House Public Safety Committee adopts DE3 amendment to combine three UAV bills; debate centers on missing-person searches, training and privacy safeguards

The House Public Safety Committee on March 26 moved three separate bills about law enforcement use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into a single delete‑all package and adopted that package as amended. The DE3 amendment that consolidated House Files 561, 1275 and 1396 was approved by voice vote after adoption of a technical A3 amendment.

Authors and agencies described a set of narrow exceptions they asked to add to Minnesota's UAV statute: using UAVs to locate missing persons, to document outdoor scenes where evidence faces imminent destruction, to assist in pursuits of fleeing suspects, and to permit training flights on private land with written consent. "We are bringing this forward that is related to some situations that we've encountered as we work to comply with the unmanned aerial vehicle statute that was passed in the last few years," said Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal…