Swedish SWAT Team Considers Drones for Special Operations

swedish-swat-teamSwedish police are testing the use of drones, with a special emphasis on SWAT and possible search and rescue operations. It’s unknown how many drones the police in Sweden plan to order, but they would be used in select cases, with testing beginning sometime this summer.

Drones could also be used to capture aerial photographs of crime scenes, fire damage, and other carefully chosen scenarios deemed too dangerous for humans.

“Drones are equipped with sensors and technology for video transfer, which would act as an addition to the police helicopters, and there are plans to use them all over the country,” a Swedish police spokesperson told Newsweek. “This will be mostly in special units like SWAT teams, bomb squads, and rescue operations if someone gets lost in the mountains or at sea. They could be used for traffic monitoring as well.”

There are still privacy concerns related to police and government use of drones, with the Civil Rights Defenders, a Swedish non-profit group, saying it’s a “slippery slope where you start with using the drones in one way without considering the use of them in a different way…”
Source: TweakTown

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *