Police to test drones in Thames Valley and Hampshire
Pilot scheme will assess use of UAVs in roles including search and rescue and major incidents
POLICE will be deploying drones in the Thames Valley and Hampshire as part of a trial to test their operational effectiveness.
Officers will be conducting a proof of concept trial to test the unmanned devices capability for reactive and planned policing operations.
The pilot of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is being run by the Joint Operations Unit of Hampshire Constabulary and Thames Valley Police (TVP).
Assistant chief constable David Hardcastle, responsible for operation across Hampshire and Thames Valley, said both forces were "committed to using technology to fight crime and make the public safer and hopefully the use of drones will be another tool available to do this.”
Each force will have three drones at their disposal during the trial, and 34 drone operators be trained across the two forces. Another drone has been purchased for training purposes.
The forces said that drones can be used in a variety of incidents, including searching for missing people, responding to major incidents, capturing aerial crime scene imagery, at road traffic collisions, large public events.
The drones will go live from mid-August when the pilot scheme is launched by both forces.
The drones are made by Yuneec and are a six engine model with high definition, optical and thermal imaging cameras and flown up to a maximum height of 400 feet, compliant with Civil Aviation Authority regulations.
The drones also have a payload capability, which the accountable manager of the Thames Valley and Hampshire drone unit, PC Andy Sparshott, said could be used to deploy rescue equipment to missing people.
Mr Sparshott said that the use of drones was "nothing new" in policing and that the trial would assess their operational capability in the two force areas.
He said: "We want to evaluate where these drones have added value and benefits, and potentially created efficiency savings within the police.
"We hope that these drones will mean that we can send less officers to the incident in the first place," adding that it currently took a lot of time and people to search large areas of land during a missing persons operation.
He said that drones would be quieter than using helicopters, adding that unless people were already awake they would not hear the drone.
Mr Sparshott said: "While this is not spying on people unnecessarily they are quieter, more energy efficient, create less environmental pollution and we hope this is seen as a positive within our communities.
"We hope the public see this as a good news story about drones. They have attracted a lot of negative publicity about their misuse. This is using them for legitimate policing purposes."
Mr Hardcastle said: “We will look at how drones can assist in a variety of overt policing situations with a view to rolling out the use of drones in both forces permanently, should the pilot be a success.
“This is an exciting opportunity for both forces, which will mean officers can get an aerial view of large areas in a short period of time, so their use should really assist with finding offenders suspected of crime or disorder and, missing people in large open expanses or wooded areas, providing live feeds for officers at major incidents or football games and protests and many other applications."
