Thread by @UR_Ninja

#EXCLUSIVE: Never-before-seen videos from a Minnesota State Patrol plane over a protest showcases the powerful surveillance capabilities police spy planes possess.🎦

Full story and ~2 hr video: unicornriot.ninja/2021/exclusive…

The State Patrol spy plane was primarily focused on the Nov 5 rally but did several perimeter searches that clearly surveilled unrelated bystanders, some of which were on private property.

Pictured is a high-definition zoom recording a jogger down Summit Avenue in Saint Paul.↕️

Footage shows Minnesota's State Patrol spy plane N115SP surveilled families, watched people with children near their garage, zoomed in on back yards and viewed others who simply had been outside and several blocks away from the Governor's Residence on November 5, 2020.

Videos show the State Patrol is clearly in possession of a powerful asset in this aircraft. One can visibly see a cigarette in this person's hand while walking behind the Governor's Residence [pic] & observe the heat signatures of squirrels in trees while in infrared (IR) mode.↕️

The Minnesota State Patrol spy plane video switches between multiple modes including infrared (IR) (showing heat emanating from people and vehicles), very high definition video and a ‘blend’ mode [pictured] which combines both image types for an increasingly revealing composite.

See the flight path of MN State Patrol spy plane N115SP from November 5, 2020, as it circled over a press conference demanding charging dropped against the 646 people mass arrested the night before on I-94.

We were on the ground #live from the presser:

Despite being a civilian law enforcement agency, @MnDPS_MSP has some impressive optics on their spy plane. A Pentagon official even noted that the State Patrol had better capabilities than the military's somewhat dated RC-26 spy planes they flew over Minneapolis in Summer 2020.↕️

@MnDPS_MSP Nearly two full hours of video from a spy plane circling over a rally outside the Gov. Residence in St. Paul was released by the Minnesota State Patrol following public records requests for footage & data collected by their Cirrus SR22 aircraft, N115SP. unicornriot.ninja/2021/exclusive…

Although this instance of surveillance comes in a higher-class, mostly-white area in St Paul, Twitter user @codyh raises an important correlation showing the how the map of recent sky surveillance in the TC depicts the racialized nature of modern policing.

https://twitter.com/codyh/status/1354918812919848962

Recently, after days of constant aerial surveillance & helicopters over Minneapolis, authorities said a number of these flights were part of a multi-agency effort targeting carjackings. D.A. Bullock (@BullyCreative) stated to UR the whole apparatus could be "an expensive failure"

Watch the full video of the Minnesota State Patrol spy plane over the November 5 press conference decrying the mass arrest of 646 people. vimeo.com/510537625

Spy plane footage obtained and story contributed, by Sam Richards

https://twitter.com/MinneapoliSam/status/1359672617368776705