In the summer of 2017, the City Administration of Cincinnati, OH, announced its initiative to establish Cincinnati as the city with one of the smartest municipal platforms. Some of the Smart City Initiative projects were plans to deliver broadband 5G networks to support the city’s infrastructure, apps for citizens to communicate with municipal offices, smart sewers and water meters, and drones to assist municipal offices and endeavors. One of the offices benefiting from the initiative’s drone purchases has been the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD).

The department has 1,000 police officers and 125 unsworn employees. The CPD serves a population of 296,943 over a 79.54sq mile range. When the CPD first began using drones, it was primarily to replace Total Stations, a device police use to map crime scenes. Typically, a Total Station takes 2-3 hours to map a scene, whereas a drone gets the job done in about 15 minutes. “That’s two or three hours that a road is closed and we’re having to divert traffic,” explained CPD drone operator Specialist Rob Uhlenbrock. “When we’re able to fly the drones for traffic crashes, it gives us the capability to clear the scene much quicker.”

The CPD soon began using the department’s 2 drones for other operations. Fully trained and licensed police drone officers were being called in to use the drones for SWAT procedures and the monitoring of large crowds for public safety. Like nearly all police departments with drone programs, the CPD has taken into account the public’s concern of privacy violations when it comes to drones. Therefore, all drone operations are made public, and the technology is used under extreme caution. The CPD has since acquired more drones such as the small and agile DJI Mavic 2, a drone that is excellent for use in search and rescue missions. And as the CPD proved on Friday, September 4, 2021, the Mavic 2 can also be used to assist in the apprehension of a suspect.

For 4-6 hours, the CPD had been searching for Sashay Walton whom an arrest warrant for several felony charges had been issued. Police knew the Sashay was hiding somewhere in a building on Peete Street in Over-the-Rhine, though manual searches had yet to provide any results. At this point, Sgt. Eric Franz was called in to use a drone to get a bird’s eye view of the building. After flying the drone six stories up, Sashay was quickly spotted lying on his stomach on top of the roof talking on his cell phone. He looks over his shoulder, sees the drone, and knows the jig is up. Sashay stands up, pulls a cigarette out, looks up to the drone again, uses his hands to signal one minute please, lights up the cigarette, and waits for the officers to come to arrest him.

“We used to have to climb into attics, we used to have to climb on top roofs,” Sgt. Franz said. “Now we don’t have to do that anymore. We’ve got the technology where we don’t have to put anybody in harm’s way.” The apprehension of Sashay marked the first time a drone was used by the CPD to complete an arrest. The arrest was done in a manner that minimized any threats to officers and surrounding civilians. Since the April 2021 riots in Cincinnati, the city has seen a record setting increase in murders and other violent crimes. If drones can be used to help police officers carry out daily missions safely, the city may begin seeing a decrease in crime rates. The CPD is currently in the process of procuring additional drones to complete such tasks, maintaining the City Administration’s Smart City Initiative.