---
title: "Tokyo Police Will Smack Down Your Illegal Drone"
description: "The city’s police can hunt scofflaw flyers in a new old-fashioned way."
date: "2015-12-14"
modified: "2015-12-14"
authors:
  - name: "Brendan McAleer"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/brendan-mcaleer"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/tech/1271/tokyo-police-will-smack-down-your-illegal-drone"
categories:
  - "News"
tags:
  - "Drones"
  - "Tokyo"
---

# Tokyo Police Will Smack Down Your Illegal Drone

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/archive-images/121115_tokyodrones_hero.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

Planning on flying a drone illegally in Japan? Watch out, would-be *bosozoku* drone outlaws; the [Tokyo Metropolitan Police are launching a special drone squad](<https://mashable.com/2015/12/11/tokyo-police-net-drone-catcher/#JI4u8BxG7SqE>). Their mission: to seek out and stop [drone operators](<https://www.thedrive.com/tech/1070/im-a-drone-fanboy-and-you-should-be-too>) on the ground or, failing that, to launch their own hunter-seeker drones, equipped to enforce no-fly zones with giant nets.

It's something out of a 2015 version of *[Seibu Keisatsu](<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IagIt7yc0Lg>)*, high-tech futurism deployed to catch the baddies. All that's needed is a catchy theme tune and some superfluous explosions.

Actually “high-tech” might be a bit of a stretch. Tokyo's police drone isn’t some kind of Robocop fitted with little propellers, but basically just a large commercial drone dragging around an even larger net. Watching one swoop in on a drone in a no-fly-zone is more like an early *BattleBots* episode than the heralding of an emergent droid-fighter army.

However, it's the first solution to the illegal drone problem that doesn’t involve just blasting them out of the sky with shotguns or lasers. Netting a pesky camera-carrying insect lets the Japanese police capture evidence, which they'll use to extract fines of up to 500,000 yen (or about $4,000).

Could we see similar anti-drone tactics used by U.S. law enforcement? There's certainly no reason why not, though likely only a built-up urban area would be worth patrolling by drone. Bad drones, bad drones, whatcha gonna do?

https://youtube.com/embed/-vknRo7aLhc

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