One of my best friends lives in New Jersey. He has sent me posts about drones in towns and cities from local Facebook groups.
It seems like it happens every day!
Staten Island residents have started seeing drones, too.
As I said, the sightings in New Jersey started shortly after the election. Weirdly enough, the first sightings occurred near the Trump National Golf Club in Somerset County.
The FAA banned drones over the golf course and Picatinny Arsenal military research and manufacturing facility in Morris County.
The Ocean County Sheriff’s Office captured one drone on camera.
Residents in Hackensack, located in Bergen County, witnessed their first drones on Sunday around 7 PM local time.
People thought they were small planes at first.
Some caught the drones on video.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDVxpDVxNsj/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading
Mayors in north New Jersey want answers:
“We look at it this way,” they wrote. “Either higher level officials know what’s going on and are not concerned or they are negligent for not apprehending and identifying one of these drones.“We strongly request a proactive approach be taken on the half of the residents of New Jersey and Morris County,” they wrote. “These drones have to land at some point somewhere and these offices need to follow them and identify where they are going and who owns them and is operating them.”Residents “pay a fortune for government,” they wrote, and “right now either our government is keeping us in the dark or they are failing to act on taxpayers concerns over these unidentified drones.”
Gov. Phil Murphy swore the state government is looking into the sightings in North and Central Jersey.
Does anyone believe him? All of my Jersey friends have told me so many times that central New Jersey does not exist.
(I laughed so hard at Murphy’s post that I sent it to my Jersey friends. They all laughed, too, because they said again…central Jersey does not exist!)
New Jersey residents Phil and Maureen Doyle saw drones over their house:
Doyle said they saw dozens of flying objects, believed to be drones, coming from the direction of Picatinny Arsenal and heading northwest.“One goes over and then another. It’s not two or three a night, it’s 30 or 50 a night. They have lights on them so you can see them,” he said.Doyle estimates the dozens of drones flying over his home in Oak Ridge were about the size of his dining room table.“Why are they suddenly here? What’s the basis for these drones suddenly appearing? They’ve been around for a while and now we are getting all this activity, so who’s behind it?” he asks.
One aviation expert warned of the dangers the drones pose since they’re all spotted in crowded airspaces dominated by three major airports:
“Let’s say a drone loses control and it goes above 500 feet, it could be catastrophic on an airplane midair. It could easily take out an engine, it could smash into the cockpit,” according to aviation expert JP Tristani.Tristani added, “Is it a hazard, yes. Should it be addressed, yes. Are you waiting for a catastrophic event? You should not be doing that, it’s a matter of public safety and it has to be stopped now.”
Staten Island residents saw their first drones over last week.
The FAA placed a flight restriction over the area as the FBI investigates.
Authorities want answers:
On Thursday, Borough President Vito Fossella penned a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requesting a formal investigation into the unidentified drones seen hovering over the borough.“We have recently been made aware of large, military-style drones flying over parts of New Jersey during the past few weeks. It has also come to our attention from concerned residents and within the media that these drones have now been flying over Staten Island during the past few days,” Fossella wrote.“It is odd and quite bizarre that nobody can figure out who is flying these drones, where they are coming from, and their purpose. It has been reported that some of the drones may be flying without an active transponder, adding to the concern about their whereabouts,” the borough president added.
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