This Texas town will monitor spring breakers with drones

Texas town plans to monitor spring break using drones.
(Image credit: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

The 75,000 spring breakers who flood South Padre Island, Texas, this month can expect local police to monitor their partying with a new tool: surveillance drones.

The tiny town, which ranked No. 5 on Coed Magazine's list of "trashiest spring break destinations" for 2016, is prized for its local allowance of all non-glass alcohol containers on the beach. The resultant partying is the police department's rationale for acquiring drones to keep an eye on spring breakers. However, the police intend to continue using the drones for other surveillance of the 3,000 local residents after spring break is over.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.