Armed Drones Not Operating In North Dakota

I was surprised Wednesday morning to see Google news alerts showing up in my inbox saying that North Dakota is the first state in the nation to legalize armed drones for law enforcement. How is it possible that the North Dakota Legislature adjourned nearly five months ago and those of us in the state who cover the unmanned aerial systems (UAS) industry had heard almost nothing about this supposed controversy until now?

An article by Justin Glawe of The Daily Beast gives the impression that the North Dakota Legislature expressly authorized the state’s law enforcement agencies to use UAS equipped with non-lethal weapons “like rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, sound cannons, and Tasers.” However, anyone who actually bothers to read the bill in question—HB 1328—will be disappointed to learn that it says nothing of the sort.  

This April 10 news article written after the passage of the bill notes that its sponsor, Rep. Rick Becker, R-Bismarck, would have preferred that the bill ban law enforcement from equipping UAS with any type of weapons. As it is, the only language—one sentence—in the entire bill related to weapons says that nobody in the state is allowed to equip UAS with lethal weapons. Everything else in the bill is about law enforcement using UAS for surveillance and when a warrant is required for such operations.

One of the sources quoted in The Daily Beast article is Alan Frazier, deputy and chief UAS pilot with the Grand Forks County Sheriff’s Department and an associate professor of aviation at the University of North Dakota School of Aerospace Sciences. On the national level, he is a highly regarded author and speaker on UAS-related law enforcement topics.

To say Frazier was less than pleased with Glawe’s story would be an understatement. He said The Daily Beast article “is full of inaccurate information, unfounded conclusions, and quantum leaps in logic.”

In addition, Frazier said that when Grand Forks County Sheriff Bob Rost testified before the North Dakota House Judiciary Committee, the UAS use of force issue was never mentioned. That’s how controversial it was at the time.

Frazier also noted that the Grand Forks Sheriff’s Department is the only non-federal agency operating UAS in North Dakota. He quoted a section of the department’s UAS unit policy which says: “Deployment of any type of projectile, chemical agent, or electrical current weapon from a GFSD UAS is PROHIBITED.”

“Both Sheriff Rost and I believe that use of force from a domestic UAS operated by a law enforcement agency is inappropriate at this time,” Frazier said.

So other than U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the only law enforcement agency operating UAS in the entire state of North Dakota has an official policy against arming its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with weapons.

Reading Glawe’s piece, one might get the impression that armed police drones are swarming the skies of North Dakota just waiting for the opportunity to remotely gas, shock, scare, annoy, non-lethally shoot or—if you believe the article—possibly kill perpetrators from afar without due process. Fortunately for those of us who live in the state, the truth is far less controversial and a great deal less sensational.