The federal government wasted more than $1.2 million on unmanned drones that have been misused or mothballed by local police departments, investigators found.
A report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s Office raised questions about how the federal grants were awarded and whether municipal law enforcement even needed them.
The audit detailed the story of how the Gadsden Police Department (serving an Alabama city with a population of 40,000) spent $150,000 from a federal grant in 2007 on a drone to help crack down on the sale of methamphetamines.
In 2009, Gadsden authorities attempted one surveillance mission.
“However, Gadsden Police Department officials stated that during the mission the ground-control station lost communication [with the drone], causing [it] to collide with a tree,” the report said.
Officials blamed the area’s landscape of hills and valleys for the communication mishap.
Investigators also said the Gadsden cops never obtained a required operating certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The device is currently grounded in a storage facility and its future use is up in the air, Gadsden police officials told auditors.
The department declined further comment Tuesday.
Meanwhile, police in North Little Rock, Ark., spent $84,000 in federal funds in 2008 to buy a drone for surveillance of high-risk drug- and gun-crime neighborhoods. Five years later, the drones haven’t been used for law-enforcement purposes, despite test runs and training.
The Miami-Dade Police Dept. bought two drones in 2007 to monitor life-threatening crime scenes such as hostage crises — but neither has been used. A drone was once activated to monitor a suspect who barricaded himself, but the mission was aborted when he willingly surrendered, a Miami-Dade spokesman said.
The spokesman said there are strict guidelines for drone use. The drone must be operated remotely by a certified pilot and must remain in eyesight at all times.
In response to the findings, Justice Department officials said they have tightened the requirements for drone funding and use by local police.