[HN Gopher] Plane damaged after being hit by York police drone a...
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Plane damaged after being hit by York police drone at Buttonville
Airport
Author : zdw
Score : 123 points
Date : 2021-08-23 18:47 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (toronto.ctvnews.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (toronto.ctvnews.ca)
| umvi wrote:
| Hopefully the police get a fine and licence temporarily revoked
| just like a civilian would have.
| [deleted]
| java-man wrote:
| The fine will be paid by the taxpayers and nothing will change.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that if a civilian was operating a drone in
| restricted airspace and a collision almost took out an
| aircraft, it would incur more than a fine and temporary license
| suspension. Just look at all of the folks being prosecuted for
| pointing a laser the wrong way in the sky.
|
| http://jdasolutions.aero/blog/aiming-lasers-at-aircraft/
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| look at the headline 'Plane damaged after being hit by York
| police drone at Buttonville Airport' if it were a civilian I
| am sure it would be 'Major disaster - as civilian drone
| crashes into a plane - potential suspects at large'
| ansible wrote:
| > _... pointing a laser the wrong way ..._
|
| I don't see how the two situations compare.
|
| If you are shining a laser light towards an aircraft, you are
| _deliberately_ trying to inflict harm upon the pilot, and
| could easily cause an accident.
|
| The police drone pilot screwed up, _badly_ , and was possibly
| criminally negligent, but wasn't intending to down a plane,
| though that could easily have been the result.
| Teever wrote:
| A lot of people who point lasers at planes don't understand
| how dangerous their actions are.
|
| I expect the people that we give guns/drones to for the
| purpose of enforcing laws to understand the laws they're
| enforcing and the consequences of their actions.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| These people tend to be intentionally aiming their lasers at
| planes, which is quite different from "point a laser the
| wrong way in the sky" which implies accidental. The headline
| example on your page also got a year of probation from a
| fairly understanding judge it seems.
| djrogers wrote:
| > Just look at all of the folks being prosecuted for pointing
| a laser the wrong way in the sky.
|
| That really smacks of being intentionally obtuse. If I said
| "look at all the people prosecuted for pointing their guns
| the wrong way when discharging them" you wouldn't buy it...
| vanattab wrote:
| I am pretty sure if a plane is actually struck by your drone
| near an airfield your going to get more then a fine and license
| revoked your going to jail.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Hopefully the police get a fine
|
| The police don't get fined - the taxpayer does.
| JTbane wrote:
| A civilian would be criminally charged for this.
|
| The police will likely get a slap on the wrist, or a token
| fine.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| It's weird how my perception of cops have changed. Actually
| that's a lie. I lost respect for the profession in high school.
|
| That said, my immediate thought is they (cops) were fooling
| around with their new toy.
|
| I guess my view would change if they lightened up on Revenue
| Collection, and solely zoned in on real crime? And what is real
| crime? I guess murders, white collar crime, organized gangs.
| It's not drugs.
| coliveira wrote:
| Cops are there to maintain their jobs, and their leaders are
| there to expand the corporation and make more money. The
| companies that support policing are there to make more
| profit. For all this to happen, they need to manufacture more
| "crime", even though all statistics say that crime is in a
| long term decline.
| candiodari wrote:
| > I guess my view would change if they lightened up on
| Revenue Collection, and solely zoned in on real crime? And
| what is real crime? I guess murders, white collar crime,
| organized gangs. It's not drugs.
|
| Then I would suggest you do not look up the statistics on how
| many "real crime" cases get solved. Murders, most of which
| are done in the moment and not planned out at all. Even
| premeditated must be understood to mean "X tried to extort Y,
| fight ensued, knife was used, Y died", and very much not "the
| butler, after 2 years of slowly preparing for the moment, set
| in motion his plan ..." like in the books.
|
| Of all murders, the police solve about 60% of cases. Every
| other crime it goes down significantly (and theft is far
| below 10%).
|
| There's a reason actual premeditated murders usually make the
| news for a week.
| btilly wrote:
| _Of all murders, the police solve about 60% of cases._
|
| The work of The Innocence Project makes me question how
| many cases they solve versus how many they found a
| targetable person to scapegoat instead.
|
| Certainly a lot of the "science" that gets used to identify
| who the killer is pseudo-scientific bunk. Very convenient
| for looking for a conviction, very bad for actually
| catching bad guys.
| leetcrew wrote:
| the 60% figure is referring to the clearance rate, which
| is just the ratio of charges filed to crimes reported. so
| if by "solve" you mean "someone gets convicted", the rate
| is quite a bit lower.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that "real crime" is a social
| construct. Petty crime is a prosecuted, despite being dwarfed
| by wage theft. Shooting someone is a crime, obviously, but
| purposefully starving thousands of infants to boost Nestle
| stock values is not.
|
| What you or I think of being the "real crime" that cops
| should focus on may or may not be what the laws define as
| real crime, which itself probably doesn't map to what cops
| spend all their time doing
| epicureanideal wrote:
| In the broadest possible interpretation, lots of things are
| social constructs, but I would imagine that any functional
| society would generally agree that murder, rape, assault,
| and theft should be discouraged.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Yes, in the broadest sense we want to discourage crimes
| like murder, rape, assault, and theft. I don't think
| anyone reasonable disagrees with this concept. The issue
| I'm raising is that what the definition of things like
| "rape" and "murder" is where problems start.
|
| My cynical point is that socially we tend to define "real
| crimes" in such a way to reinforce existing power
| hierarchies. Steal from the register and face
| prosecution, steal from your employee and maybe be forced
| to pay it back (maybe). Shoot your neighbor and get
| executed by the state, poison the river and face a civil
| case, starve foreign infants and face no consequences
| whatsoever. Morally all of these are awful things, but
| which ones get criminalized and prosecuted is extremely
| selective. The rich and powerful often not only get
| selective treatment when prosecuted, but the kind of
| violence that can bring is often not even criminalized at
| all.
|
| My most horrifying example is the fact that until the
| 1990s it wasn't legally possible for a man to be charged
| with raping his wife in some states. 13 states still
| treat marital rape as a lesser crime than rape of a non-
| spouse. I think we'd all agree that punishing rape is a
| good thing for the justice system to be doing, but that's
| hardly sufficient when the law has such obvious holes in
| it.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Police agree with you on 3 out of 4
| ashtonkem wrote:
| That's unreasonably generous to cops, IMO. They have a
| pretty long track record of doing all of those and
| getting away with it.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Yeah, the amount of "revenue collection" they do borders
| on theft I suppose.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| When I learned that you can show the police videos of who
| stole your property and give them the exact gps coordinates
| where your stolen property is right now or even the exact
| address of the house and they will do absolutely nothing...
| that is when I first realized that the police are
| worthless.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| But if you go yourself to recover your property, that's
| stalking and harassment and can get you arrested...
| alistairSH wrote:
| This wasn't a toy drone like a DJI Mavic or similar. Assuming
| they haven't changed hardware, it cost ~$125,000, takes a
| team of two to operate, and weighs 2.4kg (5.2lbs).[1]
|
| This is the damage done to the airplane.[2] It will require
| body work and an engine tear-down (prop struck the drone). If
| the drone had been a bit higher, it could have done major
| damage to the prop or worse the windscreen and possibly
| pilot.
|
| 1 - https://www.toronto.com/news-story/5728426-york-regional-
| pol...
|
| 2 - https://s30121.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/plane-
| hit-...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I guess my view would change if they lightened up on
| Revenue Collection
|
| For _that_ , you need political change. Many a constituency
| has elected to rip off their people with absurd policing
| tactics - including asset forfeiture abuse - that primarily
| target poor people to fund their operations, instead of
| properly raising taxes, because raising taxes is a hard sell
| "thanks" to decades of small-gubmint, trickle down
| propaganda.
| tjohns wrote:
| There's a photo of the damage here:
|
| https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/172-substantially-damage...
|
| There's also a copy of the incident report here:
|
| https://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/Saf-Sec-Sur/2/cadors-screaq/rd.aspx...
|
| More generally, I really hope the drone manufacturers invest in
| genfencing off controlled airspace and installing ADS-B receivers
| as part of a sense-and-avoid scheme to avoid potential collisions
| entirely. As a pilot, I'm impressed by the work DJI has been
| doing in this space.
|
| (Though it's worth noting that sense-and-avoid won't solve the
| problem entirely, since there's a fair number of aircraft that
| are not transponder equipped. Canada also doesn't yet mandate
| ADS-B equipage.)
| jdavis703 wrote:
| At least in the US there are both LEO and military aircraft
| that fly around with their transponders turned off. I'm not
| sure that "sense and avoid" would've worked in this case if the
| cops decided for whatever reason they'd turn off ADS-B.
| [deleted]
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The details in the avweb article are pretty damning... 500 AGL
| and one mile final is not even "near an airport," it's very
| obviously right in front of the approach end. Hard to imagine
| how anyone was operating a drone there without complete
| reckless disregard for safety.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| > that sense-and-avoid won't solve the problem entirely, since
| there's a fair number of aircraft that are not transponder
| equipped.
|
| To be honest, I kinda hate the fact that DJI won't bring
| Airsense to the smaller drones. I love my Air 2S and I've seen
| it in action many times, helicopters often give you a 30-40
| second window to get out of the way before you even see them.
| JamesCoyne wrote:
| You can see a little more detail on the TSB incident page, this
| is CADORS report 2021O1096: https://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/Saf-Sec-
| Sur/2/cadors-screaq/rd.aspx...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Because it involved non-police, the CADORS got filed swiftly.
|
| When an RCMP (Canadian federal police) drone collided with
| their own helicopter, they took 4 _months_ to report the
| incident:
|
| https://skiesmag.com/news/rcmp-drone-flying-wrong-altitude-c...
| bernardv wrote:
| Buttonville airport is a small regional airport with few flights
| in/out on any given day. Anyone can monitor the tower on VHF and
| get a clue as to what is coming in, and some smaller planes do
| have ADS-B transponders and show-up on flightradar, or a basic
| SDR rig. It is flat terrain and any low-flying aircraft is
| visible well before it passes overhead. Can't think of any excuse
| as to how this might have been allowed to happen.
| tzs wrote:
| I had never heard the term "airbox" before. To save people some
| Googling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbox
| giantg2 wrote:
| If this happened I the US, I highly doubt the police would have
| admitted to it.
| tjohns wrote:
| Assuming they're flying under Part 107 or as a public aircraft,
| the police drone operators would have the same obligation to
| report accidents to the NTSB as would a regular aircraft pilot.
| giantg2 wrote:
| And they're also required to report misconduct of other
| officers, but how often is that ignored...
| lisper wrote:
| The last sentence made me laugh:
|
| > The cause of the collision is not known.
|
| I'll give you long odds that the cause was the drone being
| someplace it was not supposed to be.
| [deleted]
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The rule on not using the passive voice in journalism is
| suspended the moment it's about cops misbehaving.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I hope someone out there is documenting just how
| consistently, it's astounding.
|
| I still wonder how this happens. The only theory I know of is
| that if they don't give them positive coverage then they'll
| never get comment form them again, but is that really
| sufficient for it to be so universal and why have so few
| papers gone adversarial on this?
| banannaise wrote:
| Police are also known to physically assault and arrest
| journalists from outfits they don't like.
| djrogers wrote:
| Police in Canada? Do you have anything to back that up?
| amatecha wrote:
| Here's one from just this past week (with plenty of
| prior/ongoing related mistreatment of journalistic
| activity in the area): https://caj.ca/blog/CAJ_urges_RCMP
| _to_follow_court_order_to_...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I used to work in aviation. The police fly like they drive (i.e
| like the rules don't apply to them, because they don't). This
| isn't surprising in the least.
| teeray wrote:
| Uh, why were they allowed to operate a drone within the glide
| slope of a runway?
| version_five wrote:
| > NAV Canada, the country's air navigation service provider,
| had not been notified about the YRP drone, Transport Canada
| said.
|
| They didnt ask
| jandrese wrote:
| They were not but they did so anyway.
| [deleted]
| marcellus23 wrote:
| They're not, but they're cops, so...
| teeray wrote:
| Ah, yep. The plane should have pulled over when the pilot saw
| the blue lights.
| version_five wrote:
| I'd be interested to know about how York police operate their
| drone "unit": if it's a group of trained people with flight
| experience, appropriate training, and the right connections with
| aviation authorities, or if it's just a couple constables "takin'
| the drone out".
| coldacid wrote:
| Given the quality of York cops, it's most likely the latter.
| (They're still better than the Durham cops, though.)
| stanski wrote:
| Flying a drone at or near circuit altitude within the vicinity
| of an active airport, without prior notification... You can
| probably guess about the kind of person who was operating the
| drone.
| coldacid wrote:
| York is where they go when they can't get hired by Toronto or
| Peel.
| JamesCoyne wrote:
| I found this article from 2018
|
| https://www.toronto.com/news-story/8102547-video-peel-police...
|
| Nearby Peel ON has a drone unit and probably flies similar
| equipment to York
| hbrav wrote:
| If it was >250g, you need a license:
| https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/drone-safety/learn-rules-yo...
| joemi wrote:
| I know a lot of people are viewing this as the police getting
| their comeuppance, but there's not really enough info in this
| article to go on. The last line of the article is pretty explicit
| about this: "The cause of the collision is not known."
| caconym_ wrote:
| You don't need to know much more than that the manned aircraft
| was on final approach within a mile of the airport^[1] and that
| the police drone got in its way. Short of some one-in-a-million
| (but probably actually a lot more than a million) malfunction,
| there is very little wiggle room here for the police operators
| to have been anything but profoundly and (one would assume, by
| "civilian" standards at least) criminally negligent.
|
| You simply do not fly drones anywhere near an airport without
| coordinating with the relevant air traffic control authorities,
| and this is exactly why. The people in the 172 could have been
| killed. Every person operating a UAS needs to be _positive_
| they aren 't doing so in restricted or conflicted airspace,
| even casual hobbyists flying tiny sub-250g drones.
|
| Equipment failure is usually not an excuse (for the operator)
| either, since the limits and failsafes on the drone should
| always be set to prevent it from ending up somewhere it
| shouldn't be. Every time I'm going to fly one of my drones, I
| evaluate these settings and choose new values tailored to the
| situation and "mission". This includes disabling automatic
| return-to-home if there is any chance of that function causing
| it to fly a dangerous route, e.g. one over people.
|
| ^[1] https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/172-substantially-
| damage...
| joemi wrote:
| You proved my point by bringing a second (more detailed)
| source into your argument. At the time I commented, there was
| no second source in any of the HN comments here.
| caconym_ wrote:
| The "about to land" and "at Toronto Buttonville Municipal
| Airport" verbiage in OP's article is plenty damning, as it
| tells us that the police drone's operator(s) not only
| failed in their general duty to stay clear of and yield to
| manned aircraft, but did so in the vicinity of an active
| airport. My point (possibly not well made) was that "the
| cause of the collision is not known" is mostly irrelevant
| wrt. the culpability of the police, as in _any_ incident
| like this there is a tiny keyhole of possible extenuating
| circumstances surrounded by an ocean of likely negligence.
|
| I brought in the other source to verify the claims in OP's
| article, but the fact that the manned aircraft was
| literally on short final makes this incident even worse
| than the first article implies. It escalates the police
| misconduct from serious, likely criminal (by "civilian"
| standards, at least) negligence to something so absurdly
| over the top that I'm not sure what to call it. There is no
| more dangerous place to operate a UAS than in the glide
| slope of an active runway.
|
| The term "reckless endangerment" comes to mind.
| minitoar wrote:
| The only thing I could imagine that would exonerate the
| operators of the drone would be if it turned out this was an
| unforseeable equipment failure (eg an uncommanded climb into
| controlled airspace), and they weren't already being
| excessively risky at the time of failure.
| [deleted]
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