My question was not what is the penalty but who has enforcement authority. The local PD don't have resources or authority, let alone interest. Does the FAA have air police?
If I continue to fly safe and sane, there will be no intersection of my activity with the system. If by some rare chance I run afoul of the regulations, the Feds are seriously going to spends tens of thousands of dollars to come after me?
Newsflash, I don't make enough money to pay the fine. Jail me, I lose my job and then I can be one more person on public support while I get my three hots and a cot.
It took them 211 pages of garbly-gook to try and sell/justify this crap after a handful of "reports" of which only a subset were even substantiated. How many actual incidents occurred? Is there a single documented case of a hobby drone causing damage of significance to rise to the level requiring federal intervention?
******* Don crashes into the neighbors car, he pays to get it fixed.
****** Ron clips some person on the ground he pays medical and damages.
This is what the civil courts are for, to handle claims of negligence.
This is just more knee-jerk, "think of the chirrens", over reach by the Feds to justify their existence and hire more unskilled mass to suck up tax dollars and then demand more. It only serves to appease the mental defectives who are offended by drones, the confederate flag, and high fructose corn syrup for no reason other than someone told them they should be.