Drones the future for police work
A drone on display at the Shanghai International Public Security Expo
The 5G network is expected to make drones work better for the police, a Shanghai International Public Security Expo forum heard on Wednesday.
Currently there are around 6,000 police drones around China and there has been a strong demand for the "flying detectives" since 2015, said Tang Weijia, an official with the public security bureau of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.
With over 100 drones used in tasks including daily patrols, solving crimes and surveillance during public events, Suzhou police were the first to use drones back in 2014.
“When the police drones can use the 5G mobile network, they will be able to more accurately locate a target, take live videos with less delay and also enable us to shoot 360-degree panoramic videos,” Tang said. “I predict that after three to five years, such drones will replace most of the current ones working for the police.”
With interest in using drones to assist police work rising, Tang said the current challenge is to train police officers to use the drones because “many are never properly used after being purchased.”
“Since the police drones are expensive and their use usually has to be approved by officials, they’re not handy for daily practice while a lack of experience is the problem for many drone-fliers in the police,” he said.
To address the problem, he proposed the development of drone models for daily practice along with mobile apps.
Meanwhile, the benefits of the using of drones for police work is becoming more and more apparent.
Police in Ningjin County in Dezhou, Shandong Province, don’t have to patrol the streets to know what’s going on, according to officer Li Ming.
“It takes only 40 minutes for the drone to take off from our yard, look over the whole area under our administration, which is under 30 kilometers in diameter, and fly back,” he said. “The drone flies at a height of 200 meters and can see car plates clearly.”
The drone has significantly increased the efficiency of traffic police to deal with traffic accidents.
After an accident, police usually have to go to the scene where they measure the distances between vehicles involved and then draw a picture of the scene to help determine responsibilities.
“It takes at least half an hour on the scene, but now we fly a drone over the scene and take a picture and then throw the picture into the computer to have drawing software analyze the distances and angles of the vehicles,” Li said. “It takes only 10 minutes.”
He said this works especially well for traffic accidents involving multiple vehicles on expressways.
In Shanghai, police have also started to use drones in investigating traffic accidents.
Jiang Xuzhou, a manager at Shanghai Security Service Group Co, which provides drone services to police, said a trial in Songjiang District has proved to increase the traffic police’s efficiency by 50 percent, but the way the drones are used in the city is different.
“Drones can’t take off from just anywhere in Shanghai, a crowded city, so our solution is to patrol with drones so that they can be there on the scene when they spot an accident,” he said.
