This Aerial Photographer Captured Images of the Mass Burials on Hart Island. Then, the New York Police Department Confiscated His Drone

The New York Police Department detained photographer George Steinmetz last week and seized the
$1,500 drone he
had been using to document Hart Island, where the city has been
burying unclaimed bodies of New Yorkers who died of COVID-19.

In New York City, it is
illegal to launch or land aircraft, including drones, outside of
designated airfields, but Steinmetz claims he took off from a
sleepy parking lot on City Island in the Bronx and only flew half a
mile over the water to Hart Island, avoiding LaGuardia’s
airspace.

A representative of the NYPD told Artnet News that “drones are
illegal to fly in New York City except for authorized areas. The
areas approved for flying drones are very limited and set by the
[Federal Aviation Authority].”

But Steinmetz believes the police’s concern “was not about
public safety,” he told Artnet News. “It is clear to me that the
the city was using this law as a pretext to stop people from
photographing what was going on on Hart Island.”

Inmates from Rikers Island jail have been digging graves on Hart
Island to bury the bodies of New Yorkers whose families could not
be reached to claim them. As the death toll overwhelmed city
morgues, many victims of the coronavirus have been sent to Hart
Island for internment.

“It’s a mass grave,” said Steinmetz. “I think it’s very
embarrassing for the De Blasio administration that they’re treating
the city’s poor like toxic waste.”

An accomplished aerial photographer whose work often appears in
National Geographic, Steinmetz previously
photographed New York City from helicopters and rooftops for
his 2015
book New York Air: The View
From Above. With the publication of his latest book,
The Human Planet: Earth
at the Dawn of the Anthropocene, which came out earlier
this month, he was inspired to take to the skies once again with an
eye toward documenting the streets of New York during the
unprecedented shutdown triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

“I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to look at the city in
lock down, the city in paralysis from the air?” Steinmetz said. The
results—slightly delayed because his regular helicopter pilot
contracted coronavirus—offer a remarkable contrast to earlier
photographs of bumper-to-bumper traffic and crowds in public spaces
like Bryant Park.

“The avenues are empty, the bridges and tunnels are empty. It
looks like a futuristic movie, like Planet of Apes or
something,” said Steinmetz. “It’s like a dead city.”

Steinmetz reasoned that a quick drone outing at dawn, when
internments take place on Hart Island, seemed harmless enough given
that the island has more in common with a quiet New England fishing
town than bustling Manhattan.

But about 15 minutes later, undercover police officers descended
and confiscated his drone (though he removed the memory card
first).

Later that afternoon, Steinmetz approached again via helicopter,
but air traffic control refused to give permission to approach Hart
Island below 1,000 feet, even though he says he had seen a channel
11 news chopper hovering at about 300 feet that morning prior to
his drone flight. “It seemed like word was out they didn’t want
press,” Steinmetz said. “It was very odd.”

Jason Kersten, a spokesperson for the Department of Correction,
which oversees the Hart Island and its operations, cited “a
longstanding policy of not permitting photography of an active
burial site from Hart Island,” telling Gothamist “it is
disrespectful.”

Steinmetz received a summons to appear in court in 90 days from
the incident.

The post This Aerial Photographer Captured Images of the
Mass Burials on Hart Island. Then, the New York Police Department
Confiscated His Drone appeared first on artnet News.