WELD COUNTY, Colo. — Greeley residents may spot drones flying in the skies here and there Monday afternoon, but Weld County sheriff’s deputies are getting ahead of a potential flurry of calls by stating there will be nothing mysterious behind them.
In a social media post on X, formerly Twitter, deputies with the Weld County Sheriff’s Office said the agency’s Drone Team will be performing training exercises with the unmanned aircraft around N. 11th Ave. and H St. in Greeley starting at around noon until about 3 p.m. Monday.
Deputies said on that social media post they were alerting the public in the interest of transparency “in case a member of the community sees or contacts a drone(s) in this area.”
There is no danger to the community, they added.
Mysterious drone sightings continue in New Jersey, parts of the East Coast
A large number of mysterious drones have been reported flying over the skies of New Jersey and across several eastern U.S. states since November, creating speculation over where they are coming from and why.
At first, the drones were spotted flying along the Raritan River in New Jersey, about 50 miles west of New York City. Since then, sightings have become more widespread, including over military installations and President-elect Donald Trump's golf course in Bedminster.
While public officials have said that the drones do not pose a threat, no one has been able to say where they are coming from, but the public — and lawmakers in states where sightings have been reported — are growing increasingly frustrated by the lack of transparency from the federal government.
The Pentagon and the White House have downplayed the sightings, with the former saying last week the drones were not from foreign entities nor military-related, and the latter saying people were likely mistaking planes for drones.
National
Mystery drones in Maryland and New Jersey draw more questions from lawmakers
In a call with reporters Saturday that was organized by the White House, senior officials from the FBI, Pentagon, Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies sought to assure people that the drones are not a national security or public safety threat, or the handywork of a malicious foreign actor, according to the Associated Press.
The FBI, Homeland Security and local state agencies where sightings have been reported since last month are investigating.
Despite lack of recent sightings, Colorado is no stranger to mystery drones
Colorado — where several conspiracy theories find their ground, mostly centered around Denver International Airport and more recently, Bigfoot — is no stranger to mystery drones.
Residents in northeastern Colorado reported seeing a band of large drones flying in formation and lighting up the night sky for several weeks starting in November 2019 into January of 2020.
And just as it is happening in New Jersey and other parts of the East Coast now, federal and state officials at the time were stumped over where those drones were coming from and why.
In all, seven Colorado counties launched investigations about those mystery drones alongside Homeland Security and the FBI.
By mid-January, however, officials from the state department of public safety said they would be scaling back their investigation into the mysterious drone sightings over northeastern Colorado.
In all, the Colorado Information Analysis Center (CIAC), a division of Homeland Security, found that around 27 out of the more than 100 reports they received from late November 2019 to mid-January 2020 were either “hobbyist drones,” planets, stars, atmospheric conditions or commercial aircraft.
You can view our report on Colorado's mystery drones from early 2020 in the video player below.
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