By Steven Symes 
San Francisco Police have been using drones for a while to track stolen cars as they travel through the city, allowing officers to more easily bust the thieves. It’s a simple evolution of technology many police departments already have and is something we can’t believe isn’t used more already, although there are a few other departments already doing this.
Porsche abandoned on a trail found by hikers.
The advantage with a drone, as we’ve seen in other police work, is they can be almost undetectable as they hover high above, making little noise, tracking a suspect’s every move. This means there might not be a chase at all as officers coordinate when and where to spring the trap.
Initially, the stolen vehicles are found using automatic plate reader cameras posted around the city. That’s a practice which has become quite common, with privacy advocates warning it could be easily abused.
Once the police department gets a hit on a stolen car from a plate reader, a drone will launch from the police station’s roof as the pilot tracks the suspect vehicle, relaying real time information to dispatch.
This allows officers to know where the stolen car is, where it’s going, even how many people are inside. Instead of just getting the plate reader hit and then having to hunt for the vehicle, the drone does that with relative ease.
In the CBS News report, police in San Francisco seem to attribute a drop in crime to its use of technologies like this. We can see how useful the drones are in tracking stolen cars, among other things, but we do have one big question.
The problem in many areas has been on the prosecution end of the justice system. Many times, car thieves especially get cut sweetheart deals by prosecutors and judges treat them with kid gloves, allowing chronic offenders to get out of custody and reoffend immediately.
Has anything on that end changed? Because as much as we think using drones to track stolen cars is a good idea, that would honestly have a much bigger impact on crime rates.
Image via CBS News