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posted by martyb on Monday July 06 2015, @01:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the up-in-the-air-about-this-one dept.

A Wisconsin robbery and auto theft suspect was captured by police thanks to a borrowed drone on May 31, according to court papers filed yesterday in Middleton, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin State Journal reports that Marquis Phiffer, 21, stole a car and robbed a convenience store in Middleton, Wisconsin on May 31.

After allegedly stealing a car that had been left running outside a coffee shop and robbing the store at a BP gas station (he declared he had a gun, but the clerk never saw one), Phiffer was pursued by police. A chase that reached speeds of up to 70mph ended when Phiffer crashed into a parked car. He abandoned the car and ran into a marsh near Tiedemann's Pond, just a few blocks from Middleton's National Mustard Museum.

The Middleton Fire Department lent the police a rubber raft and a camera-equipped DJI Phantom quadrocopter drone used in search and rescue operations to locate Phiffer. He was hiding in the water, and when the police reached him "his shoes were floating away from him," along with a "large wad of cash," Wisconsin State Journal's Ed Trevelen reported. More cash and a hypodermic needle were found in his pocket.

Seems like the same thing as calling in a chopper, but a lot less expensive. Anyone know what the cost differential is?


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  • (Score: 1) by lars_stefan_axelsson on Sunday July 12 2015, @08:52AM

    by lars_stefan_axelsson (3590) on Sunday July 12 2015, @08:52AM (#208091)

    USian at his best as always...

    No, police helicopters don't land to perform SAR here. We have, wait for it, SAR helicopters for that. You know, helicopters with actual equipment and personel trained for and practised in the SAR mission. But even so, the overwhelming majority of SAR is "S", i.e. "search". Any helicopter based search would end with the finding of the subject. In many parts of the world, (such as here) there wouldn't typically be any possibility of landing the helicopter anyway, and as police helicopters don't have winches, and you wouldn't use a winch with a lost kid or senile senior citizen anyway, that's the end of that. (A winch is only useful with someone who can go down with it. You know, like they have on proper SAR helicopters.)

    Police helicopters do two things. Watch traffic, and watch traffic. In their spare time they do provide "eye in the sky" services to ground based units, and spot the odd forest fire (that's all they can do when it comes to forest fires as well, watch it). It's rare, as in "hens teeth" rare, occurrence when they land to actually perform a mission. (They only land for lunch, basically).

    Watching traffic and providing overwatch could be equally well served by drones. The only mission you'd lose would be landing for lunch at the country inn, but that's hardly critical to the powers that be.

    --
    Stefan Axelsson