Concerned that pilot reports of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have grown dramatically over the past year, the FAA is stepping up its warnings of potential fines and jail time for unauthorized uses.

In July, pilots reported 137 incidents compared with 36 for the same month in 2014.

The Dallas Morning News reports at least two of the 238 incidents were in Dallas.

The Air Line Pilots Association supports additional regulations on small drones that require registering the devices and installing automatic software blocking flights into prohibited areas, Canoll said.

Officers talked with the drone operator, who told them he owns a drone business and was just flying the drone. One contributing factor, Feith said, is that drones are easy to get and not enough drone enthusiasts understand the rules.

“How do we make sure these drones are not recording things that they shouldn’t”, Calo says, “and those things aren’t winding up… on Amazon servers, or somehow getting out to the public or to law enforcement?” State Assemblyman Mike Gatto says, given that, “imagine a drone which is made of metal and hard plastic and how damaging that can be to a firefighting aircraft”.

If approved by the FAA, police could start using the drone in 2017.

The agency now gets several reports a day of drones flying too close to planes and helicopters, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said in an interview.

The rules are more liberal for hobbyists and those using UAS for recreational purposes, but they are still required to fly their unmanned aircraft, which can not weigh more than 55 pounds (25 kilograms), at below 400 feet (about 122 meters), within visual sight of the operator, and 5 miles (8 kilometers) away from airports.

The FAA recently passed a milestone of 1,000 permits granted to businesses to fly drones for aerial photography, to monitor pipelines and electrical transmission towers, and to inspect smokestacks, crops and the undersides of bridges, among other uses. As for how they fly, we learn that if a drone’s remote pilot loses control, the UAV’s Global Positioning System automatically returns to its home base.

“The FAA has levied civil penalties for a number of unauthorized flights in various parts of the country, and has dozens of open enforcement cases”.