Prosecutors working to convict Kyle Rittenhouse in the shootings of three people during a protest against police brutality in Wisconsin have introduced as evidence surveillance video taken from an FBI airplane circling thousands of feet above the chaos.
MADISON, Wis. — Prosecutors working to convict Kyle Rittenhouse in the shootings of three people during a protest against police brutality in Wisconsin have introduced as evidence surveillance video taken from an FBI airplane circling thousands of feet above the chaos. Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz during the demonstration in Kenosha in August 2020. His trial began Monday. Rittenhouse argues that he fired in self-defense after the men attacked him; prosecutors say he inserted himself into a volatile situation and that video from the plane will show he chased Rosenbaum. Here’s a look at government efforts to track people’s activities from the air: HAS THE GOVERNMENT USED PLANES TO MONITOR PAST PROTESTS? Yes. Aerial surveillance of protests is actually very common. According to an August 2020 Air Force inspector general report, the National Guard used surveillance planes to watch over demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Minnesota, Arizona and California after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis that May. The FBI used aircraft to monitor protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown and in Baltimore to track protests following Freddie Gray’s death in police custody in 2015. Democrat Barack Obama was president during both of those events. Law enforcement also used aerial surveillance to monitor a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that turned deadly. Republican Donald Trump was president at that time. An Associated Press investigation in 2015 found that the FBI had built a fleet of at least 50 surveillance planes that flew more than 100 flights over 11 states during a one-month span in the spring of that year under the Obama administration. The AP traced the planes to at least 13 fake companies designed to obscure the identity of the aircraft and the pilots. The AP review also found that the Drug Enforcement Administration had at least 92 surveillance aircraft as of 2011 under Obama.
