Flying a Drone Is Still Not a Crime, New York Police Department Learns

New York City police didn't know what to charge two drone pilots with earlier this summer and, it turns out, they still don't know what to charge them with: Charges were dropped today in a legal saga that never should have happened in the first place.

To recap: Earlier this summer, Wilkins Mendoza and Remy Castro were flying their DJI Phantom 2 drone near New York City's George Washington Bridge. An NYPD helicopter saw it and chased it down. Mendoza and Castro were arrested for felony reckless endangerment charges because, according to the police, the drone flew "very close" to the chopper, which was a lie.

The media ran with the NYPD's version of the story, and what was definitely a kind of stupid but not illegal flight by two people screwing around with their drone quickly turned into a rallying cry for the Federal Aviation Administration and others about how dangerous it is when people fly drones at aircraft.

Except, that's not what happened. The air traffic control recording confirmed that the police flew at the drone, not the other way around; beyond that, the officer on the recording noted that he wasn't sure a crime had been committed.

"We really don't know exactly what we have, maybe a reckless [endangerment]," he said. "Not sure exactly what we got."

Today's decision to drop the charges confirms what we've known for a while: Flying a drone, even stupidly, is not a crime.

Mendoza and Castro didn't hurt anyone, and "close calls" aren't inherently a crime: You don't get arrested for almost crashing into someone else in your car, as long as you're following the general rules of the road.

Now's an appropriate time to remind everyone that there are no rules of the skies for drones. The fault there lies with the FAA (and to a lesser extent, state and local lawmakers), not with two random dudes from New York.