In case anyone has been curious, I had my court date come and go last week with no charges filed by the Long Beach City Prosecutor (Doug Haubert)'s office for Disturbing the Peace (M) allegedly created by prop noise from the operation of a Phantom 3 over a public beach (perfectly legal use case, obviously why nothing was formally filed in court). One of several take-away points from this, was that
if the pitbull of a cop who cited me had not been so dead set on creating a criminal record for me and/or forcing me to contemplate the fear of a jail sentence, he would have written the ticket as an infraction instead of a misdemeanor. Had he done that, I would have mailed the city the $400 "bail" fine amount prior to Thanksgiving and everyone would consider themselves winners. Instead, the city technically lost money in the form of paying court clerks to answer my pitbull of an attorney's inquiries for the past 3 months and were able to gain nothing from this zealous officer's attempt to misuse his authority...and I certainly spent more than $400 in legal fees covering my end.
I was told effective Jan 1, Long Beach PD began following the FAA-provided guidance on dealing with drone complaints and threw out everything prior...which is great because that guidance really does protect hobby operators and supersedes local and state laws on the subject. As a result, I feel *more* protected today than I did in October when I received my ticket.
As for my Phantom 3 Pro...its been sitting in the case for nearly a month now waiting to potentially be used as evidence....it might be time to move on to another copter or an alternative hobby. I get the feeling I'll be talking to more cops if I keep flying. I'm not interested in shipping (yet) but if any locals are interested shoot me a message for a steal on a 4 battery+hard case+filters+DBSmods installed, etc.
I don't read instructions or rules, so if that last bit violates anything due to this being a locals thread not a classified thread, please feel free to moderator-edit my post, or inform me and I'll edit it tomorrow.
Cheers
P.S. I was all by myself at the boat parade...and nearly got rained out but...