Fighting Crime From Above?

The UK Police have created a remote control surveillance camera which has been dubbed a flying saucer.  According to the Daily Telegraph:

Similar to a mini-helicopter, the device has four pairs of carbon-fibre rotor blades which support a camera. An operator on the ground controls the vehicle's flight using a hand-held control panel with two joysticks.

The drone – which is based on military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology – feeds live images back to a screen on the control unit, enabling the "pilot" to operate the machine even when it is out of his or her sight.

Merseyside Police was the first force to use the drones, launching them during a number of crackdowns on gun and gang crime, as well as against anti-social behaviour. The aerial cameras have also previously been deployed to deter crime at pop festivals. Yesterday was the first time it was used at a demonstration

"The drone, fitted with CCTV cameras, will be used by a trained operator from the manufacturing company. It will record any incidents of disorder for evidence-gathering purposes. The drone is similar to a small, model aircraft."

The drone is about three feet in diameter and can be configured to gather still images, video, thermal images and night-vision pictures. Unlike full-scale police helicopters it is virtually inaudible.

There seems to be a lot of these airborn cameras going up lately.  The US recently launched a powerful camera mounted to a hot air ballon near our northern border.  While this "border camera" did not get much press in the states, our neighbors to the north told us exactly how they felt about it – they pulled their pants down and  mooned it.

60 Minutes recently ran a story on unmanned drone camera planes in Iraq and the Army deemed them "highly effective".  In Lancaster PA, which proclaims itself the "most watched city in America" is also creating an eye in the sky program.  Lancaster will mount a surveillance camera to an airplane circling the community 24 hours a day in an effort to "combat crime".

Whether these cameras are effective, or just capturing some Canadian bacon remains to be seen.  I think it's obvious that aerial cameras deployed for a specific reason have the potential to be more effective than just for "general surveillance".