choice once their names were leaked.

Better to have publications about your vindication instead of just your arrest.

And BBC should have enough SEO to bury the arrest stories.

Re: UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones

#83

Post by [deleted] »

gambiting wrote: post #60
barry0079 wrote: post #10

Not before plastering the faces of an innocent couple nationwide. I think they deserve reparation for this.

Yep, UK and US are abhorrent when it comes to this. Where I'm from(Poland) it's literally illegal to print the full name and show the face of the accused until after the trial. Once someone is arrested all the newspapers can do is say "Arthur G. was arrested on suspicion of X" with a blurred out photo of their face. The penalties for breaking that law are substantial and newspapers have paid extremely heavy fines for…

[deleted]

Re: UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones

#84

Post by CodeAndCuffs »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #56
C1sc0cat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't hire the brightest - recently I heard a former senior ex met natsec policeman who presented as very very stupid individual I would not trust to investigate a missing kitten. There was also the scandal where a v senior copper on the Cyber side was found cheating.

In the USA, courts ruled it was legal for police departments to discriminate based on intellect and refuse to higher persons with high IQs. They hire less smart people on purpose because they tend to question orders less and do what they are told more (their words, not mine).

This was literally a single court case of a single applicant of a single small department.

The ruling is that it is not literally illegal to refuse to hire someone for being smart. On an totally unrelated note, the applicant was an older fellow, and age discrimination is illegal.

The applicant was also hired as an officer in another jurisdiction.

Most departments that have more than 100 officers require a bachelor's or associate's degree. The department I worked for did not explicitly have this requirement, but I was the only person in our class of 96 hires that did not have either a college degree or military background. Most had bachelor's, a few had master's, some had doctorates.

On a completely separate tangent, law enforcement as a field is much like a skilled trade. To do it well you need a specific set of skills and the desire to learn them. Any high school graduate can do the job more than adequately if hes willing to listen and learn the stuff he needs to learn. At the end of the day a cop simply needs to be an honest person who understands the basic principles of the laws related to policing, and is willing to take calculated risks to help others.

Re: UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones

#86

Post by [deleted] »

bgeeek wrote: post #50
C1sc0cat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't hire the brightest - recently I heard a former senior ex met natsec policeman who presented as very very stupid individual I would not trust to investigate a missing kitten. There was also the scandal where a v senior copper on the Cyber side was found cheating.

To be fair, and I've come across this so many times, you can be good at your job and still have awful presentation skills. I don't think we get taught things like this in the UK and/or get practise in it, unlike other countries.

[deleted]

Re: UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones

#87

Post by jsjohnst »

Asooka wrote: post #78
klyrs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, flipping cop cars is a common and well-documented pastime among rioters

Cop cars are lighter than cows.

What cop car weighs 500 - 1800lbs? Even a Smart Car or VW bug (lightest “cars” I can think of that I’ve seen used as a police car) weighs double what an average cow weighs.

Re: UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones

#88

Post by jsjohnst »

klyrs wrote: post #71
huffmsa wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even asleep, a one ton animal is hard to move

And yet, flipping cop cars is a common and well-documented pastime among rioters

Cars don’t try to get away when you go to flip them. They also can’t widen their stance and counter your effort to flip them. Cows do both of those things. Cows don’t sleep standing up, so they definitely know when you are approaching and most will be at least walking away long before you get to them.

Re: UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones

#89

Post by Dayshine »

jsjohnst wrote: post #33
bigwheeler wrote: post #25

I just still can’t wrap my head around the fact that in 2018, with a camera attached to every waking persons hand (and some sleeping people too), how is it that there is not a single public photo or video published of this specific drone. Kind of reminds me of when I found out that tipping cows wasn’t a real thing...

> I just still can’t wrap my head around the fact that in 2018, with a camera attached to every waking persons hand (and some sleeping people too), how is it that there is not a single public photo or video published of this specific drone. I’ve been in many debates about this in the drone flying community (and with friends who know me and how much I fly) and I keep coming back to this point. I’d even take a blurry “…

Here's a real report of a near-miss (20m) with a drone by an RAF fighter jet: https://www.airproxboard.org.uk/uploadedFiles/Content/Standa...

Re: UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones

#90

Post by jsjohnst »

Dayshine wrote: post #89
jsjohnst wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just still can’t wrap my head around the fact that in 2018, with a camera attached to every waking persons hand (and some sleeping people too), how is it that there is not a single public photo or video published of this specific drone. I’ve been in many debates about this in the drone flying community (and with friends who know me and how much I fly) and I keep coming back to this point. I’d even take a blurry “…

Here's a real report of a near-miss (20m) with a drone by an RAF fighter jet: https://www.airproxboard.org.uk/uploadedFiles/Content/Standa...

When you put military aircraft flying at high speed in class G airspace so close to the ground, crap like this happens. I know the Tornado was authorized, but as someone who grew up near a military base, it is abusive to those in the area. This is a sore spot with me, so apologize I’m a bit bitter on this.

To avoid situations like the above, I typically file a flight plan or at minimum contact nearby ATC if I know I’m going to be flying above 200ft much. That said, I’m not required too and neither was the drone pilot in this incident either. I wouldn’t be opposed to a transponder, if they were made on drones, but to date I don’t know of any major manufacturers providing that feature.

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