Cape Town wants to use drones to fight crime

The City of Cape Town plans to be the first municipality in South Africa to use drones to fight crime.

Speaking to the Weekend Argus, mayoral committee member JP Smith said that the city has already sent staff for training but was still waiting for official approval for the use of drones from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

“To our knowledge, there are no other municipalities in the country that are using drones or investigating the use of drones. Cape Town would be one of the first municipalities to undertake such an initiative,” he said.

While the city will be limited by regulations as to where and when it may fly drones, it indicated that it plans to use the drones in areas such as Philippi where there have been multiple cases of cable theft.

Security estates

While Cape Town may be the first municipality to use drones for security purposes, a number of private security estates around the country are already using drones to keep their perimeters secure.

This is according to Kim James, director of Drone Guards – a company which has been contracted to provide drone security services to a number of residential estates in the country.

Speaking to BusinessTech in July, James said that the drones are programmed to follow a co-ordinated GPS position around the perimeter of the estate, with the pilot trained to take it off course and follow an intruder if need be.

“In addition to high-end cameras, they are also equipped with thermal technology for night time flights with the video live-streamed to a ground control which monitors the feeds,” she said.

Read: South African residential estates are now using drones to boost security