By Chris Stonor
Western Australia’s (WA) regional police force are turning to drones in the hope of reducing response times for emergencies, reports 24world.news.
Albany is the first town to train its police officers as drone operators. The craft will respond to emergency situations like car crashes and search and rescue operations. The state is organising a one-week drone course for officers to attend, where they’ll learn how to operate the craft and understand the flight regulations. The course will conclude by July.
The regions involved are Great Southern, South West, Wheatbelt, Goldfields-Esperance, Mid West-Gascoyne, the Pilbara, and the Kimberley. Four officers from each one, all the way up north to Broome, will have access to 14 permanent drones. It is hoped the craft will improve response times and coverage without specialist officers’ required.
Once the training is completed around all participating regions, there should be a total of 60 officers who can legally operate a drone.
Each area is expected to receive two drones, a larger one estimated to be worth around AUS8,000 and a smaller version. In the past, WA police have deployed a DJI Matrice and a DJI Phantom.
Superintendent Glenn Spencer commented, “We’ll be able to target our search and rescue operations, for example, to specific areas where we can program the drones to search automatically. This will give us a greater probability of finding the person we are looking for.”
He continued, “By flying a drone, we can gain better visibility of an area and therefore a higher probability of detection that leads us to finding the person faster.”
The drones are equipped with thermal cameras, allowing night time search and rescue missions to take place and ocean missions for missing persons.
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(News Source: https://24world.news)
