A miniature drone takes flight. (Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph via AP)
WESTFIELD – City police are investigating what appears to be a new twist on an old crime – using the camera of a flying drone positioned outside a window to be a Peeping Tom.
Detective Richard Mazza reports that on Thursday he responded to a complaint of a drone hovering outside a window on Morris Street.
There, he spoke with a resident who said that he had been inside his home wearing his underwear when he heard a noise and looked out his window to see a drone hovering near the window.
Mazza reports that he canvassed the neighborhood and found two other Morris Street residents who said that they had seen a drone in their backyards in the past few weeks.
While he was still working the neighborhood, the detective was again approached by the initial victim who advised him that the drone was again in his backyard but, Mazza reports, it was gone when he got back to the victim’s home.
Thursday’s incident was the second such recent complaint from the neighborhood, Mazza reports, noting that the resident of the house across the street had called police June 25.
At that time, the caller said that a drone had been seen hovering outside the window of the bedroom occupied by her two young daughters. She said that she had seen that a red light on the drone’s camera was illuminated, suggesting that it was recording.
Mazza’s supervisor, Det. Lt. David Ragazzini, said that, when found, the operator of the drone could be charged under the trespassing statute or for recording images of a person unaware he or she is being photographed.
