Oct. 13—MANKATO — Mankato residents appear almost universally comfortable with local police deploying an aerial drone equipped with high-definition cameras.
The public comment period ended this week on the city of Mankato's plans and policies for using an unmanned drone to record still photos, live video and possible thermal imaging from above.
Just a handful of residents offered written comments on the planned use of the already-purchased drone, and no one showed up Tuesday night for the official public forum on the Department of Public Safety's draft policy for "Unmanned Aerial System Operations."
It's possible the vast majority of skeptics were persuaded by privacy protections in the draft policy, which was displayed on the city's public outreach page EveryVoicemankato.gov.
"We had 356 participants view the website. Only two people provided information," said Jeremy Clifton, the assistant director of operations for the Department of Public Safety, who was at the forum in case people wanted to comment. "I additionally received three emails."
That meant about 1 in 10,000 Mankatoans weighed in.
Clifton summarized the five commenters: "Some of it had to do with the mechanical operations of it. How were we going to maintain it? What would happen if it falls from the sky? But the majority of it had to do with privacy concerns."
That was the case with an EveryVoice commenter who identified only as Shakara.
"I don't think it's right we have no privacy anymore," Shakara wrote, adding concerns that police will next "be able to come in our houses anytime they feel like it."
The draft policy pledges to respect privacy and incorporates restrictions by the Federal Aviation Administration and by Minnesota law against routinely hovering above people's homes and yards.
"Operators and observers shall adhere to FAA altitude regulations and shall not intentionally record or transmit images of any location where a person would have a reasonable expectation of privacy (e.g., residence, yard, enclosure)," the draft policy states.
The second EveryVoice commenter, who also used a pseudonym, called for the drone use to be exceedingly limited.
"The proposed policy declares that drones will not be used, turned off, turned away, or data deleted if there is a reasonable expectation of privacy where they are used. A nice idea, but it sounds next to impossible to determine," wrote Arminius090. "I would recommend the use of police drones only in instances of emergency or pursuit. There could be a benefit to a 'bird's eye' view of a situation to help protect the public and law enforcement officers."
The policy prohibits using the drone "to conduct random surveillance activities" or "to harass, intimidate or discriminate against any individual or group."
It also states: "The UAS shall not be weaponized."
That's not to say the drone can never be used to intentionally peer into someone's private property, but that will generally happen only with a search warrant or for a lifesaving situation.
"If we do need to use it in collecting evidence, we certainly will be getting a court order or a search warrant in order to do that," Clifton said.
In reality, the drone will mostly be used by other city departments for non-law-enforcement purposes such as creating promotional videos, tracking traffic patterns and collecting data on natural resources, he said.
"If we should have to use it in an emergency situation, our fire department will be used to aid us in piloting this drone for search and rescue issues ... for missing persons or lost persons," Clifton said.
Plans are also underway to keep the public informed about both future and past use of the drone.
As soon as later this month, a page on the city's website will be in place to publicly detail planned flights.
"We will have those listed — dates, times and locations where we pre-plan to be using it as a city," Clifton said.
While there undoubtedly will be exceptions for warrant-based use of the drone in collecting evidence in a criminal investigation, details of most deployments of the drone also will be reported after the fact on the website — showing on a Google map the precise flight path the drone followed.
"So we're trying to be as transparent as possible to the citizens to show where we're operating this drone should there be any questions," Clifton said.
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