Don't Look Up

I recently wrote an opinion article for The Skyline View in which I criticized the politicians and police administrators that placed a new breed of less-than-lethal weapons into the hands of police officers without first creating a decent set of rules for their use.

In the article, I touched on the fact that our police forces are now deploying weapons that were designed for use by the military in times of war.

Now I am reading that not only are police departments around the country trying to obtain Predator drones for use in policing their home turf, but also some of them already have access to the Predator and they are using them on US soil against our citizens.

Recently, the Los Angeles Times ran an article that described the use of a Predator in North Dakota. This was a case where a farmer was accused of cattle rustling, when the suspect and his friends fled into a rural field, an area police official was able to call upon a local military base to deploy a drone over the area. This incident ended peacefully, but that is not my point.

This drone is from the same family of pilotless-military aircraft that routinely kill suspected terrorists and innocent bystanders in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This Predator aircraft (an unarmed version) is now flying over the Unites States hunting for our citizens. How long will it be before this Predator is outfitted with missiles like its brethren overseas?

Anyway, back to studying for my Journalism final.