If you read this page he wasn't actually doing anything wrong, and has been released but the police almost crashed it by assuming they would be able to land it with no prior experience. http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update ... by-police/
I think the police have probably committed an offence themselves here. They interfered with the lawful operation of an aircraft and endangered themselves and the public by operating an SUAV in a dangerous and uncontrolled manner.
I think the police have probably committed an offence themselves here. They interfered with the lawful operation of an aircraft and endangered themselves and the public by operating an SUAV in a dangerous and uncontrolled manner.
lawful or not, if he'd of brought it down when they first asked they would of probably just had a chat & the situation could of been resolved on the spot with alot less bother. Just because i'm driving down the road, sticking to the speed limit etc in a fully legal car doesn't mean i don't have to stop if the Police ask
On the other hand, if you are in the fast lane and a cop car starts flashing you from behind, they don't want you to stop dead there - but pull over to the hard shoulder and stop in a safe manner.
I think it's the manner of the enforcement, not the actual requirement from them to land.
We didn't see the whole video, so don't know the whole story, but unless he was about to endanger life or was flying in an obviously dangerous or unlawful way, I would say this was an inappropriate level of force.
Like any news story in the UK media it is told from one side and probably doesn't include a lot of the facts.
What is clear is that he was obviously told to stop some time before that video was shot. Not like they stomped up to him and grabbed the transmitter with no waning. Since we can only legally fly line of site in the UK it wouldn;t have taken him long to bring the vehicle back to the take off location. Tensions will always run a little high when an event has fatalities or serious injuries (this is not like one of us being told to stop when we are playing in the park). Given the camera most likely fitted (either a vision+ or a GoPro) he will have to be quite close to the action to have caught much.
Breach of the peace is an odd one. Your conduct must be riotous or disorderly and severe enough to potentially cause alarm to others. Ignoring a police officer or swearing at them isn't (as they expect that in general) but swearing in a park with members of the public would be. I would hazard a good guess that for example a multi-copter hovering in the general vicinity of an ambulance crew trying to do their job would cause them some alarm.
I'm sure we will hear a lot more about this in the near future.
I'm not sure this is bad new for us in the UK as the story looks to have very little to do with general flying and the ANO.
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