Harrison Says He Can't Back 'Untested' Spy Plane

Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison elaborated Friday on his reservations over the controversial surveillance plane.

After polling showed broad public support for the flights, which a private company would operate with private money, Harrison said he was in favor of "evidence-based solutions."

While Persistent Surveillance Solutions has no statistics on guilty verdicts traced directly to the program's trial run in 2016, the company's founder, Ross McNutt, has said the data gathered by his aerial cameras has helped close multiple cases.

"I have not told anybody that they can't fly their plane," Harrison told C4 on Friday. "What I told them is that because they came out, without me and without the city and without the leadership, and touted how they're going to reduce the murder by 20% to 30% in a very unscientific and very flawed statistical way, I cannot endorse that."

Harrison said he could use "every tool in the toolbox" and that if those operating the plane could come to him with data, he would use the plane.

"I can't back something that is untested," Harrison said. "I was actually hired because I was an evidence-based police chief and anybody who owns or works or runs a corporation, it would be like asking them to take on a product that has never been tested. None of them would do it."