Six years after conducting the pilot project for the use of drones in the RCMP, the Saskatchewan arm lauds the technology’s usefulness at crime scenes.
Right now, drones are mostly used for collisions. Pictures and video gives experts material for determining how they happen.
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They have also been used in homicide investigations, and search and rescue missions.
“We’ve found that sometimes from the ground view you don’t see a lot of stuff. But you get an aerial picture, you might detect a tire mark that you didn’t see on the ground,” Corp. Doug Green said.
“That sometimes can be very crucial in your end analysis as to how and why a collision or a crime scene happened.”
Footage can also be used in court. Experts can reconstruct crime scenes and present it as evidence to a judge as to how a crime scene happened.
“Those aerial photos are valuable in later courtroom action. When you look at this system, to do it by aircraft it’s so expensive. And this thing can just fly over top and hover in there and get some photos,” Green said.
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Draganfly Innovations provide local RCMP with the units. They say the technology can improve usability for law enforcement in the future.
“If we can collect accurate data, save lives, and time and money, I think it’ll be a winning technology,” founder Zenon Dragan said.