So much for discretion: New York police drones to check into outdoor party complaints this weekend

New York has recently taken considerable steps toward facilitating and increasing the use of long-banished drones within the city – and also overcoming lively resident opposition to those rooted in personal privacy concerns. But it’s precisely the enduring strength of that resistance that now risks making a decision by NY police to deploy UAVs for outdoor and backyard party surveillance this long holiday weekend a “too much, too soon” decision officials may wind up regretting.

New York police leaders included backyard parties generating complaint calls amid the reasons they’ll be dispatching drones during the long weekend. The city expects a multitude of both public and private fetes marking Labor Day, as well as the J’Ouvert celebration and West Indian Parade events. 

Read: ‘New York Post’ wigs out over its own report of possible police drone use as first responders

But when that partying leads to neighbor protests, New York police officials say they’ll send out UAVs. That’s a truly astonishing decision at this juncture, given the city’s stated objective to make use of drones an increasingly common and accepted occurrence, and equally determined resident opposition to aerial surveillance by law enforcement.

Yet to the skies New York’s finest (drones) will take this weekend when compliments about the potato salad get too vociferous.

“If a caller states there is a large crowd, a large party in the backyard, we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up, go check on the party,” assistant NYPD commissioner said Kaz Daughtry during in an announcement uploaded to social media.

The efforts of The Verge to transcribe the nearly 15-minute speech provides full detail on just how often police drones may be called into action across New York this weekend.

We’re going to be utilizing technology, we’re going to be utilizing drones for this J’ouvert weekend. The drones are going to be responding to non-priority calls and priority calls, for example if we have any 311 calls on our non-emergency line, where if a caller states there is a large crowd, a large party in the backyard, we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up, go check on the party, to make sure if the call is founded or not, and we’ll be able to determine how many resources we need to send to that location for this weekend. We will have our drone team out there, starting tonight, all the way into Monday morning.

Ain’t no party like a police-peeped party – or so it would seem in the city that never sleeps this weekend.

Daughtry’s announcement of looming police UAV swoops of allegedly raucous lawn barbeques came less than five days after other New York officials announced a “zero tolerance” prohibition of drones anywhere near the US Tennis Open in Queens. That came as doubly bad news for any neighboring pilots who’d hoped to get aerial footage of their riotous backyard parties in Flushing this weekend before quadcops turned up.

Read more: New York police warn ‘zero tolerance’ of US Open drone flights

That starkly contrasting policies on UAV flights within the same city over the same overlapping period muddles the liberalizing, pro-UAV message officials broadcast since mid-July.

As part of that, Mayor Eric Adams’ vowed that “New York City is flying into the future,” using “drones to help in New Yorkers’ everyday lives” – unless, we now learn, those days feature residents having fun in groups on their outdoor property.

Those mixed signals also provide further evidence to critics who fear increasing drone flights – particularly by the police – will open the way for unchecked surveillance and potential privacy rights violations that will be nearly impossible to reign in.

“One of the biggest concerns with the rush to roll out new forms of aerial surveillance is how few protections we have against seeing these cameras aimed at our backyards or even our bedrooms,”  executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, Albert Fox Cahn, told CBS News. “Clearly, flying a drone over a backyard barbecue is a step too far for many New Yorkers.”