The report keeps mentioning that there are no laws against private or commercial flight of drones. Even the city attorney stated this. So obviously they don't have a clue. Notice that they charged him 6 months later? Seems like it took them this long to find out that there _are_ laws in place.
To me it seems like the flyer did the correct thing. At first it sounded like his attorney was sugar coating the story but the police report appears to back it up 100%. The flyer landed, explained himself to the home owner and told her who he was. What we have here is a homeowner that just does not understand what was being done was the same as standing on public property and taking photos of her home.
Personally, if I was going to be taking photos of one person's home I think I'd probably ask first. It's a little more obtrusive then just flying over an area. But it's not required.
What we need is _education_ and _information_... not illegal laws and/or laws that are pointless. Read the law they are proposing... it's about as stupid as stupid gets. The law states that it does not apply to; "model flying airplanes". Setting aside all of the other problems with the law, I think a person could easily argue that a drone is a model flying airplane. After all, the law calls a drone an "aircraft".
Here is the kicker to the whole thing... they charged this person for what he was doing. Then it appears they agree that there are already existing laws to protect people from what happened. Yet they feel the need to collect fees from people to fly UAVs. Odd... seems a "fee" to the city solves all of these problems. Also, no mention of what the amount of this "fee" will be. They make the law allowing the "fee" and only _then_ determine how much it will be. You also will need to obtain the permit with enough time for the police to tell _everyone_ within 500' of the area you are flying about the flight and give them time to respond. So you could easily need to wait a month before flying. This effectively would shut down the use of a UAV in this city. This law is _WAY_ over-bearing.