REPORT: Predator Drone Flying Over Minneapolis

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is flying a Predator drone in a circle above Minneapolis, which has witnessed rioting following the death of George Floyd in police custody.

The Predator has a lethal track record in the Middle East. This model is unarmed and presumably being used for surveillance. (Vice)

The drone was first spotted on a flight tracking tool by members of the ADB-S Exchange, a community of flight watchers who use open-source flight data to monitor America’s skies. Presumably, the drone is surveilling protests there, though CBP did not respond to a request for comment about what the drone is doing there.

“CBP Predator Drone CPB104 circling over Minneapolis at 20K feet,” Jason Paladino, an investigative reporter at The Project on Government Oversight tweeted on Friday. “Took off from Grand Forks Air Force Base.”

These latest protests come after a white police officer killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man, earlier this week. The officer and three others involved in the incident were fired, but have not faced any criminal charges yet.

Motherboard verified the flight path of CPB104 with flight data from ADB-S Exchange, a repository of unfiltered flight data. The drone took off from the Air Force Base before making several hexagonal-shaped flyovers around Minneapolis, according to the data. At the time of writing, the drone is still above the city.

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