“Mexico’s Secretariat of the Navy said federal security forces killed Beltrán-Leyva cartel regional leader Juan Francisco Patrón and seven others during a shootout,” UPI.com reports. And how! The video above shows an American-made Apache helicopter doing what an American taxpayer funded helicopter can do: re-aligning the profit-sharing arrangement between Mexico’s drug cartels and the federales by force of arms.
Here in the U.S., Texas had some issues with the whole death from above thing in 2012, when a DPS sniper took out an unarmed illegal immigrant in a fleeing pickup (video here). That didn’t stop an Austin police SWAT sniper from shooting and killing a perp from a whirlybird in 2015. Meanwhile, the Lone Star State has been eyeing armed drones (tear gas and rubber bullets) for quite some time.
What’s your take on this? Should cops be prohibited from firing on civilians from the skies? Should armed choppers and drones be restricted to less lethal ballistic solutions? Does it make a difference whether the platform is manned or unmanned?