Drone pilot arrested after buzzing past an LAPD helicopter

By David Nield Published September 12, 2015

If you’re taking out your brand new drone to play with, please be careful what you do with it. An unnamed pilot has been arrested in California after his drone came within 50 feet of a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter. After the chopper took evasive action, officers found the owner of the drone in a nearby car park, and he is now being questioned by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The operator of the unmanned aircraft has also had his drone confiscated. At this stage it’s not known whether he was deliberately trying to interfere with the LAPD helicopter or not, but the FAA drone guidelines state that pilots should ensure their drones “remain well clear of and do not interfere with” any manned aircraft operations in the area.

Recommended Videos

“[The drone flyby] is very hazardous,” said LAPD Sgt. Jorge Gonzalez, as SlashGear reports. “It could kill everybody onboard the aircraft and anybody you hit on the ground. These aircrafts are just under 5,000 pounds and they can carry up to 143 gallons of jet fuel.” The LAPD says the drone operator has now been released pending an investigation — aerial video recorded by the drone will be used to determine if the close encounter was intentional.

Governments and aviation authorities are scrambling to introduce tighter controls on drone use as these hobbyist aircraft cause problems for the emergency services and the occasional passenger jet. Personal drones have been banned from many national parks in the United States and from the president’s front lawn.

For now, the FAA guidelines are the best resource for knowing what you can and can’t do with a drone (the guidelines are now available in app form too). Personal drone use is separate from commercial use, which is still restricted in the U.S. — the Federal Aviation Administration is currently working out the best way forward for allowing companies to make use of drone technology.

[Image courtesy of Yu Lao/Shutterstock.com]

Former Contributor

Dave is a freelance journalist from Manchester in the north-west of England. He's been writing about technology since the…

Topics

Emerging Tech

OpenAI admits it needs to rethink what happens when AI goes rogue

As increasingly capable AI agents move beyond controlled tests, OpenAI is confronting a difficult question: When does strange model behavior become an incident the public deserves to know about?

OpenAI has spent plenty of time explaining how it plans to stop increasingly capable AI agents from doing things they shouldn't. Now, the company says it needs to get better at telling everyone when those things have already happened. The admission follows reports of another previously undisclosed incident involving OpenAI's AI agents, this time affecting a German-language programming wiki. According to Reuters, agents made more than 15,000 unauthorized edits to DseWiki, using the site to communicate and share ways to bypass restrictions, cheat on tasks, and avoid detection.

OpenAI has now acknowledged what it calls the "wiki incident" and says the episode exposed a larger problem with how AI companies disclose unexpected model behavior. The company says it is developing a framework for deciding when and how to make incidents involving misaligned AI public.

Emerging Tech

AI has a safety problem nobody is ready for

AI safety efforts are ramping up, but their protections don’t work equally well everywhere. In developing countries, language gaps and cultural blind spots can turn everyday AI mistakes into serious real-world consequences.

AI companies are spending an enormous amount of time worrying about what happens when their models become too capable. OpenAI even took the unusual step of temporarily pausing training on a model last month over safety concerns, as the industry grapples with risks ranging from autonomous behavior to increasingly sophisticated cyber capabilities.

But there’s another AI safety problem that is much easier to overlook: the protections already being built into these systems don’t necessarily work equally well for everyone. A new report from Rest of World highlights how AI safety efforts remain heavily centered around the needs of wealthier, English-speaking countries. That can leave people in parts of Asia, Africa, and other developing regions dealing with problems as basic and potentially dangerous as a chatbot misunderstanding their language.

Branded Content

The IFA 2026 Publisher Award Winners Bring Fresh Ideas to Everyday Tech

From Smarter Entry to Screen-Free Wellness, These IFA 2026 Winners Do Things Differently

IFA 2026 Publisher Awards

IFA is the kind of event where almost every corner promises the next big thing in tech. Some ideas are ambitious, others are surprisingly simple, and a few make you wonder why nobody thought of them sooner. But among hundreds of new products, the most memorable ones usually have something more going for them than novelty alone.

This year’s IFA Publisher Award winners are a good example. They span everything from smart entry and personal wellness to coffee, floor care, and big-screen entertainment. What connects them is how they take technology in interesting new directions while keeping its purpose grounded in how people actually use it.