Crowd vanishing can often turn out to be tricky business for authorities. While spraying water at extensive pressures or firing rubber bullets, crowd dispersal teams push out many victims at times. Lucknow police force seems to have recruited yet another ‘tool of the trade’ for this particular purpose in crowd control drones.
The idea of drones taking charge is naturally scary given its widespread use in warzones of late. This batch is far less terrorizing since it is loaded with nothing but pepper. That’s right; the drone is designed in such a way that it sprays black pepper at the crowd in order to vanish them. That’s not all; it is capable of taking pictures as well as capturing footage to catch suspects on tape.
The Senior Chief of Lucknow Police confirmed that the Police department bought a total of 5 drone cams that can lift as much as 2 kg of weight. These drones have previously been recruited in Uttar Pradesh for the primary purpose of scoping out troubled regions in the northern state but this marks the first instance of its use in crowd control.
Interestingly, these drones were first tested out in various large festivals in India before the Police department decided to purchase them. The other alternative was to hire them, of course, but the Police department was more than impressed with the kind of effectiveness showcased by this batch of pepper-spraying drones.
A drone manufacturer in South Africa, Desert Wolf, took the wraps off Skunk Riot Control Copter a drone that introduced this very design at the IFSEC . It is a security exhibition which stands for (International Fire & Security Exhibition & Conference) . It comes equipped with four paintball guns that can spray pepper and shoot balls as well as plastic balls at a pace of 80 each second. The idea was to prevent another accident like Marikana which led to the end of 44 people following a police strike on a platinum mine based in South Africa.
