L.A. residents protest police spy drones

Big Brother is Watching You

• "What's going to happen when they have a drone that you can't ever [sic] hear is around, that can come into close radius?" protester Jamie Garcia told NBC. "What are they going to do with this data? They haven't told us," he added.

LOS ANGELES (CBS News LA) — Community activists Thursday held a rally at City Hall against the recent acquisition of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – or drones – by the Los Angeles Police Department.

According to the LAPD, these small aircrafts can only stay in the air for about 20 minutes and would have limited use in certain circumstances, such as hostage situations.

KNX 1070’s Pete Demetriou reports about a dozen protesters with the Drone-Free LAPD/No Drones, LA! campaign staged a demonstration across from LAPD Headquarters downtown.

The group first called for limits on the use of drone technology by the LAPD in an Aug. 20 letter (PDF) addressed to Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Anti-drone press conference outside Democrat run LA City Hall

“We believe the acquisition of drones signify a giant step forward in the militarization of local law enforcement that is normalizing continued surveillance and violations of human rights of our communities,” said coalition spokesman Hamid Kahn.

The letter addressed to Garcetti referred to potential “mission creep” in using drone surveillance technology in partnership with programs such as the Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) program, which the group claims “has resulted in the openings of thousands of secret files on people engaging in perfectly innocent behavior.”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Garcetti’s office responded to the letter.

KCAL9’s Randy Paige spoke with protestors outside of City Hall who said that they would make sure that their message, “Drone free, LAPD,” would be made clear to the mayor’s representative, who was summoned to hear their concerns.

“We don’t want the LAPD to use drones in Los Angeles in any capacity whatsoever,” said Xander Snyder of Restore the Fourth.

LAPD Spokesman Bruce Borhian said that the department aircrafts are still being held in a secure location by a federal agency and have a ways to go before being approved or deployed.

In May, the LAPD announced the acquisition of two DraganFlyer X6 Drones from the Seattle Police Department using federal grants.

(RT News)

Marching to a 1984 Police State
While both parties are eagerly funding the insane drive to an authoritarian police state, in this case it is a Democrat run Los Angeles that is looking to spy on and record data about their citizens.