Good, but must try harder
Such a pun-rich article, but you missed the obvious opportunity to refer to them as legal eagles
The Dutch police's scheme to use eagles as drone-intercepting assistants has turned out to be as successful as the British skier who shares their name. The theory was, according to police spokesman Marc Wiebes, that "the bird sees the drone as prey and takes it to a safe place, a place where there are no other birds or people …
Yes, it was a very bad idea.....
Regardless of the Wedge-tailed eagle video from another poster, having recently purchased a couple of quads I'm very aware of how much power and therefore "lose a finger in a millisecond" bone-slicing capability these things have beyond the single propped fixed wing aircraft I've been using up til now; a good quote I read was they are "mini blenders of death".
I reckon they sent a few of these raptors up to retrieve test drones, and after the 5th returned trying to land on the bloody stumps that were all that remained of its claws, they realised the Dutch version of the RSPCA would go apeshit crazy if they found out.
Example or the power in a drone prop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4shbLB9U7Q
Trust me, there is no way any raptor could intercept any multicopter with a 100% safety record for its entire lifetime.
The first bird - dead, with its body a lacerated mess from 4 sharp props spinning at 10,000 rpm - dropping out of the sky into an open air concert would have killed the project dead even if they had gone live with it.
The idea probably came from Down Under - the Wedge Tailed Eagles there shred drones as a hobby.
Glance away for a second and it's too late to save your drone...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-05-24/wedge-tailed-eagle-takes-down-drone-over-wa-wheat-farm/8554120
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr-xBtVU4lg
I was hoping to get out of a job where I am insulted every day by people who ignore my advice and blame me for them not talking my advice (yes, I work in IT), to a job where I deal with predators with straightforward intentions.
The good thing about being a falconer is that the only competition for the job are a bunch of Kazakh (or is that now Qazaq?) and Altai eagle hunters. Since they are much more skilled and cooler than me, I would not be irritated if they beat to the job.
You would have thought that the Dutch police could have pivoted the project over to mounting honking huge lasers onto the heads of sharks.
Make them powerful enough and they could even reach the German border as a last, best line of defense[1]..
[1] Yes, yes, I know, best friends in Yurope, no more war etc etc. Or at least, not until AfD takes power and goes to war with France and the rest of Europe..