Oakland County Michigan Sheriff Urges Lawmakers to Let Police Counter Threatening Drones

WASHINGTON ― Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard pressed lawmakers on Capitol Hill this month to grant state and local law enforcement the authority to disable drones when they pose a threat to the public or are operating illegally.

Bouchard and U.S. Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Bruce Township, recently spoke with The Detroit News about the issue. Bouchard lamented that U.S. lawmakers haven't taken action despite widespread reports of mysterious drones in New Jersey and other communities last year and the safety risks that unmanned aircraft may pose to airports and large public gatherings like concerts and football games.

Opponents have raised concerns about the change infringing on First Amendment and civil liberties protections, government surveillance and property rights.

McClain's office said she's having conversations about potential legislation to address the drone issue.

In the Senate, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, has pushed bipartisan legislation for the last two sessions of Congress that would grant the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and local law enforcement more authority to combat potential threats posed by drones.

The Safeguarding the Homeland from the Threats Posed by Unmanned Aircraft Systems Act would allow DHS and DOJ to disable drones determined to pose a security risk. The legislation would also establish a pilot program that allows state and local law enforcement to help mitigate an urgent drone threat, according to a bill summary.

The bill, which hasn't passed Congress, also would allow critical infrastructure owners and operators — like stadium operators — to detect, identify and track a drone threat so they can report it to state and local law enforcement for further investigation.

The following partial transcript has been edited for clarity.

Q. Sheriff, what are you talking about with the chairwoman this week and the other lawmakers that you're visiting while you're in town?

Bouchard: First and foremost, it is because of Police Week (May 11-17). We're very connected to that on lots of levels, but especially because we had Deputy Bradley Reckling ambushed and murdered less than a year ago.

This week is dedicated to not just police officers in general, but today is Police Memorial Day, so it's especially heartbreaking. I was with his widow a number of times. I was with her last night ― four kids under the age of 7. We're talking about the risk that our people face day in day out.

I'm reiterating that to the members (of Congress) that I meet with that we need their support to lift up families that are hurting, but also to support the ones that are going on every day to face the same threats.

The Michigan state trooper that was shot multiple times recently was trailing a car that my same auto-theft team was on when (Reckling) was murdered. They had been trailing it the night before. So that could have been the very same unit in a shootout less than a year later. Thankfully, the trooper wasn't killed, but that could have been a dead trooper or could have been one of my deputies on the same team. ...

I'm part of the Joint Terrorism Task Force: You saw that an individual wanted to commit a terrorist attack on behalf of ISIS in Warren, and he wanted to use drones?

Q. That was front-page news. It was shocking that he was somebody who grew up in Michigan. He launched a drone to try to carry out an attack at the Army’s TACOM (Tank-Automotive & Armaments Command) facility.

McClain: But talk about the drone issue, because that's really what we in Congress need to do a better job of. And this is where I appreciate the relationship and the partnership that I have with Sheriff Bouchard ― he is not afraid to call me and tell me what he needs, what he's dealing with, and the resources that he needs. And it's our job to legislate.

We need to have a paradigm shift up here in D.C. We need to fund the police, and we need to make sure that we respect them, but also give them the resources they need, whether it's for mental health, whether it's for drones, whether it's for retirement. They put their lives on the line, day in and day out, to make sure that they have our backs. I think the least we can do is make sure we have theirs.

And I appreciate the relationship, because he will call and advocate ― very sternly, I might add.

Bouchard: I'm not a wilting rose.

McClain: Very sternly ― on what he needs and the threats that he sees.

Bouchard: That attack (in Warren) in particular was going to be kicked off with a drone, right? And we have been banging the drum very loudly about the threats of drones, and it's not a case of if but when. It's going to happen here.

We've seen it operationally already ― dropping weapons and contraband into prisons and jails. It's almost a regular thing now, but we have no ability to intervene. We've seen it used as weapons all over the world ― Ukraine, Israel ― with great effect. But even closer, Mexican cartels attacked a Mexican general's convoy and blew it up with drones.

You can buy these things off the shelf and weaponize them very cheaply.

Q. What are you asking Congress to do in terms of changing regulations?

Bouchard: Give us the authority to intervene that they have held only to federal agencies.

So for example, you have certain events. They're called SEAR events, or national security events: The Republican National Convention, Democratic National Convention, the Super Bowl, things like that. It gets a supreme level of security and safety, including air restrictions, and it also gets counter-drone capability.

So my drone unit managed, with the federal government, the air operations over the NFL Draft when it was in Detroit last year. But the feds are the only ones that have the ability to take intervention action against a hostile or even a bad hobbyist that doesn't understand that they could cause a very big problem. We don't have the authority to do that, and there's only a very limited number ― typically about two teams that are operating anywhere in the country ― that can do those kinds of things.

So my worst nightmare is, you know, we have the Dream Cruise every year: 1.3 million people in a 13-mile stretch. We run drone and counter drone and crewed aircraft and air assets during it. Last year, we had like 96 interventions in our airspace over the Dream Cruise that were illegal.

McClain: And they can't do anything.

Bouchard: We can't do anything about it. Other than we can see the drone on our drone-detection systems that we already have. We can see where the operator launched from, but we don't have the systems to intervene ―

McClain: Or the authority really, to intervene, right?

Bouchard: And three of those went past my crude aircraft to 1,480 feet. Had that hit the cockpit of our helicopter, you'd have a catastrophic crash over the Dream Cruise into the crowd. And it was not by intervention that didn't happen, it was by luck. We can't survive on luck in my world.

If you look at the California wildfires, they had a plane that was distributing water and putting out fires that was pierced by a hobbyist drone and had to make an emergency landing. It took it out of commission. And we've got records of Life Flights that can't land because drone operators are curious what's going on.

All we're asking for is pretty simple: Allow us, local and state law enforcement, to have the same authority that the federal government has to intervene when a drone is operating illegally and or is an immediate threat to the public. Those are the only circumstances we want to intervene. That's all we're asking for.

Q: Which federal agencies are opposed to this?

Bouchard: It has to come from Congress. The federal agencies support us. DHS and I did a press conference three years ago. They said they want us to have it. And the best we've gotten so far is a proposal to do a pilot in five sites in the country. Well, a pilot is going to be, what, three years, and then by the time you're talking seven years out. The threat's today.

McClain: Congress definitely needs to act on this. There is no question in my mind that we need to do that. We need to act on it.

My frustration is nothing moves quick, and my frustration is instead of being proactive or preemptive, what's going to happen is we're going to have a tragedy happen, and then all of a sudden, we're going to end up over-regulating this, when, if we just did our job, we could do this now.

The problem gets into First Amendment rights. ... I mean, I'm all for First Amendment rights. I'm all for the property rights. I'm all for that. But at the end of the day, if there's a threat, I want my local police officers to be able to protect me and the 1.3 million people that are in a 13-mile radius to keep us safe. I think if the public knew how dangerous it was, they would be lobbying us a lot more to take care of this.

Q: Where is your bill on this? Is it in committee?

McClain: We've had a couple bills on it, but it gets stalled because they get hung up on one little thing.

And remember, you got to have 60 votes in the Senate, and we have a whole pocket of people that aren't real pro-law enforcement. It's not me, and it's not a lot of my colleagues, but they're out there. So we got to make sure that we raise awareness to this. ... It's a very important subject that the sheriff and I have been working on.

Bouchard: It's one of the issues that Police Week kind of gives us a chance to talk about it. What are the threats we see and what are the ways that the federal government, in particular Congress, can help us face those? Some of it, it's not money. It's partnership or authorization or integration of effort, things like that.

Q: In the Senate, Gary Peters is on the Homeland Security Committee. He used to be the committee's chair, and he has an interest in this drone issue and a bill on this.

Bouchard: Yeah, we supported his bill. And the senator who kind of tied things up was (Kentucky Republican Sen.) Rand Paul, which makes our leap a little harder. (Paul is now the committee chair.)

I think a lot of it is some of the members are so busy, they don't take the moment to sit down and listen to somebody that's actually on the ground doing the job. It's very different to imagine than it is to operate. And the concerns about civil liberties or spying or First Amendment, they vanish when we tell them how it's utilized.

It's not utilized to spy or to do surveillance because battery life, No. 1, is very small. If you're going to do surveillance, you're going to do it from a high-altitude, crewed aircraft that has loiter capability. If you're swapping batteries every 15 to 20 minutes, and the law requires us, like anybody else, to be 400 feet or below ― that's visible, and it can even be heard most of the time. So it's not a surveillance tool. We use it for emergencies or to keep an eye on a situation as it develops.

The second thing is intervention would only come when the drone is a danger or it's breaking the law. People say, 'What if it's being used to monitor the police?' We don't care. We're the most monitored profession on the planet. We have body cameras. We have dash cameras.

McClain: Everybody's out there with their cellphone.

Bouchard: Everybody's got a cellphone. There's cameras on every corner. That's not our concern. If we're doing something wrong, we own it and have to fix it, and we should be held accountable. We get that.

But the drone would never be interfered with because you're watching us. It would only be interfered with if it was breaking the law or was an immediate threat. That's it. The other misnomer is that, well, what if you're going to intercept the video feed? There's no technology to do that. That's not why we would intervene. And why do we need your feed if we have our own air assets?

Q: Wasn't there a Green Day concert last year at Comerica Park where drones were an issue?

Bouchard: There were two events in Michigan where they rushed people off the stage, and people panicked, because of a drone. Thankfully, it was not an adversary but a hobbyist that did stupid things. So far, we've been lucky, because they've been people that are either uneducated about the law or don't care. But they're not adversarial.

Take, for example, President (Donald) Trump's assassination attempt last summer. We did a lot of the drone detection and drone work around the (presidential candidate) visits to Michigan, because we have one of the most advanced air capabilities in the country.

That individual flew a drone for pre-op surveillance of where the president was going to speak and probably determined the line-of-sight location that he chose to shoot from. What if instead, he did a pre-op surveillance with that drone and geo-marked that stage and then went back a half a mile or a mile, and waited for the president to take the stage, as he could see on live TV, and launched a drone that was explosive-bearing right to the stage?

These are all things I wake up in the night going, this is not if, it's when, and we need to do something. And you can take it to everyday examples: UM and Michigan Stadium and Spartan Stadium, Comerica Park are having games every day.

And if you have these new pilot programs ― pick which one of the three you want to be at. You only get one.

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