경찰 드론의 운영과 활용방안에 관한 연구 = A Study on the Operation and Utilization of Police Drones

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

A drone, officially referred to as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), is a comprehensive system that includes the aircraft itself, the ground-based control and communication equipment, and the mission payloads. Police drones are unmanned aerial systems that are technically and institutionally designed and managed specifically for public missions carried out by the police and other law enforcement agencies, such as maintaining public order, preventing and investigating crime, and responding to disasters.
Drones that were once used primarily for military purposes are now being actively employed in the civilian sector, and they are also being used in various areas of police work, including public order maintenance, criminal investigations, traffic information collection, and the management of assemblies and demonstrations. Although the use of police drones in policing is subject to significant legal restrictions due to concerns over privacy and the protection of human rights, it is expected that their role will become increasingly important in current and future police activities. This paper therefore examines the current status of police drone operations and discusses how police drones can be utilized in the present and in the near future.
In discussing the operation and utilization of police drones, this study first reviews, in the theoretical background, the concepts of drones and police drones, as well as the concept of police activities, and then examines the legal basis for police drone use and prior research on the topic. It subsequently analyzes the current operational status of police drones in Korea and in foreign police agencies, and proposes four categories of utilization strategies for police drones: (1) mission-specific utilization; (2) utilization from a technological and operational perspective; (3) utilization from a legal, institutional, and human-rights protection perspective; and (4) utilization from the perspective of personnel, organization, and education.
From a technological perspective, further advances in drone technology can largely be left to the scientific and engineering fields, whereas the operation of drones in police work is still at an early stage. However, given that drones are likely to become indispensable to future police activities, there is a clear need for improvements in many areas, including legal reforms and training for drone operation. Finally, this study was conducted using a literature-based research method, and it acknowledges a limitation in that the scope of the analysis could not be expanded further due to constraints inherent in the available literature.