Law enforcement agencies across the country are beginning to warm up to drones.  It’s not hard to figure out why.  Drones can aid police operations in three major areas:  tracking fleeing criminal suspects, surveying crime scenes and finding and rescuing missing persons.  The added upfront expense of a drone is more than made up for in relatively short order – usually within a single year – by improved operational efficiency.  And drones reduce the risk of death and injury to officers, suspects and missing persons. When formerly skeptical citizens become aware of how drones enhance their safety, while reducing costs, support for their use generally soars.

Police agencies in Mexico have also warmed to drones, often drawing inspiration from the success of their counterparts up north.  Tijuana police, for example, were impressed with the experience of the Chula Vista police just across the border in southern California, and in 2019 began modeling their own drone operations accordingly.  Police departments in nearby Ensenada and Mexicali soon followed suit.  Ensenada police saw a 10% reduction in crime, including a 30% reduction in robberies, in just the first four months of deploying their first drones. While Ensenada deployed a single DJI drone, Tijuana started with two and then expanded to five, with additional remote launch sites.  As crime continues to decline in these and other Mexican cities,  public support for police drone operations has mushroomed.

Despite many similarities in their use, drones in the two countries do often operate under different cultural assumptions.  In the US , concerns over citizen privacy have led police departments to establish strict protocols for flights over private property but also during major public events, especially protest marches.  Police generally refrain from photographing vehicle license plates or zooming in to capture and save images of individual faces caught on their cameras. And police drones do not engage in routine patrolling of neighborhoods; they simply deploy when a crime incident occurs.

By contrast, police agencies throughout Mexico often do engage in routine patrols, especially in high-crime areas.  For example, Tijuana’s drones regularly patrol 30 different neighborhoods, including the city’s center, the financial district, and the restaurant and tourist zones – in theory, to deter criminals  before they strike.  In the capital of Mexico City, with its legendary midday traffic jams, police have grown accustomed to deploying drones even in minor emergencies,  leapfrogging over cars to arrive at an accident within minutes instead of hours.

However, not all of Mexico City’s police drones – 109, by last count, in a crowded city of well over 12 million people – fly from police stations or substations.  The city is a pioneer in the use of  “drone in the box” technology that allows drones to launch, recharge and return home autonomously.  Many of these advanced technology drones are replacing foot patrols in violent gang-infested areas where police officers may be outgunned and vulnerable to attack and injury.  Mexico City police also use their drones to back up rescue workers during landslides that too often occur in poor neighborhoods where makeshift homes may be built on steep hillsides or in difficult-to-reach ravines and gullies.  The drones can survey the damage and help target the rescue effort to those most in need.

Police in Mexico also face a crime-fighting challenge not often found on the northern side of the border:  the threat of a drone attack from Mexico’s violent drug cartels.  Last month, a cartel gang dropped explosive bombs from a drone on a police station in Jalisico, Mexico.  The cartel also deployed a small Cessna and a pickup truck in the attack, which killed two municipal officers. The police returned fire and killed two members aboard the Cessna, but the drones easily slipped away.  These attacks – many of them focused on Jalisco, home to the semi-militarized criminal cartel formerly known as Los Mata Zetas – began several years ago but have escalated sharply in 2022, causing growing consternation on both sides of the border.

Police in the US and Mexico, as well as the FBI and other affected law enforcement groups, say they want their own drone operations to stay peaceful.  So far, no police agency in Mexico has armed its drones and none plan to.   Law enforcement already has its hands full with its current and expanding drone missions and wants to avoid drawing its drones into another source of potential public controversy

But as the Mexican drug cartels’ use of drones to support drug smuggling and illicit surveillance of border security operations continues to increase, there is a growing recognition that the deployment of anti-drone defense technology – the US army has already begun testing prototypes – may soon become inevitable.  For now, citizens on both sides are relieved that their streets are safer than ever.