Baltimore Police’s “spy plane” to undergo 180-day assessment trial in April

By Luke Parker
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer

The Baltimore Police Department’s crime-fighting aerial surveillance program will be limited to an initial 180-day assessment trial, Commissioner Michael Harrison announced during an online, public educational session.

The program, formally known as the Aerial Investigation Research (AIR) Pilot Program, was originally proposed with active service for at least three years. But Harrison, who once expressed skepticism towards the use of planes before reversing his position last December, championed a six-month trial period instead on Monday to “learn whether this program works, or if it doesn’t work.”

During the six-month period, Harrison said the Police Department will monitor the program’s impact on the city’s ability to solve, clear and deter crime, as well as the public’s perceptions and opinions of the crime-fighting technique. Baltimore would be the first city to test the program, which supporters predict will provide potential leads in an array of crimes and accelerate investigations into shootings and homicides.

The flights, which are expected to begin in April, will consist of three private planes flying simultaneously and covering about 90 percent of the city to help police investigate violent crimes. Murders, non-fatal shootings, armed robberies, and car-jackings would be included in the active cases benefiting from the program.

Civil liberties groups and several members of the community have adamantly opposed the program, describing it as “invasive.” However, Harrison said he and the department have taken preventive measures to protect the privacy of citizens. For example, according to the Police Department website, the resolution–1 pixel per person will not be crisp enough to identify “any physical features,” but it should be able to track movement.

Officials also said the program’s data system can only be accessed after an incident has both occurred and been reported to the police.

Detectives will receive the data after the fact, as opposed to accessing the live feed, in what Harrison described as “investigative packets.” The system also avoids implementing night vision or infrared technology, officials said.

“We’re only looking back,” the commissioner said during the live stream. “We’re looking back in time to see where a perpetrator would have gone after a crime has been committed or would have come from before a crime was committed.”

The system premieres soon after Baltimore logged one of its most violent years on record. In addition to 348 homicides last year, a jump from 309 in 2018, the city also counted more than 1,300 armed and unarmed commercial robberies.

However, the aerial program has yet to appease some members of the community.

“The spy plane program is a privacy nightmare come to life,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland commented on the department’s Facebook stream. “It’s the equivalent of requiring residents to wear a GPS tracker whenever they leave their homes.”

Harrison has acknowledged the controversial nature of aerial surveillance several times since unveiling the program and has hosted three public meetings, all of which were held earlier in March.

In a joint statement with the Coalition for Justice, Safety and Jobs last December, however, the ACLU of Maryland called the program “a fateful step” for people of color in Baltimore. The organizations also said that a decision that carries such a bountiful weight on top of citizens should be made by an elected body and not the police commissioner.

“The surveillance plane means putting every resident of Baltimore under permanent surveillance, creating a video record of everywhere that everyone goes every time they walk outside,” the group said. “If the police did that in real life, in person on our streets, we would never accept it.”

Harrison denied the program will invade citizen’s privacy.

“We’re tracking movement,” he said. “We’re not necessarily tracking people.”