Sign in or Join the community to continue
Drone as First Responder: Changes in Policing, Changes in Prosecution
Posted Oct 05, 2026 | Views 9
Share
Speakers
Ryan Kao
Director of Public Safety Strategy @ Skydio
Ryan Kao is a Public Safety professional at Skydio, where he helps law enforcement agencies adopt autonomous drone technology to improve operational effectiveness and officer safety.
Prior to joining Skydio, Ryan served with distinction at the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), where he gained firsthand experience with the challenges and opportunities facing modern policing.
Ryan brings a unique perspective that bridges frontline law enforcement insight with cutting-edge drone innovation, helping agencies deploy Drone as First Responder (DFR) programs and scale their use of unmanned aerial systems.
+ Read More
Colin Romberger
Solution Engineering Manager @ Skydio
As Senior Solutions Engineering Manager for SLED (State, Local and Education) at Skydio, Colin’s Team engages with State and local government agencies across the country to assess their UAS operational needs and provide the technical product knowledge and support necessary to ensure their success with Skydio by delivering innovative, paradigm shifting solutions that form the foundation for advanced program growth for years to come.
Prior to coming to Skydio, Colin was the Chief Pilot for DARTdrones, a nationwide UAS training and consultation company that provides services to government and enterprise clients in the United States and abroad. During his tenue, Colin and his Team helped launch drone programs for over 300 public safety agencies from 2016 through 2020.
A lifelong enthusiast of all things that fly, Colin has been a student of multiple aviation disciplines over the past 30+ years. In addition to his passion for drones, Colin is also an FAA Private Pilot, Advanced Ground Instructor, Skydiving Professional, FAAST Team “Drone Pro” for the Federal Aviation Administration, and holds a Masters Degree in Uncrewed Systems from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University with a focus on UAS Operations and Systems Design.
+ Read More
SUMMARY
Drones are showing up on more 911 calls, which means prosecutors are seeing more drone evidence in more cases. In partnership with the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA), this session walks through a live Drone as First Responder (DFR) demo and the legal questions that come with it. Ryan Kao, Skydio Director of Public Safety Strategy and Legal Counsel and a former San Francisco prosecutor, and Colin Romberger, Skydio Solutions Engineering Manager, fly real missions from a rooftop dock in a cross-country demo. You'll watch a drone launch in three clicks, track a vehicle, clear a parking structure with thermal, search a wooded area, and upload evidence to evidence.com. Then the session covers how to analyze drone footage under the Fourth Amendment, defend against motions to suppress, and authenticate video at trial. The session closes with Q&A.
+ Read More
CONTENT & TRANSCRIPT
It's with great pleasure that I introduce our speakers today, Ryan Kao and Colin Romberger from Skydio.
Stop sharing and turn that over to you guys.
Great. Thank you, Kara. Is this coming through?
Yep.
Great.
So nice to talk to you guys. Looking forward to today's, panel and, presentation. So, my name is Ryan Kao. I'm director of public safety strategy and legal counsel here at Skydio.
I was a prosecutor in the San Francisco DA's office, for nine years, from 2013 to 2022. In 2022, I joined the San Francisco Police Department as a director of crime strategies, and that's how I kinda got involved in this whole kinda technology game, looking to use technology to transform the way we were, fighting crime in San Francisco. Dfr has been absolutely
And by DFR, mean, Drone as First Responder has been absolutely instrumental in the progress that we've made in San Francisco and in many other jurisdictions around The United States. Skydio is the leading provider of DFR for law enforcement in the US, and we've got a lot of things that we're really excited to show off today.
And really interested to see what prosecutors think about how this is gonna change the criminal justice landscape. I'm joined today by Colin Romberger, is one of our solutions engineering managers here at Skydio. Colin, could you tell the group about your background a little bit?
Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks, Ryan, and, great to meet everyone. Happy to be here. So, yeah, Colin Romberger, lead, one of our solutions engineering teams, here at Skydio.
Been with Skydio for about six years, but, I've been supporting public safety agencies as well as other entities around The United States and abroad with establishing small UAS programs for for various use cases. But, again, a a primary focus on public safety for the past, it's going on twelve years at this point. So really have been honored to be a part of helping to establish a lot of those programs throughout the country, and happy to show you what Skydio has to offer today.
So what we're gonna talk about today is we'll talk about current and future use of police drones. Essentially, what is DFR? What is drone as first responder? And how is it different from drone programs before? We will have a tech demo that Colin is gonna lead for us.
Then we'll spend a lot of time talking about some of the Fourth Amendment considerations and, how we should approach getting this evidence into court in defending against motions to suppress and motions to set aside, or how to get it through grand jury, etcetera. Then we'll spend a little bit of time, on authentication and trial strategy, and, we'll close it out with some time for questions and answers at the end. And then if questions and answers filter in and I'm able to get to them, it's kinda hard when, you're kind of looking at the screen.
But if you wanted to, put the question in, I'm able to, get to it, in the middle. I'm happy to, handle interruptions.
So, let's kick it off by talking about, comparing and contrasting traditional and current police drone use. So traditional police drone use, police drones have been around for, you know, probably easily ten years now. They primarily been used tactically for search warrants or plainclothes abatement operations. It usually means that the pilot and visual observers are near the launch site.
And what this means is essentially, like, let's say you're executing a search warrant at a house. You're gonna bring your search warrant team to the house, and they will have a drone with them in a suitcase or a backpack or something like that. And they will... The pilot will be there at the scene, and they will pull the drone out, unfold the wings, launch it, and they will use it, while they're executing their search warrant. It's typically, used in concert with teams of officers.
Your classic example is, like, let's say you have, officers who are searching for someone who has fled from them and is now, like, hiding in a ravine or something like that.
One officer would go and, you know, deploy the drone. But if the officer is sitting there looking at the controller, they've got their head buried in the controller, they need a cover officer. So that's like, you need a second officer now to protect the first officer who is focused solely on flying the drone safely and not crashing, as well as locating the suspect. Now if they see anything, then you're gonna need a third officer to go do something about it, and they're probably gonna need a cover officer as well. So you're essentially talking about a ratio of, like, four officers to one drone.
You often see them used as well in, like, cross reconstruction where, again, officer is bringing drone to scene, launching drone, and doing some work with it all while the drone is within visual line of sight. In other words, the officer is able to, you know, with their eyeballs, see the drone in the air. It's essentially a flying camera that sticks close to the officer.
The new trend is now drone as first responder, and this is kind of like an umbrella term that kinda... That describes, the way of... The way police officers are using drones now, which is unmanned rooftop docks. In other words, they are like these barbecues that sit on your roof, and they have drones that are autonomously launched and recovered from these docking stations without the need for a person to be present to to launch or recover them. They're typically remotely operated. So if you have one location where the drone is launched from, you're gonna be flying the drone from another location, like in a real time crime center, for example, and then you're gonna fly them to a third location. So drone launch site, drone pilot site, and where you send the drone are all three different locations. You're typically flying beyond visual line of sight, which means you can fly these things out for miles where the operator is no longer able to see the drone.
And they're typically carrying more and more advanced optics and sensors. The big one that's mostly relevant to law enforcement is thermal. And you're gonna So one of the big trends is, going toward a, like, sworn led civilian staffed model because officers are quite expensive, and you see a lot of, skills, necessary for drone piloting also be present and coming up in, other civilian professions as well. So that is relevant because, you know, sworn officers are professional witnesses, civilians aren't necessarily. So that is another thing to keep an eye on.
And, ultimately, what this means is that drones will respond independently and in concert with other police assets at scale. The typical workflow is, like, let's say there's an I one one call. We'll demonstrate this. As officers are being, dispatched to that call, a drone pilot is listening to the call and is launching a drone ahead of the officers and is trying... And is racing to get there first, and they often do get there first. And so we see this kind of switch from, like, officer drives with drone in the trunk to the scene changing to this kind of, like, citywide dispatch model where you're launching miniature aircraft, essentially, a whole bunch of mini helicopters, all over your city, reaching, reaching crime scenes or reaching emergency scenes in two minutes or less is is quite common, whereas, like, your a priority response is sometimes more like seven, eight, or nine minutes.
Looks a little bit something like this.
Skydio Dock for X10.
Station docked X10s where critical work happens.
Get airborne in twenty seconds.
Operate remotely from anywhere in the world and get the data you need to act.
For public safety agencies, Skydio DFR command is the ultimate software suite for drone operations.
Respond to incidents with a single click, share live video with ReadyLINK, and use augmented reality overlays for precise visual orientation.
Manage your fleet, upload evidence, and build community trust. It's all at your command.
So what does this mean for prosecutors? This means that you're gonna see more drones in more places and in more cases. It won't just be for special cases. It will be for routine or mundane cases as well.
Your average nine one one response now may very well have a drone, and in the future, will likely...
You should expect to have a drone involved. There's an increasing technology stack. A lot of these DFR and drone as first responder programs are being integrated into crime centers. So you see them integrated with ALBR, FUSIS, other types of camera systems.
You're gonna see, the drone, for example, have different integrations where the information is being piped into the pilot, and then it's directly loaded into their cockpit, and they're launching for that for that purpose as well as they're passing their drone feed to other locations as well.
You're gonna have to confront issues with night vision, which is usually a huge benefit because you're able to see a lot more evidence at night. And as we know, a lot of crime happens at night. Thermal is also a big aspect of that. Thermal is a very, very powerful night vision technology, but, of course, there's Kylo.
And then you're also gonna see more things with RTK or real time kinematics, which is, which is a technology that's very useful for, mapping things.
More evidence, more problems. I think there was a a song... I'm paraphrasing a song about that from the nineties.
And then, the last big thing is, pilots are completely remote from events that are captured on video. We're often used to saying, like, hey. What'd you see? What happened next? That is not necessarily, sometimes that can break down a little bit when you're doing fully remote operations.
K. So, we're gonna have our first scenario now. So, Colin, do you want to grab the, screen share?
Absolutely. Let me, go ahead and do that. And let me know when we have the share going.
I think we just need to maximize your screen.
And then while you're getting set up, let me set the stage. So officer Romberger works as a DFR pilot for the, Skydio Police Department. And, officer Romberger, I would like to let you know that there has been a report of a suspicious vehicle, on Clearview Way in San Mateo, California. The caller reports that, there's a black Audi, and that there's, an individual who seems to be loitering around the area, and he and the caller reports that you may have seen a gun. Are you able to launch a DFR drone, to that location?
Yeah. Absolutely. Ryan, let's go ahead. I... So I do see that suspicious, vehicle call here in my list of incidents in DFR command.
So I can, click into that and, see the details. It looks like that black Audi a three that you mentioned, and, we'll go ahead and get a drone there ASAP. So very easy and fast to do that. I can go ahead and hit respond here. This, next screen will show me the the particular, docks and drones, in the vicinity that I have available ordered by, closest to furthest. I'm gonna go ahead and send, this one, number 22.
So we'll go ahead and click there. And, now the, we're gonna bounce into the cockpit view, and, this will only take a few seconds to get up and running, and then we'll be able to go ahead and dispatch our vehicle right away.
While you're while you're doing that, the thing that I would like to mention as well is that this is a live demo. So I said Skydio Police Department on Clearview Way. This is a live doc. This is done completely live. It is not simulated. It's not virtual. We have a whole bunch of these docs on our rooftop, and Colin is... Where are you where are you living right now, Colin?
I'm actually in Pennsylvania, so this is a true cross country remote demo for me.
So Colin is flying from Pennsylvania, and that's great. Thank you. So what Colin has pulled up is a ReadyLink.
Let's get that ReadyLink up so that, people can see what it would look like from an officer's point of view or a supervisor's point of view. So for the attendees on the call, if you have your cell phone and you scan that QR code, that will, allow you open kind of like a supervisor's view. And you can see exactly from the pilot's point of view what he... What Colin is... What officer officer Romberger is seeing.
And the other great thing about it is that connects directly to the Skydio cloud. So the video quality feed is actually much higher. We actually... When you when you stream the drone footage through, like, Zoom or any of the teleconferencing, teleconferencing, platforms, the signal degrades a little bit. So if you wanna have, the authentic experience, fire up the QR code and look at it on your phone.
Yeah. Turn your phone sideways and maximize, and you'll be able to see just what Colin's seeing. And this is the the experience that police officers have in the field.
Awesome. I'll go ahead and minimize that just that I can regain control with the drone, and we can start looking for that suspicious vehicle.
Looks like we do have a black car. I believe that's our black Audi.
I'm gonna go ahead and lock on to it using our subject tracking capability. And in this case, you know, I'm still manually flying, but what subject tracking will allow me to do is keep the the Audi center focus as I maneuver the drone and just makes the piloting experience very easy. All I'm doing at this point is pressing one button so that we can descend a little bit lower, and it's keeping the the car locked right in the center of the frame for us. So if I zoom in, it does look like there may be something nefarious on our dashboard.
I don't see anyone in the vehicle. Although, again, with, because we are using that subject tracking, I can go ahead and maneuver over to the side, and just drop down a little bit further and see if we can get a slightly better view, in there. So there we go. Let's punch in a little bit closer.
Yeah. It looks like, we are in fact looking at an empty vehicle.
No occupants inside.
And, again, we can get this angle, you know, very low to the ground, because, you know, Skydio's autonomous visual navigation capabilities, you know, it is constantly mapping the world around us using navigation cameras on the drone. So obstacles, trees, telephone lines, things like that, You know, the drone, even though the pilot may not be able to see that based on their view, they can stay focused on what is most important, and the drone will navigate autonomously around any of those hazards.
Alright, officer Rumburger. I'm gonna pass that, information to the responding officers, and they do see your ReadyLink feed. Can you drop a marker there? And I will let them know. I'm getting some updates on, on the call, but officers will respond, and they will secure that vehicle and make sure that firearm is secured for processing.
But, also, Ron Berger, I'm receiving another 911 call.
Apparently, there's been a robbery nearby. It may be connected to our suspicious vehicle.
Someone has just called and reported that a man in a hoodie pointed a gun at him and stole his cell phone, and that man has run into a nearby parking structure. Are you able to see any nearby parking structures?
I am. Looks like we have the large parking structure here at Clearview Way. Let's go over and, take a peek and see what, what we can see.
And, Colin, what's our current altitude right now?
Right now, we are flying at about 75 feet above the ground.
So... Or I'm sorry. About 75 feet above our takeoff location, approximately a 100 feet above the ground. But I'm actually gonna descend much lower now, so that we can start to scan into, the the parking garage and, see if we can see, any suspicious individuals.
Here we are. This is approximately 30 feet off the ground.
It is a little dark in the parking garage. Couple ways we could deal with that. Let's go ahead and take a look down at the next level.
In addition to the visual camera, we also have a thermal sensor on the Skydio X 10, so that might actually give us a better idea. I see a few vehicles that look like they've recently been moved, but nothing...
No people standing out yet. So let's go ahead and check the next level up.
And for attendees who are currently using the ReadyLink on their cell phones, there's a button for you to toggle back and forth in the corner between optical, in other words, the regular visual spectrum camera, the color camera, and thermal. And that is something that you can control independently in your own view. It doesn't interrupt what officer Romberger is seeing.
Yeah. So clearing the 3rd Floor right now. Still no sign of an individual.
Go ahead and check, this next level.
Oh, it looks like we do have, an individual here in this parking garage. They must be bundled up quite a bit. Not seeing a a huge thermal signature off of him, but that definitely looks like a suspicious individual.
Yeah. I've never seen a more suspicious mannequin in my life. I think I think we got our guy. So we'll we'll relay to the officers, and we'll pass them this feed.
It looks like our suspect is just below the top deck. It looks like to be on the 5th Floor on the North Corner. So congratulations, officer Romberger. You can mark this one as a win.
Do you wanna return the drone to the dock, and we can show what the evidence upload process looks like?
Absolutely. So very simple to recall the drone. We've got a button down here at the bottom, return and land in dock. We're gonna go ahead and click that, and the x ten's gonna go ahead and return to, its docking station. You can notice, down in the, bottom left hand corner of the, the pilot live feed view, there is another camera down here. That is actually a camera from the dock, and, this allows us to, be able to see the dock's condition on the deck, as the drone's coming into land, make sure that, you know, nothing blew on top of that surface, you know, while the drone was in flight. If it were... If it was unsafe to land, we do have safe landing zones set up nearby.
In this case, everything is clear, so the drone is going to descend down. We can switch to that view, from the dock, see the touchdown. And, here is our post flight report, that we can go ahead and fill out while the the dock is closing up and putting the drone back into its standby state. So you can notice because we did respond to an incident, that incident for the suspicious vehicle has already been tagged here for us in the report.
That helps. That will link the record for this flight as well as any media that we would have captured to the incident reports when the files are uploaded to evidence.com. We can then also go through and fill out the details about the type of incident. So this was a dispatch for a call for service.
Did the drone get to the scene first? Yes. We did. Did the drone clear the call without patrol patrol resources to, you know, obviously follow-up on that weapon that we saw in the vehicle and also, you know, go question our suspicious individual. So we're gonna say no.
And was...
How was the drone able to assist with the call? You know, we we actually did quite a few things. So we located a person. We located a vehicle.
Located an object. We did not have...
We were not working in conjunction with other officers in the moment, we weren't providing Overwatch. You know, again, we, we can say that if officers did come to make an arrest, that we did assist in that process. And, again, we've got the rest of these, here as well. No other notes.
If there were additional lessons learned or or hazard reports, this entire form is customizable, you know, by our agencies that use this product so they can configure this, you know, however they like. But then I can go ahead and hit submit. And then like I mentioned at this point, that will get tied to the incident record, and, the evidence, any video footage that we captured, is actually being uploaded right now, and will automatically sync to, evidence.com.
Great. Thank you.
Turns out I'm getting another I'm getting another call, officer Romberg. There's an emergency. There's a potential kidnapping human trafficking case that's unfolding right now, and officers have done an emergency ping of the victim's phone. And they're getting a ping to a remote wooded area just south of your launch location.
Can you can you launch to go see if you can locate that cell phone that they're pinging?
I can. In fact, I do see a missing person, call for service, here. Let's go ahead and get another drone over there, on scene. So I'm gonna go ahead. We'll use, 33 this time.
And how many clicks did it take you to launch this drone?
So it is three total clicks. One for the incident, one to say that we will respond, and open up a a flight deck, and then a third to, launch the actual drone itself.
While Colin's flying, one of the things I wanna impress on the attendees and and what makes DFR and drone as first responders so valuable to law enforcement is the ease and speed in which you are able to respond. The autonomy system on the drone allows the drone to take care of its own launch and recovery, essentially.
It also allows an operator to, handle some of the really complex things. I'm gonna fire my own radio for this.
Handle some of the really complex things of figuring out even, like, where to go and, like, how to get there while they're trying to process lot of information that's coming at them. So it's an incredibly, effective system that's been designed.
Excellent. So we've arrived on scene. I did, bring the ReadyLink up again, just so that, everyone that's attending, if you wanna watch it on the ReadyLink, you'll have the best viewing experience, as we explained earlier. I don't see... I do see a clearing, down here, Ryan. I do not see, any signs of, any individuals. I'm gonna switch over to thermal here, quickly and just scan.
Again, no human looking targets, down in this area, but let's go ahead and, drop down a bit, and, we'll we'll take a closer look just, just to be safe. I'm gonna go ahead and maneuver over this, clear area. Again, I don't have to be too precise. You know, as we start dropping down, the drone is going to, you know, recognize the tree canopies like you could see right there, start to make some adjustments to make sure that, we don't have any issues with the obstacles.
And now that we're down below the trees, I'm gonna continue to do another sweep, see if we can see any evidence of individuals down here. Not sure what that is. Nope. Nope.
That looks like a pole or a pipe that may have come down across the creek there.
Officer Romberger, we'll we'll report back to the officers that, the the victim does not appear to be at the site of the phone ping. It's possible the suspect may have thrown the phone down the hill. We'll have the officers focus their search in other locations and follow other leads to see if they can prioritize that.
Copy that.
In fact, I'm getting a report now that we have a possible suspect, and officers are in pursuit.
See. Do we do we see our suspect on foot?
I see a individual on foot. I don't see any pursuing officers, but, we can certainly track on to that subject and take a closer look. Looks like he's standing by a table and maybe doing something suspicious. Hard to tell.
And what... And can you tell us what subject track is?
Absolutely. Yeah. So subject track is an autonomous method of being able to track human subjects or vehicles.
Basically, what we can do is identify the distinguishing characteristics, you know, of that object, you know, color, shape, etcetera in the frame, and then use that information so that as they start to move around, the camera, either the camera will stay automatically focused, and the drone will stay in place and basically rotate, to keep, the the target, in in lock. Or if we wanna do, follow, we can, go ahead and, allow the drone to actually keep up. So if it was a vehicle, you know, traveling down the road, the drone would actually travel with the vehicle and and be able to maintain that visual contact.
Yeah. Officer Romberger, officers are starting a pursuit of of the suspect in a vehicle. Can you lock on to the to the vehicle and provide overwatch during the pursuit?
Yes. In fact, I see a vehicle, leaving right now. Let's go ahead, and, we'll go ahead and follow, this individual.
Oh, it looks like they're going right back into their spot. So, apparently, I got the wrong one. Let's go ahead and, find another, vehicle that we can track.
I imagine that, this individual is probably heading to one of the busier travel streets.
So let's go ahead and, take a look down here. Oh, I see a number of vehicles coming.
Here's one. Go ahead and lock on.
And you can see even, going through a few disruptions, with the trees, We're able to predict, you know, where we can expect that vehicle to appear and continue that lock.
Awesome. Well, officers will continue pursuing that vehicle, and we will get ahead of them, and we will stop that vehicle.
Excellent.
Congratulations. Great job assisting that human trafficking case.
Glad we could help. We'll go ahead and send, the drone back to, its docking station, and we'll get the second report filled out.
Cool.
Alright. I think we're still on track for time. I'm gonna grab screen sharing back from you if that's okay.
Sure.
Screen.
K. Let's talk about...
Am I back up? Looks like I'm back up. Let's talk about some of the Fourth Amendment implications, and we can use some of those scenarios as kind of like a discussion for or as a discussion point for for the next framing of how I think we can approach this. So I'll start with kind of a three part test that I'd like to suggest as to how we kind of analyze the admissibility of drone footage, and it and it has three parts.
One is essentially where the drone flies. This will be, like, aerial trespass on public or private property. A lot of people, when they start thinking about drones, and this is how I started thinking about it, was you're thinking about helicopters, and you're thinking about, like, where you're actually positioning the vehicle. And by vehicle, mean airframe.
Like, the...
Like, where the where the drone is in the sky.
There is some analysis that we can do there. Then the next thing that we need to think about is what the drone sees. Essentially, this is, like, where the drone is looking at places that could have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and this can include sense enhancement. And then the big one right now, which is, confronting mostly ALPR, is how you database the data. And are you capturing the whole of a person's movements in public? And between those three, that's kind of a three part, analysis that we would do for drones. So let's start with, like, where the drone flies.
So when we start with the initial, thought process regarding helicopters and aircraft, you know, we reach for the original, aerial observation cases, Open Fields doctrine, observation of by aircraft. These are all, like, the marijuana cases from the eighties and nineties. The big ones are California v Seralo in 1986 that was using a fixed wing at a thousand feet and making a naked eye observation.
Then Florida v Riley was a helicopter around 400 feet in 1989. Both of these were marijuana cases.
And there are a couple others like Dow Chemical, and and I think there's one other. But those are... Cearallo and and Riley are probably the two most heavily cited ones.
And the commonality for those was, well, there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in what can be observed in your curtilage, absent, you know, greater efforts to, conceal your curtilage. The commonality for that was the police were flying aircraft in a publicly navigable airspace. They're doing it in a physically nonintrusive manner, and officers were essentially no different than the public. And so some people are like, great.
Then drones are aircraft, so I should be good. Right? Because, especially when you think about, like, hobbyist aircraft, like, if you're just going down to Best Buy and buy a drone, unless you're flying into restricted airspace, you can...
And you're flying outside 400 feet. If you're just kind of zipping around around the building, generally speaking, the public can do that.
And so if that's the case, then officers should be able to do that too.
I don't think it's that simple. I don't think it's that reductive. And I'm not sure that drones are gonna be kind of, like, the touchstone for... Excuse me. The marijuana cases are gonna be the touchstone for, like, how DFR gets decided.
Drones fly far lower than aircraft and are able to... And just see different things as as, Colin was demonstrating from being able to kind of, like, scan the side of the parking garage searching for our suspect. A helicopter would not be able to do that.
And so if that... Like, if that's not gonna be how it's decided... Now to the extent, like, you are flying very high and you're kind of, like, simulating a helicopter, I think that probably is gonna be the... Largely the end of the analysis unless you have a state law that's a little bit different, Florida being one of them.
But there's also another factor for it too, which is, you know, intrusion and aerial trespass. I mean, a lot of you are, I'm sure, familiar with the United States v Jones, which was our GPS tracker case. That was not decided on so called mosaic theory or carpenter type whole of person's movements. That was decided based on trespass theory. There's another great case, matter of United States. That was an all writs application, using a drone to search a yard and house, I believe. And there's a very interesting discussion in that case where the district court was discussing...
And I I I don't think we have time to kind of really rule proof it by discussing that, you know, there's gotta be at some point where, you know, you're flying low enough that you're interfering with people's personal or property rights, and Floridi v Riali's dicta kind of, like, alludes to that. Right? When they when they talk about how there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in your curtilage to passing aircraft.
They also mentioned that the police use of the helicopter didn't create undue risk of noise, dust, or risk of injury.
It was not interfere...
It was in the National Aerospace, and it was not interfering with, the individual's property rights. And that and that was a factor in it, I would think, although, arguably, it was dictum. So I think that's still relevant, for the analysis, and that's kind of, like, the first prong, at least, like, how, I think we should start thinking about how we square the, aircraft cases, for observation marijuana with the new industry of drones, which doesn't have a lot of case law on it. That's one angle.
Second angle is, well, speaking of angles, is the shallower angle that you can get at lower altitudes. So especially in urban environments, you're seeing drones fly usually below 400 feet, sometimes below 200 feet. You're also seeing buildings which are much higher than that. Right?
Remember, 10 feet is, like, roughly the story of a building generally. So, like, a four, like, 400 square...
400 feet would be, like...
Let's let's just round down, say, like, 30 stories. For a lot of downtown environments, you're flying drones alongside buildings.
And this is a place where helicopters and manned aviation don't fly, so it's unlocking potentially a new capability for police. And, like, I have this blue arrow on the right side for, like, a lower structure next to some trees. If you're flying at 200 feet, you're gonna you're gonna be able to look into a window that a helicopter would not be able to look into before. And so this is kind of where you start...
I I...
You start realizing that it's not so much about the mechanism that you're making the observation by. It's actually more about what you're actually observing. So I think when when we talk about drones and the new technology, I was falling into this trap. I'm just like, well, you know, the drone is special.
I work for a drone company. Obviously, the drone is special. It...
I I need to be analyzing this about, like, how we're using the, like, how we're using the drone to make the observation. And then I realized as I was thinking about it a little bit more, I'm like, wait. That may not be the right way to think about it because, you know, police have been using sense enhancing technology to make observations for a very long time. I mean, just think about, like, basic narcotic spotting cases where you're, like, posted up on a rooftop with some binoculars.
And think about, like, pole cam cases and helicopter cases. And, again, like, yes, the way you make... The way you... In which you make the observation matters, but more than anything else, it's almost from the perspective of what's what's being observed. Right? And, ultimately, like, where a person has exposed his conduct or property to public view by the naked eye, sensing devices can be used to observe from a more clandestine vantage point without constituting a search.
Right? So... And they're spawning in binocular cases galore. And the real test that I've been talking about with a lot of officers is, like, could a person in public have seen it with the naked eye?
If that's the case, then you should be able to use a drone to make that same observation. Because if a person in public could have seen it with their naked eye, well, whether or not they've manifested a subjective re... Expectation of privacy, If it's in public, most people would say there's no reasonable expectation of privacy. That's, the case I have there is a California case, which is kind of, like, one of the most heavily cited cases, for spotting. But, the analysis in that that case was, I think, very helpful and instructive, and I would bet you that there are a lot of, analogs in the other states as well to that case.
And this is kind of like an illustration of, like, what I mean by the shallow angle or a voyeuristic angle depending how you wanna how you wanna describe it. This is a photo from, my daughter's, bedroom, which is facing a side yard with my neighbor. Yes. I can kinda see my neighbor's window.
He can kinda see mine. I have a side fence. But, realistically, the only way you can, like, get a good view into her bedroom is if you are on...
If you've climbed onto my neighbor's roof, which I don't expect. You have broken into my side yard, which is secured by a gate, which I would be very unhappy with you, or you slide a drone into that kinda narrow slice of sky and you peek in there.
So, yes, I can see the sky, but, arguably, I think a lot of people would, back me up that I have a reasonable expectation that no one is gonna be peeking into their bedroom.
Compare and contrast that with this fine individual who is in a high rise with all the lights on at night, and he's breaking out the windows. I used to live in San Francisco, and I I would joke that well, I I...
It was a tiny box, a little one bedroom in in San Francisco in in a in a high rise. And, you know, I would I would joke, and I would explain that, like, if you if you have your lights on at night, you...
Your neighbors are seeing everything whether they want to or not. And so, arguably, there's no reasonable expectation of privacy there either. So, that would kind of be the overall, perspective that I would suggest. I'm very interested in the the discussion, we can have, on that point.
Regarding night vision, on some of the sense enhancement technology, California, generally, doesn't really focus on night vision at all. It's commonly available technology, and it's not X-ray vision. It's just assisting seeing at night. And, again, it's not so much the the means of which you observe.
It's what you're observing.
Exceptions to that, of course, is thermal.
We would probably... Most of us have probably read Kylo of The United States, again, a marijuana case where they were using thermal to, look for hot spots and identify, potential grill lamps. And that's different because you are using thermal to ascertain intimate details of the interior of a house, which should not be otherwise observable. Now one of the things to call out is that today's thermal technology is very different. It's much higher resolution, and it's not... You can... Yes. You can see things that are that are warm, but it's primarily being used as a night vision aid.
Colin was able to use it to essentially see in the dark, and that area would have been open to public view anyway. So we do see thermal being very, very common and popular with law enforcement agencies, and it is different than the than the way the thermal is being used and employed, and the technology has changed significantly from there as well. But, again, as long as you aren't, ascertaining the intimate details of a of a home, without a warrant, then we should be pretty good.
I'm gonna try to pick up the pace a little bit, and we may cut a little bit of content to make sure that we have enough time for questions. But the third component. Right? So first, we talked about where the drone flies, what you've done with the drone itself.
Then two, we talked about, like, what the drone sees, and that could be analyzed from the perspective of what is being observed. And then three is what I call the dreaded database. And we we have Carpenter, which was the case that really kind of changed a lot of things for call detail record and and tower dumping. We also recently just had Chachry come out expanding that for Google location history.
And then, another well cited case is leaders of a beautiful struggle v Baltimore Police Department. That was an aerial observation case where, Baltimore PD was flying a plane over all of Baltimore and and photographing everything to try and be able to identify drive by shootings and and go back and try to identify the vehicles that have been involved with it.
And the the the base of it is is that when you are able to ascertain the whole of a person's movements in public without a warrant, you're gonna have a problem because the Supreme Court has recognized in Carpenter. They've reiterated that in Chattery, that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of your movements.
I see a chat come in.
Rosie has a question potentially, but I will keep going and see if Rosie is able to ask that.
And this is a video from San Francisco, and it related to an ALPR hit for a stolen vehicle, and officers were able to respond to it. I don't know how many of you have seen a vehicle get cold plated in real time before. I had never seen that. But they actually were able to, since they were following the, suspect vehicle, they were actually able to watch him, switch license plates. I've seen lots of cars with switch license plates, but I've never seen anyone actually do it.
And they were able to spike the vehicle and take them into custody without any use of force.
And what's really interesting that... About that for for prosecutors is there's kind of a shift toward real time policing instead of...
Like, when you when you go to n d... I was at NDAA in Boston, and I I got to talk with a lot of people who had other different technology solutions.
And those are all great. I... Like, I've I've used Celebrite and all the others, mag... A lot of the magnet technologies when I was doing a lot of organized crime stuff. But now you see, like, this kind of real trend toward real time policing, and people are getting caught red handed.
You're no longer just building cases and going back in time. You're actually catching people in the act. And I don't know what the breakdown in my in my career was like, but I I remember only a fraction of people are getting caught in the commission of the actor immediate... Immediately after. When you get them, like, with the gun and you get them with the the cell phone and you get them with the stolen property, it's incredibly powerful.
So breezing through a little bit to make sure we have time for questions. A little bit on trial strategy and authentication. So evidence management. We'll talk about that. A little bit of authentication and exhibits.
So, Colin mentioned that, one of our default integrations and one of the most important ones is with axon'sevidence.com. A lot of you are familiar, of course, with their BWC. I've used a lot of that, over the years, and that's how we receive a lot of evidence from our police departments.
So what we've done is we've built a first party integration with evidence.com so that when the drone lands, it automatically pulls the footage off the drone, tags it, and uploads it to evidence.com. This means that it's gonna be, seamless in receiving your evidence and your case files in the same way that you receive BWC. And it's really kind of, like... Think about it like a virtual officer living in the drone is responding to calls. So that should be, the overall experience. Not everyone does it that way, but many agencies do.
So, authentication. For authentication, I would say there are a couple of things to think about. I've been kind of suggesting, kind of like a four tier approach. Baseline is, treated just like it's BWC. You're gonna you're you're gonna authenticate it like it's a recipient witness in the video.
If the drone is responding and an officer is able to, it shows up on scene and the drone is essentially filming the officer, the officer who is present there should be able to authenticate the video and say, yes. That clearly and accurately depicts, what happened on the day and time, and that's me in the video.
So that's kind of the easiest. For me, I come from a preliminary hearing state. I'm always looking at, when I'm getting through preliminary hearing, limiting the number of officers that I have to call and witnesses that I have to call. And then that also leads into one of the other things that I'm very interested in developing with prosecutors' offices as well as police departments.
Those are the California evidence code sections, for, public records and, business records. And I think what a lot of police agencies have expressed some interest in in, but interest in, but we should, talk about that as a way to collaborate with prosecutors' offices and police departments is a custodian records or subpoena juices system where, the prosecutor's office, is able to issue an SDT to the drone program manager who's responsible for ensuring that the video is, that the system is properly functioning, that the, that everything is working, as designed, and that it's being uploaded and tagged appropriately, and that the records are being reproduced in the normal course of the operation of the system.
We've done...
I've done this for other types of police systems before. In California, you just can't do that with incident reports. They're testimonial. But for nontestimonial things, that has definitely been something we've been able to do, and it's it's very convenient because you issue your subpoena.
And then, the video comes back to court, and you've got your custodian declaration, and you can put it in without a live witness. Very convenient. Prop one fifteen allows us in California to bypass one level of hearsay at preliminary hearings. If you have something similar, that could be another way to do it.
The analogy is, like, let's say you're calling a criminalist, and you are at at a preliminary hearing or a grand jury.
Well, grand jury, you can't use so much hearsay. But, let's say, you have a mechanism by which you can introduce criminalist technology... Criminalist testimony.
That could be another analogy to use for pilots. And of course, don't be afraid to call your drone pilot live, especially for serious cases or, you know, if the drone pilot, saw or directed police action, you may just wanna call your drone pilot. The only reason why I bring this up is because, if your default reaction is to always call your drone pilot, if your drone pilot is flying a bunch of missions a day, and you pull them into court, that means that they're not working other cases, and they could be, taken offline for significant amount of time, which is, inconvenient for the police agency, and that means that you don't have as much pilot access for your cases, because DFR technology is very strong for, making these cases.
Calling your drone pilot. So some of the other considerations, do you know who your pilot is? Some places, it's a little bit hard to tell because they may use call signs, so just make sure that you are, very clear as to which pilot is which. Sometimes there are multiple pilots, especially now that we are pioneering multidrone operations.
You may have one pilot controlling multiple drones simultaneously. You may have multiple pilots jumping in and out of a call. We've built a new operation system where multiple pilots and ground assets can all respond kind of together. The pilots behind the terminal, they're not at the scene, so they are not a precipitant witness.
Did the pilot see something that others didn't? Sometimes the pilot is is seeing something where, you know, despite, you know, the best evidence rule, they... The person has thrown something and the officer says, like, hey. Like, I observed this, and this is what it meant to me, and this is why it's important for the case. Or did the pilot direct police action?
The one thing underlying all of this, and I've been kind of mentioning about the autonomy and how easy it is, is that establishing specialized skill or training should not be necessary. You should not need to qualify your drone pilots as expert witnesses.
As a quick aside, I flew a drone for the first time, any drone for the first time in my job interview at Skydio. I didn't have any prior training. They threw me on the drone, they said try to crash it.
I was not able to crash it. And so that was that was a pretty eye opening experience for me that literally no specialized skill training or experience is necessary for that.
Last couple things.
We are also seeing a lot more people using drones for a crime scene reconstruction and, three d modeling.
And this is an exhibit I produced for a DA's office on a on a felony murder case, also a Watson murder for, driving under the influence, causing death. And, we we produced this as a demonstrative for for the DA's office, basically, because the guy took off on the cops. They lit him up. He was high in meth. He had warrants, and so he ran off. They terminated the pursuit, but he was doing 90 miles an hour through the street before he went through the intersection and t boned the minivan with a family inside, killing two young kids and critically injuring the mother and and one other child.
And they had to stitch together his route through snippets of... Like, through, you know, wreckage along the way as as well as, like, surveillance cameras that capture him blowing past the camera. And so they they rolled a bread crumb his route, and they kind of knew where he went. So what we did is we went and flew over this route that the DA's office would lay foundation for, and this is essentially the route that the guy took.
And it culminates in us circling the crash scene. And this is a very powerful demonstrative.
Even though it... You know, it's not a reconstruction that happened on the night of, it really kinda gives you a perspective on what went into, this guy's driving and, what he did, because it's very very effective for proving state of mind, for this type of case.
So we still have a couple minutes left. I'll throw this up. This is my contact information, and I'd love to hear from you. I also have a broader CLE that I teach. I've I've taught it to a number of DA's offices. I think there's a great opportunity for police and prosecutors to work together on this very important technology.
But, yeah, feel free to reach out. I'm very interested in in learning more on your perspectives in in in your states and the way that you guys operate. And this is a developing area of the law. It's a developing area of policing.
And I think the more we talk about it, from a prosecutor's perspective, the better it's gonna be for all of us. So, that concludes the presentation. Let me see if there are any questions.
Let's see.
If you have any questions, please throw it in the chat or send me a message.
I don't see anything in the chat. Rosie, we saw that you'd raised a hand. If you're still on, if you have a question, feel free to put that in the chat, and we'd be happy to get that answered for you.
Nothing there.
No?
Alright.
Oh oh, that's okay, Rosie. It was an accident.
Alright. Well, thanks again, Ryan, Colin. We really appreciate you guys being with us today.
Again, if anybody has questions or needs to get in touch and didn't get Ryan's or Colin's email address down, you can always reach out to us at [email protected] .
Great. Anything else, Ryan?
Yep. Thank you very much to the NDAA for hosting us.
I really enjoyed the experience, and I I look forward to working with NDAA and more prosecutors around The US.
And thanks very much, officer Romberger, for the for the very effective demonstration.
Anytime. My pleasure. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate it.
Thank you. You too. Bye bye.
+ Read More
Watch More
Summiting Mount Regulation for Drone as First Responder (DFR) Programs
Posted Jun 13, 2024 | Views 2.2K
# Public Safety
# Regulatory
# Remote Operations
# Skydio Dock
# First Responders
# DFR
Live Remote 5G DFR Demonstration - Patrol-Led Drone as First Responder (DFR)
Posted Mar 23, 2024 | Views 1.5K
# Patrol-Led DFR
# First Responders
# Remote Operations
How OKCPD Paved The Path to Drone as First Responder
Posted Sep 25, 2024 | Views 897
# Community Engagement
# DFR
# First Responders
# Patrol-Led DFR
# Public Safety