New Jersey "Drone" Footage from Youtuber Strategic Eyes

[jimmyslippin]

Youtuber and active duty cop (either NJ or NY police) Strategic Eyes today posted the video below on his Youtube channel "True Crime with Strategic Eyes." I thought this was an interesting case because it demonstrated how a police officer and "trained observer" could mistake common aircraft for nefarious drones.



The video shows a number of airborne objects with flashing lights that appear to be consistent with FAA regulations.

I managed to geolocate the area where the video was recorded to the Palisades Interstate Parkway alongside the Hudson River in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:

Source: Google Maps

Two locations used to geolocate the video are marked on the map.

1. is the Sisters of St Joseph of Peace seen at 0:34 in the video.

Source: Google Street View

2. is the gas station that Strategic Eyes pulls into at 1:21 in the video.

Source: Google Street View

The video appears to have been uploaded at 2024-12-19 22:41 UTC (17:41 local time) which I believe to be very close to the time it was recorded. Youtube doesn't show me the exact time but it must be buried in the code somewhere as I am able to pull it out using a third party tool.

NOTE: The time format in the screen cap below is my local time zone, which is +11. New Jersey is -5.

Source: https://ytlarge.com/youtube/video-data-viewer/

Looking at ADSB Exchange around that time we see that the Hudson River is very active with helicopters. These helicopters fly northbound up the river and then turn around at about the same location as Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and head back the way they came. These helicopters are flying at about 1000-1250 feet and around 120-180 knots.

Also, in the distance to the east we have planes on a departure track out of LaGuardia airport, ascending west toward the Hudson River.

Here is one such example at 2024-12-19 22:28 UTC with the two geolocated areas marked:

Source: ADSB Exchange

NOTE: I am not sure why, but when you follow these links to ADSB Exchange it resets the date to the previous day (or at the very least it is happening to me). So make sure to change it back to 2024-12-19.

Here is another around 12 minutes later at 2024-12-19 22:40 UTC, though I believe the first example is far more likely given the upload time and the video length.

Source: ADSB Exchange

Also worthy of note is that LaGuardia Airport is 6.25NM from the gas station Strategic Eyes pulls up at and in the same direction he is recording.

 

[Minus0]

Nice work.

The comments on his video are so incredibly depressing.

 

[jarlrmai]

We're firmly in the "jumping on the bandwagon to grow my social media presence" phase.

 

[Ravi]

We're firmly in the "jumping on the bandwagon to grow my social media presence" phase.

Yup, and they all think they are right, because who wants their video being thumbed down or taken down? So they will all argue endlessly over it.

 

[flarkey]

NOTE: I am not sure why, but when you follow these links to ADSB Exchange it resets the date to the previous day (or at the very least it is happening to me). So make sure to change it back to 2024-12-19.

I see that too.

 

[jimmyslippin]

I see that too.

If I want to look at data from 2024-12-19 I also have to select 2024-12-20 from the date box. It's weird.

 

[Gaspa]

Isn't it unlawful in the US to be filming things with your phone while driving? Someone should report this guy to the police.

 

[jarlrmai]

If I want to look at data from 2024-12-19 I also have to select 2024-12-20 from the date box. It's weird.

I reported this issue via the ADSB Ex reddit a while ago


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSBexchange/comments/1e0skwf/issue_with_date_selection_on_replay/


I got one answer which misunderstood the issue.

 

[jarlrmai]

Isn't it unlawful in the US to be filming things with your phone while driving? Someone should report this guy to the police.

I cringe everytime I analyse a video filmed by a driver in a moving vehicle, another danger from this flap, distracted drivers

 

[JMartJr]

One of them appears to be just a reflection in the window of his car, from the way it bobs up and down in relation to everything else in the shot:

 

[jimmyslippin]

One of them appears to be just a reflection in the window of his car, from the way it bobs up and down in relation to everything else in the shot:
View attachment 75121

Yeah, it disappears the moment the window goes down.

 

[JMartJr]

Isn't it unlawful in the US to be filming things with your phone while driving? Someone should report this guy to the police.

Largely it is illegal to text or speak on a phone while holding it in your hand, speaker phone is often allowed., but laws vary by state.

For some reason I am having a lot of trouble nailing down the New Jersey situation, which appears to ban use of hand held phones but I can't find specific mention of using one as a camera. If I do, I'll post it.

 

[Gaspa]

If someone is going to recreate it:
When he pulls the window up, at 46 seconds in, we can see from the reflection he's doing 56 mph. And he gradually speeds up to 59 mph over the next 10 seconds. He maintains that speed for about 5 seconds until, at 1:00 we can no longer see the reflection of the speedometer for several seconds.

At 1:10 we can see it again, and he's doing 56 mph. And after that he slows down a bit, such that at 1:18 he's at 50, 49, and after that he's really breaking to stop at the gas station, but we can barely see anything after that.

I think one could just extrapolate that he's at about 55 mph all the way through, and results should be fine. So, from the beginning of the video until about 70 seconds, which is when the helicopter is about in front of him just a tiny bit to the left, that means he's moved 1,07 miles or 1,72 km.

(If you want to round it up to 60, that's a mile a minute, shouldn't be bad)

 

[Gaspa]

I think I found the exact trees he's facing at the first frame in the video. Just downloading GIMP in order to draw some lines in order to show what I'm seeing.

 

[jarlrmai]

There's very clearly a match between the branching patterns of 4 of the trees depicted.

 

[Gaspa]

Did an overlay in GIMP, and also ran the video for several seconds checking if the treeline kept matching, and can confidently say that the first frame in the video is at coordinates 40.8832°, -73.9468° (the numbers in the bottom of the image shown at post #14 are the coordinates of where my mouse cursor was, I just now realized that).

Another helpful landmark was when he passed a couple traffic signs (ONE WAY, one of them is seen from the back) at seven seconds, that I found to be where the lanes of a half cloverleaf intersection (?) merge at coordinates 40.8818°, -73.9477°.

 

[Trailblazer]

I reported this issue via the ADSB Ex reddit a while ago


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSBexchange/comments/1e0skwf/issue_with_date_selection_on_replay/


I got one answer which misunderstood the issue.

Apparently this is a known bug that is related to the time zone on your computer. For me in the UK, it happens during the summer when my local time is UTC+1.

When I am on UTC, eg now in December, the date stays correct when I click the links.

I think it happens if your current time zone is ahead of UTC - because when you set the date to (say) 2024-12-19 it parses that as 2024-12-19 00:00 in your computer's local time zone.

If that time zone is ahead of UTC then it subtracts time from it to get the UTC equivalent of 00:00 in your local time - which will be on the previous day, and so the date gets set wrongly.