By Meghan Friedmann
The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.
NEW ORLEANS — As sheriff of East Feliciana Parish, Jeff Travis sometimes gets complaints about unidentified drones.
“Oftentimes, these drones come over, and you never know who it was or what it was,” he said. “That’s a problem — that’s a big problem.”
That’s why Travis praised a new state law, championed by Gov. Jeff Landry, that gives local and state law enforcement the power to take down drones.
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“The governor was right. He’s right about the fact that we need to be able to do something about it,” Travis said.
House Bill 261, now Act 170, was sponsored by state Rep. Jay Gallé, R- Mandeville. Gallé chairs the House Select Committee on Homeland Security.
Act 170, also called the We Will Act Act, allows “a law enforcement officer or agency” to “take reasonable and necessary mitigation measures against a threat posed by an unmanned aircraft system operating within this state in a nefarious manner.”
Such action could include detection, tracking and identification methods, or it could involve “the interception or disabling of an unmanned aircraft system through legal and safe methods, including but not limited to jamming, hacking, or physical capture,” the act says.
The new law also bans drones from being flown over parades, unless they are being used for film production. Violating that rule would carry a fine of between $2,000 and $5,000, or a prison sentence of up to one year.
Gallé said the parade rule was added to the law out of concerns that parades could be targeted for mass casualty events.
In Louisiana, it was already illegal to fly a drone over a correctional facility or the Governor’s Mansion. Nor may drones be used to surveil facilities without a facility owner’s written permission, according to Louisiana Revised Statutes 14:337.
According to the FAA’s website, drones are prohibited from flying over national landmarks, certain military bases and certain critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants. Drones also are not allowed in the controlled airspace around an airport.
Concerns about drones
Gallé said the law aims to protect Louisianans from possible threats posed by drones.
“From an all-around homeland security standpoint, drones are becoming cheaper and more efficient. They can carry explosives. A big enough drone can fly into critical infrastructure and cause great damage, cause power outages,” said Gallé. “Those are the things that we’re really trying to guard against.”
The state representative also said Louisiana prisons have had problems with drones being used to drop contraband behind prison walls.
To date, the Department of Public Safety & Corrections has encountered 51 “drone incidents” at its state-run facilities, according to a statement from Derek Ellis , deputy corrections secretary.
Those incidents include some cases involving contraband but also encompass all other sightings of nondepartmental drones at state prisons, he said.
“The We Will Act law gives the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections’ staff a way to neutralize, intercept or disable drones through any legal and safe methods, including but not limited to jamming, hacking or physical capture to prevent illegal or harmful activity, such as individuals attempting to drop contraband into prisons,” Ellis said.
Drone sightings at Entergy’s River Bend Station nuclear power plant early this year marked another driving force behind the new law, Gallé said.
Officials at the time did not identify the drones as a public safety threat. But they’ve also never gotten a clear answer as to where those drones came from, according to Gallé and Sheriff Brian Spillman of West Feliciana Parish.
Those sightings prompted Landry in January to say the state ought to have a way to mitigate drones. At the time, he said he’d been asking the Federal Aviation Administration to grant Louisiana that authority.
Now, Louisiana’s new law puts the state “on the front lines of drone defense,” Landry said in a statement.
It is unclear how Louisiana’s law will interact with federal rules and regulations. Generally, under federal law, it is illegal to damage, destroy, disable or wreck any aircraft.
The Advocate | The Times-Picayune asked the FAA whether it accepted Louisiana’s new law.
“The FAA is a safety regulator not a security agency,” a spokesperson said in response. “Our role is to ensure drones operate safely within the broader National Airspace System. Congress gave certain federal agencies authority to counter credible threats from drones.”
How would drones be intercepted?
Law enforcement has so far been mum on how their agencies would take down drones if the need arose.
Gallé said the preferred method would be by electronic means.
“In some instances, you can intercept the drone, take over the controls and then remove it from the area and land it safely,” he said. “That’s the primary way that law enforcement wants to do it.”
Louisiana State Police are prepared to counter drones being operated unlawfully, according to a statement from Capt. Russell Graham.
The agency would not provide details on how it would intercept a drone because it “does not divulge investigative methods, law enforcement tactics, or technological capabilities for safety and security purposes.”
But Graham emphasized “that all counter-drone activity would be done safely and lawfully.” The department would not be shooting drones out of the sky, he said.
The Department of Public Safety & Corrections said it had “several staff members who are trained and certified as drone pilots for detection and counteraction purposes.”
Spillman, the West Feliciana Parish sheriff, said he had discussed a drone take-down method internally but was not ready to divulge it publicly.
“We would take the necessary steps, I’ll just leave it at that. And those necessary steps would include at all times that we were not putting anybody else in jeopardy,” he said.
Joe Gebbia Sr ., founder and CEO of State Shield, a national nonprofit that supports state-level laws to protect against possible interference from China, called the bill “historic.”
“It’s the first time that a state passed legislation giving itself the right to do what it needs to do to protect its people,” he said.
Gebbia plans to lobby other states to pass similar legislation next year, he added.
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