CPS lay first-ever charge related to flying a drone
Posted Jan 21, 2016 4:37 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
For the first time in Calgary’s history, city police have laid charges connected to the illegal use of a UAV, more commonly known as a drone.
It comes after an incident on Sunday around 6:45 p.m., when a police officer spotted a man operating the drone in a public park at 2616 16th N.E., with the UAV under the flight path of an airport runway.
The man left in his vehicle, but was pulled over and arrested shortly after.
There were no planes in the drone’s vicinity at the time of the incident, but this particular model can go up around 500 feet and Sgt. Colin Foster said the action of the officer to spot the man could have very well prevented a dangerous situation.
“The officer who spotted this drone did an awesome job, he really did and potentially stopped a serious collision,” he said.
25-year-old Syed Gohar Haider Shah of Calgary has been charged with one count of interfering with navigation facility to endanger the safety of an aircraft.
There is no evidence this was terrorism-related and Foster was asked if this was a situation where someone was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“That would seem to be the indication,” Foster said.
However, the force is also urging drone owners to take note of the many restrictions for operating the machine in the city.
Residents aren’t allowed to operate a remote-controlled aircraft in a park or next to a road.
“If you want to operate your aircraft anywhere in Calgary, there’s virtually nowhere where you can do that,” Foster said.
Although there’s many restrictions, there are drone-flying clubs within driving distance from the city, where they have large fields and insurance required for drone operation.
The drone involved is called a quadcopter, about 60 cms in diameter and while it isn’t a large drone, a possible incident could be it getting sucked into a plane’s engine.
