The Oceanside Police Department (OPD), in San Diego County, CA, is one of the nearly 1,172 law enforcement agencies in the United States that has implemented a drone program as a part of a 21st century policing practices. The OPD operates one drone that it has been using for search and rescue, situational awareness, the apprehension of suspects, and gathering of evidence for several years now.

In 2019, the OPD updated its Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) manual. In the manual it states, “It shall be the mission of those personnel of the Oceanside Police Department who are trained in the use of UAS, to use this resource to protect the lives and property of citizens and first responders in a constitutionally and legally sound manner. Use of an aerial system can be utilized in circumstances which would save life and property, as well as being able to detect possible dangers that could not otherwise be seen.”

Recently, the OPD discovered a new way to enhance its drone program. While using the drones had made certain aspects of policing easier, officers were finding it difficult to share the drone’s video feed with the appropriate team members swiftly and smoothly. Sgt. Jack Reed, a supervisor for the OPD’s drone program, explained that the department had been using an app that would share the drone’s video feed with other officers during a call. However, the app would often lag, defeating the purpose of the drone.

Sgt. Reed found a solution through a program that nearly the whole country became all too familiar with during the pandemic, Zoom. “We use a screen-share feature like if you were going to be giving a presentation on a Zoom meeting, and then we share the screen generally from the phone that we’re using to fly the drone, log into the Zoom meeting and launch it,” Sgt. Reed explained. “We send usually a text out on an app that lets everybody know that the meeting is live. With our account, we basically have the same Zoom meeting and password so that we can all quickly log in.”

As an example of how the department combined drone technology with the Zoom platform, Sgt. Reed related an incident when a SWAT team was called in. A suspect had stabbed a person and sheltered themselves in an apartment. The SWAT team’s goal was to apprehend the suspect without risking any more victims. They needed total situational awareness to prevent another stabbing or a possible shootout. “One of the things that we decided to do,” Sgt. Reed said, “was to perch a drone on a balcony where they could see between the vertical louvers of the apartment of this particular suspect and see what they could see. See if he was still armed, see what his actions were, see if he was agitated, and use that information so that the SWAT team could make decisions based on what we were seeing. And the Zoom platform gave us the ability to do that.” Whether they are using drones on their own or combined with video conferencing, the OPD is fully embracing 21st century policing practices.