MANSFIELD – A drone flew over Mansfield Correctional Institution on Wednesday afternoon while inmates were outside in the recreation yard.
A spokeswoman at MANCI said the incident remains under investigation. No further details are being released at this time as to whether any contraband was dropped in the yard. However, the yard was cleared and a search conducted.
The Mansfield post of the Highway Patrol was contacted at 5:12 p.m. but did not respond to the incident the prison on Ohio 13 North, which occurred roughly after 3 p.m.
“We have had other instances of unmanned aerial systems breaching security,” said JoEllen Smith of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. “The agency’s top security administrators are taking a broad approach to increase awareness and detection of unmanned aerial systems.”
Drones are more formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Essentially, a drone is a flying robot.
The aircraft may be remotely controlled or can fly autonomously through software-controlled flight plans in their embedded systems working in conjunction with GPS. Drones have most often been associated with the military but they are also used for search and rescue, surveillance, traffic monitoring, weather monitoring and firefighting, among other things.
More recently, the unmanned aircraft have come into consideration for a number of commercial applications. In late 2013, Amazon announced a plan to use drones for delivery in the not-too-distant future.
Last year the Mansfield post of the Ohio Highway Patrol stepped up efforts to watch and catch criminals in the act of throwing contraband over a prison fence.
Lt. Chad Enderby, then commander of the patrol’s Mansfield post, in 2014 invited media to the patrol post at Interstate 71 and Ohio 13 to bring the issue to the public’s attention, asking people to report anyone or anything suspicious being thrown over the fences of Mansfield’s prisons — especially Richland Correctional Institution, because of its proximity to Ohio 545.
Enderby last year said the patrol had seen an increase of conveyances, or “fence throws,” at RiCI and Mansfield Correctional Institution, on Ohio 13 and Piper Road.
Contraband primarily is drugs, tobacco and cellphones for the most part. Prime days for the majority of fence throws are Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays, Enderby said earlier.
The patrol is working hand-in-hand with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections and has increased perimeter patrols of the two institutions.
http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/story/news/local/2015/07/30/drone-manci/30879809/