Avon and Somerset Police deploy new drone to fight rural crime

The drone can be used to survey large areas of land

A police force has unveiled a special drone it says will be a "gamechanger" in efforts to tackle rural crime.

Avon and Somerset Police said the drone had already helped recover £100,000 worth of stolen equipment in a single operation.

It hopes the technology will stop hare coursing and poaching and lead to more prosecutions.

One Somerset farmer said it would stop theft on his farm "if it can be deployed quickly".

Police have said using the drone will lead to more more rural crime prosecutions

The drone uses a controller that has a live feed from its cameras, and can be quietly flown at a speed of 25 knots (28 mph).

It can be used to survey large areas of land to find missing people and criminals quickly.

Avon and Somerset's rural and wildlife affairs unit drone pilot Pete Wills said: "It is a gamechanger.

"Hare coursing, especially, and poaching are underreported and also prosecutions are really difficult to get because there isn't CCTV out here."

Somerset farmer Richard Payne said the drone could help stop vandalism and the theft of his machinery worth thousands of pounds.

"My farm has become a soft target for crime," he said.

"There are professional gangs that will go around taking valuable bits of kit out of machinery - if they don't take the whole machine themselves."

'There's no escaping'

Mr Payne said the drone would be useful as long as it is able to be "deployed quickly".

"On a drone you can see so much more than you could from the ground and there's just no escaping from them, they are brilliant," he added.

The drone has a light attachment on top and and can take a microphone that can be used during rescue incidents.

The machine has already been successfully used in a time-sensitive case to recover stolen tractor parts that were going to be sent abroad.

Mr Wills said: "To search large areas of land, we just wouldn't have been able to do it in time to get £100,000 of kit back to a farmer who was just over the moon."

The force now has its own dedicated drone operator and drone