Police to launch drone patrols in Hong Kong urban areas on Friday

Police will launch drone patrols in the force’s Kowloon West region and Hong Kong’s northern border area on Friday, with 700 officers and about 30 sets of unmanned aircraft ready to be deployed.

Superintendent Tango Ko Chung-ying of the force’s key points and search division said patrols would be rolled out under a pilot scheme for three months to evaluate operations. He added that the force aimed to conduct automatic drone patrols on The Peak and Cheung Chau by the end of this year at the earliest.

“In the long run, we hope to equip each police district with its own automatic drone patrol system to regularise drone use in policing,” Ko said.

The move confirms an earlier Post report that the force will introduce anti-burglary drone patrols in urban areas, targeting older districts with tenement buildings that may require scaffolding for repairs.

Chief Inspector Vincent Law Hoi-ming said that the drone patrol pilot scheme would mark a shift from the force’s current operations-based approach, in which such aircraft had been used in ad hoc mountain rescue operations, evidence collection, training and aerial surveys for crowd control.