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I chair the tech and garden committees at the PTA at my kids' elementary school in Brooklyn, a small, Title 1 (the majority of the families are poor) school with limited resources. A couple months ago the PTA gave money for expensive self-watering planter boxes, flowers, hoses, and other gardening implements to improve the austere, institutional exterior, which resembles a prison. As we discovered this morning, some of the flowers, boxes, and hoses were stolen over Memorial Day weekend.
Since planter boxes must be outside, and the thief must be in the neighborhood to know the boxes are there, it occurred to me that they must be visible from the air and perhaps a camera drone with decent range could be used to recover the stolen property and put a stop to thefts that will surely continue if we merely replace what was lost.
Ideally I imagine flying it from the flat roof of my 4-story apartment building to search in a .5 mile to 1 mile radius, with roughly 30 minutes of flying time and a "go home" feature if it loses contact with the controller or runs too low on battery.
Are there drone aficionados in the SN community who can speak to the feasibility of such a project and/or can recommend models to buy?
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:22PM
If you are all alone in fighting crime without sufficient authority and legal means to do so, you cannot win.
I'm not certain that's what this is, nor that it is legally distinct from walking past somebody's yard and seeing your stolen property in it. Cops won't lift a finger to investigate the theft of a planter trough from a poor school. They probably wouldn't investigate the theft of a rich man's Rolls Royce either, for that matter, if it meant they had to expend effort to do so. But if a school came to them, having done the legwork, with pictures of the property and an address where it is, would they still refuse to do anything? Maybe. But there's a chance.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @02:25AM
So let me ask some questions to hopefully clarify the issue.
If you weren't looking for a criminal, could you legally fly a drone around your neighborhood? With a camera.
--I think the answer is yes.
If that's true, then yes, flying around with an rc plane/drone with a camera attached in order to look for stolen goods is entirely fine.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday May 29 2015, @12:32AM
If you weren't looking for a criminal, could you legally fly a drone around your neighborhood? With a camera. --I think the answer is yes. If that's true, then yes, flying around with an rc plane/drone with a camera attached in order to look for stolen goods is entirely fine.
Law is not math. Intent matters a great deal in law. Imagine that the RC drone hits a wire, falls, and cuts up a child with its spinning blades. The operator will have to explain to the judge what it is that he was doing. The judge will learn that the operator was acting as a PI without a license [ca.gov]:
Private Investigator / Qualified Manager
Requirements for Licensure
A private investigator is an individual who amongst other duties (1) investigates crimes, (2) investigates the identity, business, occupation, character, etc., of a person, (3) investigates the location of lost or stolen property, (4) investigates the cause of fires, losses, accidents, damage or injury, or (5) secures evidence for use in court.
A careless teenager will get a slap on the wrist. An adult who was trying to perform a commercial service without being properly certified and caused injury or death while doing it... it's likely time in prison.