Police drones in North Dakota will soon be armed. But they won't be armed with guns, instead they can be armed with tasers, guns that fire rubber bullets, teargas, and other  "non-lethal" weapons after a Bill in the State House passed. This means that police departments in North Dakota will soon have another tool at their disposal and have drones do some more active roles besides surveillance and monitoring.

Originally, a bill sponsored by Rep. Rick Becker (R-Bismarck), HB 1328, was proposed to ban weapons on police drones and also limit the powers of the police on surveillance given that police departments in the USA look more like military organizations rather than law enforcement ones. However, due to lobbying by North Dakota Peace Officers' Association, an amendment was allowed to permit non-lethal weapons to be used on police drones.

Rep. Becker said that while he is against weaponized drones, he can live with the amendment.

Police need  a warrant before they can use a drone for surveillance purposes. Now with this bill the police can do more with their drones and the local drone industry would now start looking into development of drones to fulfill roles for the police such as prosecution of suspects with a drone that can swoop in and immobilize a suspect with the use of a taser, or for crowd control purposes where drones can be used to drop teargas with more precision as compared to handheld teargas launchers.

A year ago, a design studio demonstrated a drone that can fire a taser gun. Chaotic Moon Studios (already acquired by Accenture) designed the C.U.P.I.D. or the "Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone" that can fire an 8,000 volt taser. While police tasers go up to 50,000 volts the C.U.P.I.D. shows that the taser copter is now a reality. The design factored in the EMP blast that will be generated by the taser and protected the drone's guts with a Faraday cage, according to the Verge.

So if you are up to no good in North Dakota in the future and thinking that you can get away from the police, chances are, a drone would be ahead of the police cars and ready to fire 50,000 volts up your ***.