DenverPost | Myers suspects the drones might be operated by a private company,
although the machines haven’t targeted any obvious landmarks or features
— sometimes they fly over towns, other times over empty fields.
“They do not seem to be malicious,” Elliott said. “They don’t seem to be doing anything that would indicate criminal activity.”
Vic Moss, a Denver-based commercial photographer, drone pilot and
co-owner of an online drone school called Drone U, said Monday he’d bet
either a company or a government agency is flying the aircraft.
“We have a number of drone companies here in Colorado, and they’re
very innovative,” he said. “So maybe they’re testing something of theirs
out in that area because it is very rural. But everyone that I know of,
they coordinate all that stuff with local authorities to prevent this
very situation. They all very much want people to understand drones and
not cause this kind of hysteria.”
The grid pattern suggests the drone operators might be creating a map
or carrying out a search, Moss said, although he added that some drone
operators will fly at night in order to use infrared cameras, which are
sometimes used in agriculture to examine crops.
He urged people not to try to shoot the drones down, both because
their batteries can cause intense fires and also because shooting a
drone is a federal crime.
“It becomes a self-generating fire that burns until it burns itself
out,” he said. “If you shoot a drone down over your house and it lands
on your house, you might not have a house in 45 minutes.”
Even if the sheriff’s office identified the pilot or pilots of the drones, they’re likely not breaking any laws, Myers said.
“The way Colorado law is written, none of the statutes fit for
harassment or trespassing,” Myers said. “Colorado hasn’t gotten on board
with identifying the airspace around your property as the actual
premises, so we don’t have anything we could charge.”
