Arizona Bill Seeks to Shield Law Enforcement from Liability for Shooting Down Drones Near Border

Ariz. bill would shield police from liability for shooting down drones near border

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

A bill pending in the Arizona state legislation is proposing to grant immunity from liability from any damages caused by a drone falling from the sky after being shot down or disabled by state and local law enforcement officers near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Earlier this month, the Arizona House of Representatives passed the legislation, House Bill 2733, which will now go on to the state Senate. The bill received bipartisan support and has the backing of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mays.

Under federal law, with the exception of certain federal law enforcement and military personnel and under very limited circumstances, it is illegal for anyone to shoot down a drone. Drones are classified as aircraft, with the same protections as manned aircraft such as planes and helicopters. The law, 18 U.S.C. 32, prohibits setting fire to,damaging, destroying, disabling, or wrecking any aircraft.

“It’s illegal under federal law to shoot at an aircraft,” according to the FAA website. “An unmanned aircraft hit by gunfire could crash, causing damage to persons or property on the ground, or it could collide with other objects in the air. Shooting at an unmanned aircraft could result in a civil penalty from the FAA and/or criminal charges from federal, state or local law enforcement.”

The proposed state legislation is aimed at combatting the use of drones by Mexican drug cartels to smuggle drugs or for other nefarious purposes.

Under the bill “a public entity or public employee is not liable to an unmanned aircraft operator for any injury caused by a peace officer intercepting, capturing, disabling, shooting, destroying or otherwise rendering inoperative an unmanned aircraft within 30 miles of this state’s international border.”

The bill was later amended to limit encompass an area within 15 miles of the border.

In a statement, Mayes said she supported the passage of the bill as a way to aid law enforcement officers from border counties fight drug trafficking. “I stand ready to work with anyone to combat the drug cartels, and I want to reiterate my ongoing commitment to our sheriffs and local law enforcement: we will help them secure our border, combat the fentanyl crisis, and protect Arizonans. This bill gives them the tools they need to do exactly that.”

In an interview, Representative Alexander Kolodin, a member of the Arizona House Public Safety and Law Enforcement Committee and a supporter of the legislation, said he does not think the bill as written contradicts the federal law about shooting down drones.

“I don’t think that is as clear of a question as some have posited,” he said. “States do have the power to enforce public safety measures. So, I’d be surprised if that got litigated and the courts ended up ruling, ‘Oh no, state, you know police officers can’t shoot down drones.’ That seems a little spurious.”

He said he thinks there is a strong possibility that the Senate will pass the legislation.

David Taylor, a professor at the University of Arizona’s College of Fine Arts, who flies drones near the border area as part of his research, said he thinks that encouraging local law enforcement agencies to shoot at drones is a bad idea.

“There’re a number of assumptions that are being made in the way that the legislation is being constructed that strike me as problematic,” he said. “The airspace adjacent to the border — unless there is a notice to airmen or some other kind of airspace restriction, is Class G airspace in many cases. So, there’s no prohibition by the FAA from flying in that space.”

He said it isn’t logical to assume that anyone flying a drone near the border is a cartel member, as there are any number of reasons why a person might fly a UAV there, such as documenting border activity, environmental monitoring, surveying or agricultural work.

“And there’s any number of different reasons why a drone might be flying a particular pattern, especially if you understand surveying software and photogrammetry software and the sorts of flight patterns that are necessary to generate a data set that’s useful in those arenas,” Taylor said.

He also said he was troubled by the “cavalier attitude,” which some lawmakers displayed when discussing the pending legislation. “People were saying, ‘Shoot it down with birdshot’. I hand-launch my drone, because it’s better for it mechanically, to not have it throwing up dust that gets into the motors,” he said. “You might in fact be shooting at the operator either intentionally or inadvertently.”

Taylor added that establishment of a 15-mile-wide buffer zone on the Arizona side of the border – down from 30 miles in the legislation’s original version – in which law enforcement officers could legitimately shoot down a drone without incurring any liability doesn’t make any sense from a drone avionics perspective.

“That’s a crazy amount of distance,” he said. “Drones that have a greater 15-mile range are really expensive industrial drones.” Assuming that any drone flying within that region of airspace is a drug-laden cartel-launch aerial vehicle defies common sense, he said.

It’s seems as if the legislators who are proponents of the bill did not consult with any drone experts in writing the legislation, Taylor said.

“This is a space where there are people that know what the (drones’) capacities are and know what the regulations are,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like anybody of that stature was consulted in the crafting of this law.”

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Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.