Seven drones of the Municipal Police fly over the sky of Madrid.

Its function:

"to be the aerial eyes" of the agents

and "to complement the surveillance work from above" of the 218 agents who control the accesses of the 16 basic health areas that the city of Madrid has confined since Monday to stop the increase in coronavirus infections. "From above everything looks much better and we can detect infractions that colleagues on the street cannot control," he explained.

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the officer of the Municipal Police Air Support Unit, David López, who affirms that having a drone "is similar to monitoring with a helicopter, but much cheaper."

He is one of the 15 pilots that make up this section and that during the last 48 hours

have already guarded the intersections of several basic areas confined to four districts

: Salamanca, Arganzuela, Hortaleza and Fuencarral-El Pardo. The main function of these devices, according to the officer and his fellow unit Fernando Fernández, is to "provide coverage from the air" to the fixed controls and patrols.

But how?

“The drone cameras allow us to identify license plates more easily and contrast whether or not they should leave their basic area,

allow us to see more clearly if citizens wear the mask

or if there are gatherings of people above those allowed, "they say.

Detect irregular groups

And, precisely, this last point is one of the functions in which drones provide the most help in complying with the restrictive measures imposed by the Community of Madrid.

A function that they have already developed in recent months in the Madrid Río environment to prevent large bottles from being produced.

«

With the camera or with the thermal camera we detect irregular groups of people

and we notify the patrols with which we are connected by radio where exactly the illegal meetings are taking place ", say the agents."

They are very useful to detect, for example, meetings of young people making bottle

that they know where the controls are and they stay as far away as possible ", explain these agents, who must have a specific professional pilot qualification to be able to enter the Air Resources Section of the Municipal Police, on whom these devices depend.

A section that currently has about 15 pilots, according to the sources consulted by this newspaper, although the intention that they handle in the Madrid City Council is that this number of human troops grows to 24. In addition to having that pilot title professional, the Municipal Police offers specific training courses to its agents of this unit so that they can handle the different types of drones they have.

A total of 22 devices with which the agents also continuously carry out practical training

.

Informative work

Apart from surveillance and the collection of complementary information for patrols, drones also carry out

an informative function through sound alerts

.

These devices remind citizens of the mandatory use of the mask in case they do not wear it, warn those groups that exceed the limit of four people established since Monday by the Ministry of Health or avoid the passage of basic areas of health to another who is confined. «Unless someone fled when we issued the notice, our function is to give information to the agents who are at street level.

It is a support and complementary work with the district units that monitor the streets

"López and Fernández say in a telephone conversation with this newspaper. But the Municipal Police drones not only perform surveillance functions in basic areas confined by Covid.

These devices have been used in recent months to control the capacity of cemeteries during All Saints' Day, at the Rastro after its reopening or on Christmas dates in Centro;

It has complemented the work of the Firefighters in the explosion of the Toledo street building, and they have helped to assess the damage caused by the storm in parks obstructed by snow.

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