A man decided to control a reconnaissance drone to fly over the area as the Palisade wildfire raged in Los Angeles County on January 9.Obviously, this was a bad decision.And this man is Peter T. Ackerman, co-founder of Treyarch Studio, a developer of the Call of Duty series.After losing visual contact with the drone, Ackerman's drone hit the left wing of a "Super Scooper" -- the plane used to throw water was assisting firefighters to stop the spread of wildfires.

The Super Scooper was subsequently forced to ground the maintenance, further exacerbating the difficulty of firefighting in a serious disaster that had already lasted for several weeks.

Ackerman pleaded guilty to the charge of "unsafe operation of unmanned aircraft" and was convicted of law on February 3.By pleading full guilt, he avoided potentially up to one year in prison, but still required 150 hours of community service to support the Southern California wildfire rescue operation.

This Monday, the former Call of Duty developer and former president of Sky Dance Media received a formal verdict.In fact, Ackerman is still in jail and serves his sentence, but the sentence is only 14 days of federal prison, but he still needs to receive one month of home house arrest after the imprisonment is over.In addition, he will have to pay a total of US$156,000 fine and compensation.

In a letter to the court, Ackerman expressed his "most sincere regret and deep apology" to the crew of the "Super Scooper" and to the people of Los Angeles.He insisted that part of his manipulation of the drone was because of "worry about a friend" who was home near the area affected by the fire.But there is no doubt that even so, this cannot be a reason to put firefighting operations at risk.

The U.S. Attorney's Office, as always, directly condemned the incident:

"The damage suffered by ‘Super Scooper’ is a profound reminder that operating drones in emergencies poses a great threat to those committed to rescue people, and it also weakens the overall ability of police and fire departments to carry out operations. As shown in this case, we will definitely track down the entirety of operators who illegally operate drones and interfere with the critical work of first responders."

I hope this "deep warning" can have a sufficient deterrent effect on potential distractors in the future.