Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Urging Immediate Deployment Of State Of The Art Drone Technology And Greater Authority For Local Officials To Investigate Drone Sightings In New York And New Jersey

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor after sending a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas urging the Department to immediately deploy special drone-detection technology amid continued drone sightings over New York and New Jersey, and announced that he will seek passage of legislation to give local authorities more tools for drone detection. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Yesterday, I called on Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas to quickly deploy any available drone-detecting tools to help New York and New Jersey deal with the mysterious drone sightings of the past few weeks.

This week, I will also come to the floor of the Senate to seek passage of legislation that will give local officials greater authority to swiftly respond to these sightings. 

The reports of the past few weeks have ignited immense anxiety and confusion for millions of people living across the Northeast. Thankfully, there is no reason to believe these drone sightings pose a national security threat, but even so they can be disruptive if they fly over restricted airspace like airports and bases.

While there is no shortage of reports about possible drone activity, we still have very few answers on where some of these drones come from, and who may be operating them. The people of New York and New Jersey have a lot of questions, and haven’t gotten many answers.

We know one thing, though: local officials now don’t have the resources nor authority to get to the bottom of what’s happening. This is federal jurisdiction, but of course because drones are so new and there are so many in so many different places, including recreational users, we need to do a lot more.

So, to repeat, this week I will move for the Senate to pass legislation giving local officials the tools and authorities necessary to act quickly and in lockstep with the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. Local authorities can do a lot to help answer our questions, but right now they are not empowered to do so because the federal government has total jurisdiction.

In the meantime, I urge DHS to take all necessary action to deploy as many drone-detecting resources as possible. Right now, they have not deployed close to enough, and that's why these questions that so many people have are going unanswered.

Some of the new technologies – like the ROBIN systems – are 360-degree radar. They’re 360 degrees – and can go a long way to help local officials collect real data about where these drones are coming from.

So, I want to see a flock of ROBIN-like technology systems deployed across the New York City metropolitan area, so we need the Department of Homeland Security to spring into action.

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