This woman took a photo of a police drone. Then she got ticketed for distracted driving

Laurie Esseltine was idling at a red river illumine in jamaican capital, Ont., when her "spidey senses" — highly-developed during a vocation spotting hazards for the province's Transportation Ministry — starting tingling.

She noticed a drone hovering above her vehicle with no pilot in sight, so she picked up her phone.

"My first thought was to take a picture of this and report it," Esseltine recalled. "It was frightening ... And then it was like, 'What are they doing? You can't do that.' That was my second reaction."

She snapped two photos, put her phone back down and waited for the light to change.

Then, as Esseltine proceeded through the intersection, a police cruiser pull up behind her.

She was among 20 drivers ticketed on May 7, 2025, for using their phones while behind the wheel, and faced "the full monty" under the Highway Traffic Act: a $615 fine, three demerit points and the possibility of a three-day licence suspension.

During a brief court appearance on Monday, however, the charge against Esseltine was withdrawn — at least the second of the drone-related tickets issued that day to be dropped without explanation. It's unclear how many others have also been withdrawn.

Asked in January about the tickets, municipal prosecutor Rikki Viskamp said her department had no comment. She did not respond this week to follow-up questions about why Esseltine's charge was withdrawn.

As an avid motorcyclist, Esseltine said she's well aware of the risks of texting and driving, recalling how she "almost lost her life" because a motorist was looking at their phone instead of the road.

But to her, using a drone in this sort of "police sting" amounts to a form of entrapment.

"What better way to catch a distracted driver [than] by providing the distraction?"

Flying drones to nab distracted drivers was a new tactic for Kingston Police, according to a media release issued two days after Esseltine was ticketed.

In fact, it was the first time the force had used a drone for that purpose — and the last.

In the past, Kingston Police officers had watched for distracted drivers from buses and vans. Last May, former police chief Scott Fraser said the force had decided to try using new technology.

While Fraser said the intention was never to invade drivers' privacy, the force would stop using drones if so ordered by the courts.

The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), a charity focused on defending the constitutional rights, became involved in the matter and was set to represent one of the other motorists who was ticketed that day.

The CCF's litigation director Josh Dehaas said the unnamed woman spotted a drone "the size of a microwave" outside her car window and took a picture because she suspected it was "up to no good."

According to Dehaas, the CCF views using drones to zoom in on drivers as a "violation of the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures under Section Eight of the Charter."

That woman's ticket was withdrawn before CCF raised those concerns in court, but the charity was never told why.

"They must have decided that it wasn't in the public interest to pursue, and we think that it's quite likely that's because they understood that this was a Charter violation," said Dehaas, who believes all 20 tickets issued on May 7 should be dropped.

Both the CCF and Esseltine said Kingston Police should have warned residents that they were using drones to charge distracted drivers.

Had the force posted warning signs similar to those near red light cameras, for example, Dehaas believes the tickets could have had a better chance of holding up in court.

But that would have missed the larger point, he added.

"We really need to ask ourselves whether we want to live in a society where police can be using drones to zoom in on what we're doing inside our cars," Dehaas said.

Reporter

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