$5M Purchase Rankles Residents with “Spy Plane” Accusations

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office got heat from local residents this week when locals decried the addition of a new special mission Kodiak 100 to the County’s fleet of surveillance aircraft.

The $5 million dollar price tag didn’t end up being their main sticking point, with most discontented residents taking issue with the aircraft’s payload of ISR gear. Chief Ian Floyd downplayed their concerns to local journos after the County Commission voted unanimously in support of the 10-seater aircraft.

So the idea that it's this massive aircraft with a satellite dish on top, I mean I heard some of the comments earlier, that's tinfoil-hat crazy talk,” he said, characterizing privacy concerns, “We're not out there surveilling, you know, law abiding citizens," Floyd assured. "This is primarily for drug traffickers who are, you know, pushing poison into our community. That's who we're going after.”

Local antagonism centered around the lack of a public comment period, with no apparent checks on the acquisition other than a token Commission vote. Nobody apparently knew who would have access to the data recorded by the Kodiak after its missions, nor its overall range of surveillance or spectrum recorded. While the Sheriff’s said the aircraft was intended to hunt down drug dealers, a local School Board member said they have given little else: “They absolutely did not answer any questions about which deputies have access to it, what its capabilities are, what are the safeguards for privacy..they answered none of those questions. The county commission should be ashamed of rubber stamping it.”

The Sheriffs have long been looking forward to an upgrade to their aged Cessna 182. Their case for the vastly superior Kodiak lay in the fact that Prime Air’s constant cargo operations in the area has made their surveillance nigh-impossible thanks to their 2,000-foot AGL ceiling for effective surveillance. Lacking current-gen stabilized digital optics, they remain stuck using gyro-stabilized binoculars out the side - and that’s not the optimum method to remain unnoticed while tracking wary prey.

FMI: www.daher.com