Many law enforcement agencies nationwide have discovered the utility of drones for supporting their crime-fighting missions.  Often these agencies stumble upon these missions as they arise, and conventional methods prove limited.  Last month, a Durango, Colorado patrol car spotted a vehicle speeding madly down a state highway.  The officer chased the car for miles on a gravel road until both cars reached a dead end.  The suspect fled his car and disappeared into the dense brush.  What to do?  Several  months earlier, Durango police had recaptured an FBI fugitive after she escaped a local hospital by tracking her down with a drone.  So, as dusk fell, the patrolman called for back up – from the departmen’’s newly acquired heat-sensing thermal imaging drone, especially equipped for nocturnal pursuit.   The drone deployed and within a matter of minutes the suspect was identified.  Durango officers rushed in to apprehend him.

It’s a story that’s being repeated over and over across the United States as more law enforcement agencies acquire drones – sometimes with funds from the police budget,  other times from donations and grants from private sources.   Many agencies still face skepticism from the public owing to a lack of information about what drones can do, and sometimes due to controversial incidents in which a department used a drone to monitor a protest march, ostensibly to ensure that it remained peaceful.   The Chula Vista California police department, a nationwide pioneer in drone-enhanced law enforcement, was sued over one such incident.  The fall-out led many departments deploying drones to institute strict protocols for the use of police drones, which are generally prohibited from flying over private property and from using facial recognition technology.  Some police departments even ban the use of drones for collecting simple information like license plate numbers, even though other forms of stationary surveillance are regularly consulted for such information.

Durango’s police department is hyper-aware of the controversies that have accompanied police drone use in some jurisdictions – and have no intention of deviating from their own protocols, which suit them just fine.  In addition to criminal pursuit, the department has used its fleet of three drones to aid  its crime scene investigations that typically follow fatal car accidents, which have increased in recent years.  “It only takes six or seven minutes to take a bunch of photographs on that scene that we can then take back to our office and stitch together into a map and do our measurements on that model, as opposed to spending an hour-and-a-half on scene doing manual measurements of everything,” says Durango chief Kellemeyer.  “So that significantly cuts down on the amount of time that we’re processing accidents.”

Durango police also deploy their drones to find and rescue missing persons and to investigate hazardous materials spills.  In the latter case, drones not only reduce the time needed to investigate but also shield Durano officers from the threat of physical harm from contamination.   The drones can gather surveillance footage to aid Hazmat teams in their on-the-scene investigation of the spill site.  Drones are also equipped to drop small medical kits, life preservers or warm blankets to those exposed to the elements, keeping them safe until a rescue team can arrive.

Durango’s PD is part of the “second wave” of police agencies that are benefiting from increased public receptivity to law enforcement use of drones.  Consider the stats:  Back in 2019, about 350 law enforcement agencies in 43 U.S. states were using drones But that number exploded to nearly 1,200 police agencies by early 2022 –  a phenomenal 300% increase.  All told, over 50 police agencies in Colorado have acquired drones; that ranks the state 7th nationwide.  But as success stories mount, expect another huge spike in law enforcement use of drones in 2023.

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