UK Nationwide Police Chief Councils (NPCC) drones and flight security – sUAS Information

The Unbiased Workplace for Police Conduct spokesperson has confirmed through electronic mail to sUAS Information that the next incident occurred.

We will verify we’re independently investigating an incident the place a toddler was harm by a drone which crashed whereas being flown by Kent Police.

It occurred on 2 August 2025 when officers had been responding to stories of a disturbance on the Isle of Sheppey.

A drone was launched, hit an overhead cable and fell to the bottom, hitting the kid and severely injuring their hand.

As a part of the on-going investigation we now have served a misconduct discover on a particular inspector. The serving of a discover doesn’t essentially imply disciplinary proceedings will observe.

Ian Hudson has been making an attempt his perfect through FOIA to get to the guts of this matter however to no avail. We knew it had occurred however no one would admit it. If he had not written to The Unbiased Workplace for Police Conduct we’d nonetheless be at nighttime.

At sUAS Information we’re fearful about police drone incident reporting. It appears the AAIB nonetheless don’t learn about this incident. It ought to and valueable classes to be learnt ought to have been promulgated to the broader group.

This leads me to the place my concern lies, the NPCC are working their drones as State plane, lets google what meaning:-

Within the UK, “State plane” refers to any plane used for army, customs, or police functions, as outlined by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The CAA is the UK’s impartial aviation regulator, and whereas it usually regulates civil aviation, State plane function beneath particular agreements and are permitted to function opposite to some commonplace civil guidelines, although they have to nonetheless be dealt with safely by air visitors management.

The Nationwide Police Air Service (NPAS) additionally function as State Plane however there’s a massive distinction. They clearly use skilled, usually very skilled ex army aviators. Pilots and crew people which have grown up round aviation security assurance methods (SAS).

We can’t be sure that there’s an aviation simply tradition inside NPCC drone operations, they don’t have to observe the identical guidelines, an incident in 2023 to me factors in the direction of that. An officer crashed a drone, that in itself is basically grist for the mill, a part of the job. The difficulty to me is that he lined up his actions.

Former Leicestershire Police officer, Kenneth Fricker, was discovered responsible of gross misconduct after he crashed a pressure drone throughout deployment and subsequently lied to colleagues three separate occasions to cowl up the harm. The misconduct listening to, chaired by Chief Constable Rob Nixon, dominated that the sustained dishonesty was a “basic breach of honesty and integrity” and concluded that Mr Fricker would have been dismissed with out discover had he remained employed by the pressure.

Mr Fricker, who was hooked up to the Drone Group, crashed the machine (Drone 20) on October 14th whereas performing low-level manoeuvres on the scene of a critical visitors collision on the M6 at Catthorpe. The crash resulted in particular harm, together with a damaged propeller, a cracked VPS/IR Sensor bar, and points with the antenna module and RTK module base. Crucially, as a police officer deployed with the drone staff, he was obligated to report any collisions or crashes in compliance with pressure coverage and Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) laws.

As an alternative of reporting the incident, Mr Fricker offered colleagues with a number of false accounts of how the harm occurred. Initially, he claimed he had solely damaged a propeller blade by catching it on a police van whereas sliding the tray again into its compartment, stating he had changed it. The next day, the account shifted, stating the harm was attributable to dropping the drone whereas carrying it to the van. Later that very same day, he informed one other officer he had dropped it whereas getting it out of the van. Moreover, the drone’s footage was deleted, which the listening to dominated “on the stability of possibilities” demonstrated “intent to cowl up the unique incident”.

Chief Constable Rob Nixon acknowledged that the previous PC’s actions “undermined the connection and belief along with his colleagues and compromised the integrity of information”. The dishonesty additionally posed a major security threat, because it “positioned a fellow drone pilot in a scenario the place they might [have needed] to deploy a drone with undisclosed harm”.

Was Mr Fricker afraid to return ahead? Why did he really feel the necessity to wreck 20 years of service?

One other clue that there usually are not actual aviators round are the experimental drone in a field, drones as a primary responder (DFR) trials lately concluded in London and Coventry with maybe a complete of 11 websites to run concurrently. These had been BVLOS trials over constructed up areas and taking place inside a Momentary Hazard Space, excluding different drone fliers and which means some needed to cancel industrial operations that had been booked.

We reached out to the NPCC unit doing these trials however to this point they haven’t commented on their operations.

So this factors to a lack of expertise of airspace and different airspace customers.

It’s my opinion that the short-term hazard areas had been put in place by the CAA as a result of they needed to. They might not have been fully sure what the police had been as much as and needed to defend different airspace customers.

I’ve at all times been satisfied that police drone operations needs to be beneath the wing of the NPAS unit, they know aviation, they know climate, they know warning.

To me the NPCC try to get low value air cowl and are being satisfied by distributors who wish to promote them gear.

I’ve acknowledged in lots of quarters that I imagine Drones as First Responders (DFR) will fail as an idea. I give it 5 years. There shall be drones that work, however these usually are not those they’re in search of.

Let’s deliver this proper again to the start, a police officer with the drone in plain sight flew it up an into energy strains. The UK common public is predicted to just accept drones of an analogous measurement being flown over their heads by law enforcement officials that may’t see the drone.

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