CHULA VISTA, Calif.—The scene that unfolded along Interstate 5 looked like a carefully choreographed action film sequence. But it was a real life-or-death situation.
Flames and smoke billowed into the night sky from a vehicle that had crashed off the roadway. Upon arrival, police discovered that the car’s driver was trapped inside, screaming in agony.
“C’mon, give me your hand!” an officer yelled, as he and three others worked frantically to extricate the man through a rear window they had broken.
Panting and grunting, the officers struggled. Then, seconds after they pulled the man to safety along the highway’s berm, the car exploded. A ball of fire engulfed it just as a fire truck arrived.
Chula Vista Police Capt. John English said the man “probably would have perished” were it not for the officers’ heroism, as well as the aid of a camera-equipped, airborne drone.
By relaying real-time information to officers as they head to emergencies such as this one, drones help police plan their actions.
English reviewed video footage of the fiery rescue with The Epoch Times, explaining how a drone helped officers save the man’s life.
As the car burned, the drone’s aerial view allowed police to quickly identify the best route to the scene. Without that perspective, officers easily could have chosen a more distant highway entrance.
“That would have taken extra time to get there, and they didn’t have it,” English said.
Also, because the drone’s thermal imaging showed no person near the burning car, officers suspected that someone might still be inside the wreckage. That fear increased their sense of urgency, helping to avert tragedy.
Although the man and three of the four rescuing officers were hurt, all recovered. That incident, on Oct. 13, 2023, stands out as a dramatic example of how drones are bolstering police work across the nation.
Officers have used terms such as “game changer,” “transformational,” and “revolutionary” to describe the effect of drones on their jobs.
Others are raising alarms over this technology’s capability to be intrusive.
In Eureka in northern California, a city of about 25,000 people, opponents recently stopped local police from even looking into a drone program.
After citizens pressured city leaders to back away from the idea, the city announced that the proposed drone study had been cut from the city council’s Oct. 21 agenda.
“We vow to keep fighting surveillance overreach ... [to] preserve our integrity, safety, and privacy in our rapidly changing world,” it stated.
From Rescues to Arrests
In the seven years since the Chula Vista Police Department pioneered using drones as first responders, increasing numbers of police and fire agencies have adopted the technology.
Skydio, a U.S. company, supplies drones to 800 public safety agencies, including those in New York City, where police are using the aircraft to quell the dangerous trend of riding on top of subways, known as “subway surfing.”
In Redmond, Washington, officers used a drone to reveal the hidden location of a missing elderly man with dementia. He was found safe, sitting in a wooded area.
Police in all three cities run drone first-response programs. Drones go airborne to relay and record live video footage from scenes where people have reported disturbances or circumstances that appear to imperil lives, safety, or property.
Across the United States, officers credit drones with improving police safety and efficiency. Drones also help police rescue people, de-escalate contentious situations, and arrest suspects.
His audience had just watched a staged, live demonstration of a remote police officer using a drone to track a fleeing suspect. Using the drone’s loudspeaker, the officer ordered him to put his hands up and walk toward on-scene police.
Chula Vista Laid Groundwork
Jon Beal, CEO of the Law Enforcement Drone Association, said he expects the drone first responder trend to grow rapidly, largely because of “trailblazers” such as Chula Vista.
That department’s leaders “stuck their necks out” to figure out drone methods that are now being replicated across the nation, he said, noting that departments fine-tune policies to meet each community’s needs.
Over the years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been removing approval obstacles.
Applause and Concerns
The technology’s role in law enforcement has become increasingly important, Beal said.He believes that we are approaching the point at which “it’s almost negligent” if departments fail to use every tool available, including drones.
That is particularly true in “search-for-persons operations” and high-risk incidents, Beal said. Those might include police serving search warrants targeting dangerous people or police responding to shootings-in-progress, unruly crowds, or standoffs with barricaded suspects.
In such circumstances, the high-tech devices give officers “an eye in the sky and time on their side,” Beal said.
Those numbers are low, considering that the United States is home to about 18,000 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.
“We’ve got law enforcement agencies buying drones on a daily basis,” Beal said.
Agencies that lack their own drones often borrow them from neighboring departments.
And, as agencies’ drone use expands, people on both sides of the political aisle are raising concerns, he said.
“Research is only the first step,” the post reads, alleging that police would move toward “a military drone surveillance program.”
Beal said it is impractical—and irresponsible—for agencies to deploy drones for general surveillance. It makes no sense for officials to say, “We’re gonna go out and fly a drone for 10 hours today and hopefully find something,” he said.
Misusing the technology, he said, could ignite backlash against drone programs across the United States.
Beal’s 2,000-member nonprofit helps train drone operators and sets standards to ensure that the technology is being used “the right way,” he said. His group assists public safety agencies not only across the United States, but also in Canada, Europe, South America, and Australia.
Tales From 2 Cities
To learn more about police drones, The Epoch Times visited the Chula Vista Police Department and the Cincinnati Police Department, which began its drone program over the summer.Although the two departments are located 2,200 miles apart and serve starkly dissimilar communities, they follow some of the same key principles. Their drone pilots must be federally certified, and their policies prohibit general patrolling or random surveillance with drones.
Unique factors affect police drone operations in each city.
Chula Vista, which means “pretty view” in Spanish, enjoys Southern California weather that is reliably clear and sunny: ideal drone-flying conditions.
And it is a low-rise city, with buildings mostly 20 stories or lower, simplifying drones’ flight paths.
The police headquarters building is only about four stories high, but its rooftop enables a miles-wide view. It is one of the locations from which police launch drones.
Under federal rules, a person must be present at the site; that is typically a contractor who performs maintenance on the drones and coordinates flights with a drone operator inside the building. The indoor employees operate controls and monitor computer displays of maps and drone-collected images.
In contrast, Cincinnati faces more obstacles for its drone flights.
Midwest weather tends to be more fickle, and skyscrapers form the Queen City’s distinctive skyline, posing challenges for drones. Tall buildings can disrupt GPS signals that guide the aircraft. The structures also may create a “canyon wind effect” that can destabilize drones.
Numerous federal flight restrictions affect Cincinnati airspace, too. While Chula Vista lacks a professional sports team, Cincinnati is home to three: Reds baseball, Bengals football, and FC Cincinnati soccer. Those teams’ schedules and the presence or movement of Vice President JD Vance, whose permanent residence is in Cincinnati, all can cause the FAA to impose restrictions.
Cincinnati encompasses nearly 80 square miles of hilly land and water. That is about 30 square miles larger than Chula Vista, a mostly flat Pacific coastal plain just north of the U.S.–Mexico border.
Furthermore, because Cincinnati was incorporated nearly 100 years before Chula Vista, much of Cincinnati’s land is more densely packed with structures. That characteristic could also affect drones’ maneuverability and sight lines.
Tragedy Sparked Innovation
The idea for Chula Vista’s drone program dates back a decade or so.English recalled that about a decade ago, then-Capt. Roxana Kennedy was lamenting a tragedy in a neighboring community.
A man having a mental health crisis had positioned himself in a ready-to-shoot stance. To defend themselves, officers opened fire, killing him. They later learned that he was holding a harmless shiny object, not a gun.
Kennedy and other officers brainstormed how to prevent such a terrible outcome in the future. They designated a small team of plainclothes officers to go to critical incidents in unmarked cars. That advance team used binoculars and radios to “start providing real-time intelligence” to arriving officers, English said.
According to English, after that approach proved effective, then-Lt. Fritz Reber wondered, “What if we did the same thing with drones?”
After Kennedy became chief in 2016, Chula Vista held community forums to address questions and concerns. Community opposition had killed proposed drone programs in other cities.
A committee worked with the FAA to learn rules governing drone flights. The department earned federal approval to fly drones for tactical purposes in 2017, paving the way for the drone program the next year. In 2021, the FAA granted citywide approval for drone flights.
“It’s hard to be the first, because there’s a very bright light that shines on you,” English said. “[Kennedy] had the guts to make the leap.”
Evaluating Effectiveness
Sgt. Manny Salazar, drone unit supervisor, told The Epoch Times that first-response drones, which run about $35,000 each, are far less expensive aerial aids than helicopters, which he estimated at $1 million apiece.
However, he said, it is hard to quantify program cost savings, such as the vehicle gasoline preserved in 4,500 instances in which a drone arrived and showed that there was no need for an officer.
“The impacts of the drone program are demonstrated through narratives of drone use and supported by video gathered by the drones themselves.”
Chula Vista’s police department employs fewer than 300 officers and is considered understaffed for a city of its size, English said. Police often say drones act as a “force multiplier,” meaning that drones maximize what each officer can accomplish.
Tactical and Mapping
In Chula Vista, police use drones in three different ways.Another type of drone use involves specially trained officers who can sign up to take one of 20 smaller, “tactical” drones with them for use during their shifts. Those drones take several minutes to set up, so they are typically used for less urgent situations such as surveying the building an officer is about to enter during a requested “wellness check” of a person with potential mental health issues.
With both first-response and tactical drones, the drone pilot can connect the device to a system that allows responding officers and commanders to watch drone-fed images of events on their cellphones in real time.
Willingness to answer questions and provide information has allayed most concerns and converted many skeptics into supporters, Salazar said.
Meanwhile, Chula Vista’s DFR program has faced a notable court challenge: a four-year legal battle over a journalist’s request for a full month of drone video footage.
Chula Vista’s legal department did not respond to a request for comment.
Stepping Up to the Launchpad
Police in Cincinnati confront higher crime rates than their peers in Chula Vista.Crime became a major political issue in Cincinnati this year. Local outrage gained national attention after a racially divided, videotaped brawl went viral online.
Earlier this year, Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge announced multiple steps the city was taking to address crime, including launching drones.
A month before the drone program’s official rollout in July, police used a drone’s spotlight to disperse an unruly nighttime crowd downtown.
But the drone program is not a product of the recent crisis.
In fact, it was “years in the making,” Police Lt. Jonathan Cunningham told The Epoch Times. He said police leaders, including Theetge, became increasingly interested in the technology after hearing success stories from other departments. The process began four or five years ago.
Cincinnati police followed Chula Vista’s example and met with community leaders before rolling out its DFR program; officers met with heads of all 52 community councils to seek input and familiarize them with the department’s planned use of the technology, Cunningham said.
In addition, Cincinnati’s main DFR-use policy resembles Chula Vista’s.
“This program represents a major step forward in the department’s commitment to using innovation to keep Cincinnati safe.”
The department started the program with nine drones capable of covering about 40 percent of the city; the department is aiming for 90 percent coverage within a few months.
Cincinnati’s Distinctive Features
Cincinnati’s DFR program differs from Chula Vista’s in a few notable ways.While Chula Vista’s drones are labeled “Chula Vista Police,” Cincinnati’s drones fly with blue-and-red lights, a more visible indicator that the drone represents law enforcement.
Also, while Chula Vista puts a person on the roof at the launch site to observe the skies and clear the airspace—as the FAA requires—Cincinnati obtained FAA approval to use a radar-and-camera system, DedroneBeyond.
Sgt. Jay Kemme, supervisor of Cincinnati’s drone unit, explained that the system fulfills the FAA’s requirement for a “visual observer.”
“It tells us where the planes are, how high they are, the helicopters,” he told The Epoch Times. “And if there’s something in our area, it'll beep, so we know we have to get out of the way of that.”
Cincinnati also figured out how to help minimize the effects of sometimes-unfriendly southwest Ohio weather. The department houses its drones in a climate-controlled charging dock.
“It’ll stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. ... It’s all-weather,” said Officer Ben Miller, a remote drone pilot.
Miller said he marvels at the devices’ capabilities and “how incredible it is that [police] can get to virtually anywhere” while the drone’s battery lasts. If a battery gets low, police can send a backup drone and command the original to return to home base for recharging, he said. Using this “leapfrog” method, drones can monitor scenes for prolonged periods if necessary.
Drones are sent after reports of “everything from a shooting to a mattress on the highway,” Kemme said.
“I would like citizens to know that it’s keeping them safer,” Kemme said. “[When citizens call 911] we’re going to get there really fast ... and if we see that it’s a serious situation, now we can rush resources to you faster.”
