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Woman Faces A Year In Jail For Beating Drone Operator, Assault Caught On Video

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Flying drones for hobbyist purposes is mostly legal, but not everybody seems to understand that.  Some say ridiculous things like "If a drone is flying over me, I'll shoot it down."  Others get so worked up that they take the law into their own hands.

Take for example, Andrea Mears, a 23 year old woman in Connecticuit who allegedly didn't like the fact that Austin Haughwout was flying his drone (also known as a remote controlled quadcopter) at the beach.

According to Haughwout, he went to Hammonasset State Park in Madison, Connecticuit to fly his remote control quadcopter.  Soon after landing on his last of four flights, an angry woman, later identified as Mears approached him.  Mears was on the phone with the police, attempting to get them to respond to the flight by claiming that Haughwout was "here taking pictures at the beach with a helicopter plane."

That statement, and the subsequent assault were captured on video by Haughwout, who used his phone's camera to document the alleged assault.

On the video Mears is clearly shown attacking Haughwout.  She rips his shirt, holds him down, attempts to scratch his face and puts her fingers in his mouth.  At one point she yells, "I'm going to beat your ass you little motherfucker."  Haughwout is heard screaming for help, asking other people to call 911 and report the assault.  Eventually Mears leaves Haughwout alone, giving him enough time to call the police to report the assault.

According to Haughwout, the police responded to the assault in 10 or more vehicles.  They first listened to her story in which she claimed Haughwout assaulted her, that he "was taking close ups of people in bikinis" and that she had asked Haughwout to stop flying before calling the police, but he refused.

After hearing her side of the story, the police approached, clearly intending to arrest Haughwout.  However, before they could place him under arrest he told the police that he recorded the entire incident. Haughwout stated, "I had video evidence that she went nuts completely unprovoked, and was the one that assaulted me."  He explained how he showed the police the video from his last flight "which proved that she lied when claiming that she asked me to stop flying before calling the police."  Haughwout provided copies of the videos to the police for their use in the case against her.

Mears is charged with Assault in the 3rd Degree and Breach of Peace in the 2nd Degree.  The Assault charge carries with it a punishment of up to one year in jail and a $2,000 fine, while the Breach of the Peace charge carries with it a punishment of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Haughwout has continued to fly since the alleged assault, but not as much as he did before.  He is fearful that he might be attacked again, and now always carries his phone with the camera running.  He said that the police told him "Flying that thing the way you were is fine, you're not in any trouble. You can come back and fly, but just be aware that some people can be alarmed."

In fact, oftentimes both the police and private citizens are unaware that flying a drone in a public place is not illegal (barring some local law to the contrary).  As Jason Koebler writes at Motherboard:

It'd be naive to think that drones don't pose some privacy risks—anytime you can film video or take pictures remotely, there's going to be that concern. And there have been instances of people using drones to peep on their sunbathing neighbors and that sort of thing. But it's extremely important to remember that it is not illegal to fly a drone, and it is not illegal to take photos in a public place, whether that camera is on a drone or not.

I haven't seen anything this extreme before—violence is certainly uncommon, but harassment isn't. Anti-drone sentiment is everywhere in internet comment sections. On hobbyist forums and Facebook hobby groups, there are dozens of stories of people who have been told to stop flying by passersby and by police who don't know the law

Koebler goes on to describe a few other instances where police wrongfully instructed someone to stop using their drone because either the police, or private citizens misunderstood the law.

Below is the footage that Haughwout took that day.  It's pretty clear that this was a nearly empty beach, and any people who were videotaped can't be identified (in fact it would be difficult to distinguish men from women, children from adults, and mannequins from real people, given the resolution of the video, the speed of the drone, and the altitude from which the video was captured).  Of course, the average person doesn't know this.  They hear the drone, they see a flying object, and they really believe that this remote controlled helicopter has some kind of sophisticated spying tool mounted to it.

For the most part, the drones being flown in public places are remote controlled quadcopters --- toys for hobbyists, not spying tools.   But that shouldn't really matter, you simply can't fight someone for flying a drone.  Check out the video:

Gregory S. McNeal is a professor specializing in law and public policy.  You can follow him on Twitter @GregoryMcNeal or on Facebook.