Sask. launching pilot project to combat ‘unauthorized drones’

Sask. has issued an RFP for “Drone Detection Solution” to boost penitentiary security with real-time monitoring and early warnings. Damian Smith reports.

The Government of Saskatchewan has launched a pilot project to combat unauthorized drone usage around facilities in the province.

To do that, the project will provide “early warning detection of unauthorized activity, real-time monitoring and actionable data to support timely intervention.”

While the government says that unauthorized drone activity hasn’t been a significant issue in the province, other provinces have been alarmed. They say that this pilot project is a proactive approach.

Jake Suelzle, regional president of prairies for the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, says drone smuggling has increased in Canada since the mid 2010s. The concern is not the drop off of the items in the moment, but the occurrences that can occur on-site afterwards.

“Our overdose rates go through the roof,” he said. “Now, we’re doing first aid overdose responses on an on incredibly regular basis. The other thing is the level of violence. Further entrenched the drug culture gets within the prison, the violence is a close second right behind that, inmate on inmate and inmate on staff [violence].”

Based in Drumheller, Alta., Suelzle represents 12 locations across the prairies. While speaking to CTV News, he received a text that Drumheller Institution uncovered $320,000 dollars of shatter and methamphetamine, which was caught on a Tuesday drone dropping.

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“Our mobile patrols are one of the best ways for us to detect, because they’re operating 365 days a year for 24 hours a day,” he said. “They’re always in the sky, for lack of a better word, and then we have boots on the ground watching for these kind of things in the back 40 and in the recreation areas”

Suelzle says that drone droppings have become so regular, that they’ve become an “institutional routine.” He says that 80 per cent of droppings have been drug related, with other items are phones and ceramic weapons.

In their efforts to respond against drone droppings, he says that cuts have been made this year to their detection and response team. They’ve decreased from two mobile patrol units a day, now down to one, only during daylight hours.

In Regina, Queen City Drone has been putting transportation of items to good use.

“We’re saving lives by carrying inflating devices to somebody that was drowning in water and then also medical supplies to somebody that needed medical supplies in remote areas,” said CEO Ryan Beston.

Working with Amphibious Search and Rescue Unit ONE, they’ve been running drones to carry lifesaving, inflatable devices that they’ve been testing at Echo Lake.

“There’s many people out there that are using drones for good, and it’s a shame when people can come and hurt a privilege that the good people have running these things,” he said. “Drones can be a very useful tool for good and also evil.”