Mayor Eric Adams on Friday claimed the public’s fantasies about “sci-fi” are to blame for any fears involving NYPD drones flying over Labor Day weekend celebrations.
“We have to push back on the sci-fi aspects of drones — nobody’s going to be monitored,” Adams insisted at a press conference Friday alongside NYPD Commissioner Eddie Caban — after some civil-rights activists and Big Apple residents trashed the cops’ use of the gadgets as Big Brother-esque.
“So what we’re doing over this weekend, there are a number of calls of loud music disruptive behavior,” Adams said. “Instead of the police having to respond and look at those, they’re going to utilize drones from a safe distance up, not down flying in someone’s backyard to see what they have on a grill.
“[NYPD are] going to utilize the drones to determine [if they] should they send crisis management teams there right away to help mitigate the problem. We don’t want police to be the only response.”
Caban backed up Adams and said the drones have been “a wonderful thing” for the department.
“Everybody, like the mayor said, is worried about sci fi,” he said.
“Now we’re using these drones as an extra resource, a force multiplier. … We have our 311 calls, and they’re complaining about noise. We can deploy the drones to see — it just might be people having a nice orderly party, so we don’t have to deploy so many resources.”
Adams has previously said he wants the NYPD to further embrace the bots’ “endless” potential – and even cited Israel’s surveillance methods as an ideal model, despite the fact that legions of critics argue the strategies unfairly target Palestinians.
City data shows that the NYPD deployed drones for public safety or emergency reasons 124 times thus far in 2023, up from just four times in 2022.
Hizzoner noted two recent unruly Manhattan incidents in which drones were deployed: in Washington Square Park after the Pride Parade and during streamer Kai Cenat’s gamer giveaway in Union Square.
In the Cenat case, “We were able to see it remotely, and we had a view that the responding units did not have, and we were able in real time to communicate with them, where the problem spots were, what we had to do, how we had to close down the street, how we were able to see where dangerous places were,” Adams said.
“You know, in my entire career of being around law enforcement, never did I experience that level of firsthand on the ground,” added Adams, who loves to remind the public about his past gig as an NYPD captain.
The high-flying technology has the advantage of traveling much faster than officers themselves, who will be impacted by traffic jams and closures for events like the Western Indian American Day parade and the J’Ouvert festival, Adams noted Friday.
“You know, a drone could get to a late location in 30 to 40 seconds, while we’re going to have crowded streets where police are not going to be able to get there as fast,” he said.
Adams and Caban’s comments about science fiction concerns came after Daniel Schwarz, a senior privacy and technology strategist with the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), blasted the NYPD’s surveillance plan as a “sci fi-inspired scenario.
“It’s a troubling announcement, and it flies in the face of the POST Act,” Schwarz said after NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry announced the plan Thursday.
The 2020 Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology, or POST, Act requires city police to disclose all surveillance tactics, according to the NYPD website.
“One of the biggest concerns with the rush to roll out new forms of aerial surveillance is how few protections we have against seeing these cameras aimed at our backyards or even our bedrooms,” said Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
“Clearly, flying a drone over a backyard barbecue is a step too far for many New Yorkers,” he added.
Some city dwellers shared the group’s concerns – with several criticizing Daughtry’s choice to announce the drone strategy during a security briefing on the J’ouvert festival, which is an important annual event for the Caribbean community.
The NYPD has previously faced accusations of racially biased overpolicing of the festival, which has been the scene of a handful of gun violence incidents over the years, Gothamist reported.
“NYPD said they’re doing this because J’ouvert is soon,” an observer tweeted. “So the drones are literally for spying on black people.”
Another remarked, “Black ex-cop mayor authorizes NYPD to use drones to spy on Black folks attending J’ouvert and Carnival this weekend in Brooklyn.”
Others online expressed worries about privacy as well as concerns about how the bots could respond to legitimate emergencies.
“How does a drone respond to a call for help? What assistance can a drone provide? This requires a court order to cease & desist,” a critic wrote.
Another person chimed in, “Time to invest in a slingshot.”
One commenter blasted the NYPD for not “having anything better to do than spy on weekend barbecues.”
“I think we should #Defund them all,” the writer quipped.
With Post wires