High stakes crisis How drones helped the Orange County Sheriff’s Office OCSO save the day

Learn how the Orange County Sheriff's Office in Florida is leveraging Skydio's autonomous drones to enhance officer safety, improve situational awareness, and respond to critical incidents faster. With real-world examples and an exciting video demo, discover how drones play a pivotal role in law enforcement today.

💡 Key Takeaways:

How drones assist in high-stakes crisis management. Real-time tactical insights from drone operations. The benefits of Skydio's autonomous technology for public safety.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Lex Poll webinar. High stakes crisis, how drones help the Orange County Sheriff's Office save day. We're gonna be getting started in just a minute or so here. Just quick clarification that folks, today we're gonna be talking about Orange County, Florida.

So over on the, East Coast, Florida and not the Orange County of the West Coast. We wanna thank our sponsors for today's webinar, Skydio. Been working with them on a couple different events this year, and they've been great to partner with. So we definitely wanna extend our appreciation to Skydio for being our sponsor for today's webinar.

Alright. We've got a great panel joining us here today. Let me introduce them at this point. Deputy Michael Kleinfeld has twenty two years of experience in law enforcement, starting his career with Lake County Sheriff's Office and then joining Orange County Sheriff's Office in two thousand five. He has experience in a variety of specialties within law enforcement from mountain patrol SWAT, youth services as an SRO in high school, sex crimes, FDLE task force, and now serves as the agency's drone coordinator and trainer.

In twenty ten, deputy Kleinfeldt was Florida sheriff's association deputy sheriff of the year for the state of Florida. Mike is an avid drone pilot with over ten years of experience in drone photography and operates Windmere photography outside of his role with OCSO.

Also joining us is Lieutenant Rob Branch, and Rob is a twenty two year veteran of the Orange County Sheriff's Office and currently assigned at the aviation as the aviation unit lieutenant. He helps oversee the manned and unmanned flight operations throughout the large nine hundred plus square miles of a tourist oriented county. Here in the master's degree in business management from the University of Florida and is a graduate of the sixty sixth command officers development course, Lieutenant Branch worked as a tactical flight officer in the aviation unit for five and a half years before being assigned full time as one of the unit managers.

Also with us today is Noreen Charlton, and Noreen has a bachelor of science in biology from John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. For more than decades, she worked in the crime scene investigation section of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in Las Vegas, Nevada. Throughout her time in the field, she responded to nearly four thousand scenes, including a Route ninety one Harvest Festival mass casualty shooting. Building on her experience, Noreen has shifted her focus in recent years to the instruction and implementation of three d technologies for public safety applications.

She's also played a crucial role in the documentation and forensic analysis of numerous high profile cases. And at this point, I'm gonna turn the floor over to Rob, Mike, and Nori. Welcome.

Thanks, Steve. Appreciate it. And thank you to everyone for joining us with an exciting chat, with members of the Orange County Sheriff's Office. Over the next forty five minutes or so, they will share insights into their drone program and real world experiences using drones in various operations.

And then before we wrap up, they will highlight an incident, and we have a video from a high rise hotel where drones were pivotal in providing additional information and developing the right tactical response.

Whether you are currently exploring the idea of starting a drone program or just looking to scale your current program, this discussion will definitely provide you with valuable insights and tips from Orange County. And so, again, thanks for hanging out with us, and we will start with an overview of the Orange County Sheriff's Office. Guys, I'll hand it off to you.

Hi. Thank you, Noreen. The Orange County Sheriff's Office is a a large county sheriff's office in Central Florida.

And we have we're budgeted for about nineteen hundred sworn members, But through staffing shortages like everybody's going through, we, we have about seventeen hundred sworn, and eight hundred civilian, members in our agency.

We're a little over a thousand square miles in the entire county with nine, cities that have their own police departments.

But we are by far the largest law enforcement, agency in Central Florida. We have about a one point five million residents, and we receive about one point four million calls for service a year.

And we currently operate a fleet of twenty eight drones, mostly in uniform patrol.

The twenty five in uniform patrol with, two permanently assigned to forensics, and one is obviously with our our drone coordinator, Mike, who's on the call with us.

Thanks. And is there anything that you can tell everyone who's joining us today about the airspace in Orange County Sheriff's Office?

Well, we do have, the international airspace with the airport, and we have an executive airport that we operate out of. So, generally, all the airspace that we fly in is a controlled airspace. Yes.

Alright. Perfect. So now we'll jump into the history of your drone program.

I know that you kind of started quite a few years ago, and you've ramped up as of late. So can we talk about where this started and where we are today?

Well, there's kind of a two phase part to our our drone program. We started back in two thousand, or I'm sorry. Two twenty eighteen, purchasing drones.

But because of COVID and some, some some concerns from some, concerns from residents, and some outcry, there was a there was some complications, and that never really got launched. And then, beginning, in twenty twenty two, there were some talks that there was gonna be some changes under Florida law with, drones that were purchased or used out of a foreign a country of foreign concern.

So those drones inevitably, were traded in through the state, and there was a reimbursement program. And then so, essentially, in twenty twenty three, was when we really started to ramp up our drone program.

We purchased several Skydio drones.

We saw good success with them, and we developed a drone coordinate position, and that's where where Mike comes in. He's now our full time drone coordinator, and we work hand in hand with our manned and unmanned aviation, here out of our flight operation.

Excellent. And, actually, Mike, if you don't mind, I would love to talk to you specifically about being a full time coordinator. I think you guys have done an excellent job of kind of designating the ownership of the program to one program to one person, and that definitely contributes to your success. So can you speak specifically to that role? Yes.

Thank you, everybody.

Yes. It is a, somewhat of a challenge at first. We had, the program starting, and then we had the law change, on the heels.

Governor Ron DeSantis, signed into law, you know, preventing certain types of drones that we can or listing with the types of drones we can and can't use. So that was obviously a challenge, but, I think we've overcome that. And our, program just continues to to grow with sport of good leadership with sheriff Mina, really embracing that technology and then the technology that just continues to to to improve.

I mean, anybody in the drone industry right now knows that, what's on the market today is on the shelf tomorrow, on clearance because there's there's just something new out there. So, it's it's been a great, great experience, though, for sure.

Excellent. And then there was a mention of air support. So you're unique in the fact that you have that. Right? Most agencies don't have access to helicopters.

But when we have spoken to agencies who are using both helicopters and drones, we find out that they actually complement each other pretty well. Can you talk about working in conjunction with that team?

Yes. I mean, it's it has been a great opportunity to work with Amanda Aviation, only because, we stay on the same page. If I have a specific mission going on, I'm telling these guys, hey. Listen. I'm out. I'm doing DFR research.

I'll be in this location.

I'll be a radius of of this distance. So that way that manned aviation, our our helicopter guys know that, we're out there doing that operation. Moreover, learning as a TFO, to be able to coordinate drones from a helicopter.

So not only do I do the coordinator, role, but I also, become part of the TFO team. So it has been a challenge. It's it's somewhat interesting drone hovering with a helicopter orbiting and trying to guide a a drone in. So learning that perspective, I think it makes us stronger, and it helps with training and teaching these guys how to direct a drone towards an individual as well, which I didn't realize was was an issue, until we actually got up in the helicopter to experience it.

And and, Noreen, if I may, one thing that we benefited from was we, we're we're passionate about including the manned pilots. A lot of our, instructors actually, all of our instructors come from the aviation unit, and they may be, full time pilots with us or they may be full time flight officers. But either way, they're involved in the aviation unit somehow, and they've they've dedicated years of their their career to the man side of the aviation.

And I think it helped minimize the the negativity or the stigma with the unmanned side when you're, you're one of the trained instructors and you're one of the agency instructors for all the uniform patrol pilots. It it really helped build some collaboration.

Excellent. Yeah. I think, with the agencies that do have manned aviation, we're finding that they are, you know, having a lot of buy in from that group. I think originally, there was this assumption that maybe drones were trying to replace that, and they certainly aren't.

Right? There's a lot of things that you're gonna do with the helicopter that you just can't do with the drone. But I do think there is a massive benefit to having lots of drones in the field that can go places that, you know, your helicopters can't. They can be up in different airspace at different times or different weather conditions.

So there's definitely a lot of benefit to having both, and it looks like that you have, figured out how to work with both of those very well.

Yeah. No.

I mean Can we speak to the oh, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Yeah. I I will say that they really embraced the, drones once they realized that we were gonna be taking it over, airspace or anything like that. They really started to embrace it. And, actually, some of the the pilots and TFOs are are instructors.

They they help instruct new pilots. So it's great to have that, that, cooperation.

Excellent.

And you have a pretty robust program. So can we talk about kind of how many drones you have and how we got to where you are today? And then a little bit about, getting the buy in and how many pilots and instructors you have as well.

Yes. We we have twenty eight drones. Majority of those are in uniform patrol.

And we, through collaboration, we have multiple divisions here at the agency, probably like a lot of larger agencies.

An aviation unit controls and trains, all of the, manned and unmanned pilots, but we don't pick them. We certainly can't know all eighteen hundred of our personnel.

There's probably eight or nine hundred in uniform patrol alone.

So we ask the sector captains. We have, six sector captains to submit names of, personnel that they think would be go getters, and good level headed individuals that would be good pilots for us.

And then we require everyone to obviously go out and get a, commercial one zero seven, which the agency will pay for the training and the and the testing. But you have to pass the one zero seven before we will even consider you for placement into, our school. And then we spend a considerable amount of time, developing a a curriculum and a lesson plan for the training.

Where all all the agency instructors are trained the trainer, trained from the manufacturer.

And then we developed a lesson plan from that, submitted it through, our training chain of command. And it's it's been a a a very daunting process, but we think it's it's, something you can you can really rely on. And it's a forty hour school. It's, an intensive, two to three days of classroom and then literally two days of flying.

And we incorporate a lot of flying in there. So by the time that you're out of the of the forty hour week, you are a very good basic pilot. And then, obviously, we encourage, extra training, outside of the forty hour school.

Excellent. And did you find it difficult to get buy in from anyone, or did you feel like a lot of people were kind of raising their hand and and volunteering to be pilots?

Well, we we had a it's interesting you asked. We've had a great rush at the beginning.

It didn't take a whole lot to convince people to come onboard.

Now I think what we're seeing is we're trying to maintain the motivation, and that's probably one of our biggest challenges right now.

Instead of let's just call it the familiarization flights or the I wanna show my zone partner flights. We've had a couple couple schools now, and we'll see a very high, tick up in the flights and the flight hours, in and around the school time, but we're and then we'll dip back down after the class, and we we really wanna try to promote, the the apprehension flights or the successful mission flights as opposed to just the familiarization type flight. So, we're working with any kind of benefits that we can add. You know, money is always a hot button issue and and with pay, but if we can add some side benefits or some enhancements to the uniform patrol people I mean, mean, there's people that obviously just wanna go out and fly the drone, and and there there are are great go getters.

But as we keep expanding and we talk about expanding more, there there will be a challenge where we're finding aggressive individuals to be able to deploy the drone and then communicating with their chain of command, on what they can and can't fly with, how can we motivate the chain of commands to allow this individual to go fly on as many calls for service as they can.

So, yes, there's there's some challenges, in in that realm.

Anything specifically that you are doing to generate awareness, for the agency as a a whole as to what you are doing and the success stories that you're having with the drum program so that they want them around more and they're requesting them more often?

Well, we we send Mike out quite a bit, and Mike's a great field personnel, to go out and try to drum up the the knowledge. Mike's an incredibly skilled pilot, and he's he's readily available. Part of the the downside, so to speak, of the uniform patrol approach is that they have all the calls for service to answer. They're not a dedicated drone pilot. So they have ninety nine percent of their responsibility has nothing to do with the drone. So we we're trying to encourage what calls are good to fly on, encourage the supervisors to allow them to go fly on that call, and then, obviously, congratulating them and and boosting the, the notoriety when they get great catches.

But Mike has been a tremendous resource to go out and, basically catch those calls, come up on the radio, be vocal about it, and everybody starts getting the mindset, oh, that that is a good drone call. Because we have to keep in mind this the drone part, the unmanned side of our aviation is is incredibly new to this agency.

So people don't always associate, hey. Can you send me a drone? That's that's a new concept in our in our agency. So we have to kinda get rid of that mindset of, well, we gotta wait ten to fifteen minutes for Chase to arrive, if we wanna call for Chase. That's our that's our helicopter name. So, that's not necessarily true. You might have a drone pilot on your squad, and just by the mere fact of you asking, it it dawns on everybody's memory.

Okay. We that that's some that's an option, and they're very quick to respond.

And you bring up a great point. I think, you know, I'm just coming off the heels of being at the IACP conference, over this weekend, and I'm having a lot of conversations with agencies who are primarily using drones and crime and crash scene documentation or for search and rescue efforts. But they're really starting now to look more into getting them into patrol operations and into daily calls for service, but you highlight this barrier of this isn't the way that policing has been done. And so there's this not even a hesitation, but there's just a lack of awareness on how many times you could actually be using a drone and how easy it is to get it up in the air and provide you that additional information.

So, I think, you know, we all need to do a little bit better of a job now that drones are becoming more prevalent in law enforcement at educating everyone on the different types of scenes that they can be used for. And I think the case study that we have at the end of this session really highlights that.

You mentioned that you have a forty hour training session that you put, your pilots through. But do you have any additional requirements that they do on a quarterly or yearly basis, just to maintain their proficiency?

That's one of our goals. We wanna establish a better quarterly training.

We have had all our pilots will come back for the schools to help, as adjunct instructors, so to speak, assist with the teach ins.

They will assist with the NITS course that we've incorporated into the forty hour course. So we will do some scenario based training during that time, but that's one of our longer term goals is to incorporate some, more advanced, suspect searching or some more grid searching. We're we're trying to develop some some lesson plans for that type of material.

Excellent.

So now we're gonna touch on, kind of the way that Scottie O looks at the path to drone as first responder, and the different phases along the way. And so I kind of just touched on this briefly already, but we're seeing that drones are mostly being used in these specialized units. We're calling this kind of drone on a shelf. So you've got your drone, lives on a shelf somewhere, whether it's one of your substations or, you know, a specific lab or a specific area where you keep it.

These units are requested out to do a specific task. Maybe that's search and rescue. Maybe that's a crash scene documentation.

Usually, it takes them quite a while to get to the scene because then again, we have smaller units where they might be at home. They've gotta come in. They've gotta get the drone, and they've gotta get out to the scene.

And so a lot of agencies now are moving away from that and into patrol led deployments. This is moving those drones from the shelf into the trunk of patrol vehicles so they are more readily available on these, you know, everyday calls for service so we can get them out there and up in the air faster.

And what people are now moving into even more is what we're calling patrol led drone as first responder. So, with drones, like Scadio x ten that has five g capabilities. It enables an officer to get a drone on the scene from the trunk of their vehicle, but to give up the piloting aspect of it to someone in a remote location. So that could be a dispatch center or real time crime center. It doesn't matter where the pilot's located.

And the five g capability gives them, the chance to remotely pilot that so that the officer on the ground can get back to work doing what they were doing in the first place. Right? So they don't have to worry about being a pilot. They don't have to worry about controlling the drone.

And when we're talking about shorting, short staffing in law enforcement, this isn't again taking another person out of the field who's now stuck with the controller. They really just have to get the drone on the ground and someone else can manage it.

And now there's even more of a shift towards, dock based drone as first responders. So this is taking docking stations in preposition locations throughout a jurisdiction, so that they can respond to calls for service in your highest crime areas, you know, within seconds, within under two minutes. Right? And so the idea is to get that drone overhead as quickly as possible so we can start feeding that information to all the units in the field, to all the command staff, to whomever needs to see it for that particular call.

And there's kind of two different versions of this. There's piloted where, again, you have someone in a remote location, a dispatch center or RTCC, who is piloting the drone from that dock to calls for service based on, you know, an a nine one one call coming in or a shot spotter ping.

But where we're moving toward very quickly is autonomous flight where the systems that are gathering that GPS location. So let's say automated license plate reader hit, we now have that GPS location.

That's popping up in the software, and with the click of a button that says fly here now or yes, you wanna fly here, the drone will autonomously fly to that location. So no pilot input at all. Of course, you can take over if you need to or want to, but it's just going directly to that location, taking the best and easiest path, to get overseen, overhead as quickly as possible. So this is the kind of the path to drone as first responder as we have defined it. With all of that in mind, can you guys just talk about where you started, where you currently are today in your operations, and where you see the future of drones for the Orange County Sheriff's Office?

Mike, would you like to start?

Sure.

Thanks, Maureen. So, the slide that's up right now, you see specialized units in patrol deployment. We're presently at the patrol led deployment, which means our deputies, like we previously said, have all been trained.

They have a drone that's assigned to them, and then they utilize that drone when the calls arise. So the patrol led has been very, very good for us. No joke. Before we started this webinar, we had a deputy out with a drone streaming. I was sitting in my office helping him. We were chasing a guy in the woods. So, it was quite an experience.

And I was like, I'm gonna jump on this call, and we're gonna find him, then I have to go. So but, we were working together. He was watching, the visible, camera, And I was watching the thermal camera from my office here, and we picked the guy up, but we lost him. But, nonetheless, it worked out great.

I was able to communicate with him. He's out flying, and I'm in a remote location, helping him catch somebody. So, what a testament to to what that experience has been like. So the Petrola, drone as a first responder, that is something that we are, we're exploring.

We're doing the research in advance.

I'm working on a white paper to see if or to compare, our spear or if the drone I guess it'll show if if we're getting there on our scenes fast enough. I have had a few calls, where I'm sitting on the top of the roof with the drone ready to go, listening for those calls to come in and deploying the drone. And so far, I'm getting there before the deputies are, and I'm able to pump the video out. I'm telling the patrol supervisors, hey.

Here's the link to the video. If you hear the drone, being deployed, you're able to leave the browser open. Boom. They're able to see what I'm seeing already on scene.

So so far, it's been, pretty positive.

But, again, I'm I'm writing a a white paper because I wanna be able to show, you know, our taxpayers, hey. We did the time. We did the research beforehand, and and, this is what our results were. So I I think it's just being, you know, doing your duty to to to the taxpayers, the people that we serve. So, so that seems to be going, really well. And then as we saw in Ascend, which was a great event, with a new doc that's coming out, it's it's great. So we're looking forward to to to that experience and to see where the evidence, if you will, or where the, the research research takes us.

Yeah. That's excellent. And I think, you bring up a great point about being really transparent, not only internally with, you know, the stakeholders within your agency who are finding the budget for these types of programs, but to your community. So they understand the benefit of having these drones in the air, especially when there's some concern about, you know, privacy and, concern about just what you're doing with the drones.

Part of what we're really passionate about is transparency with the community. And so, Skydio recently just announced that we have created, Skydio DFR Command, which is a software that enables you to do DFR operations.

And part of that is a transparency dashboard that allows you to publish your flights, with the information that you want to publish at the time given whether or not it's an open investigation so that your community understands you are flying them, where you're flying them, and kind of what general incidents you are flying them for. But even more so, we wanna get deeper into that.

So the types of metrics like, you know, how long on average did it take you to fly to a call for service, or how often was the drone on scene before units on the ground, and how often were you able to say, hey.

Guess what? We don't actually need a deputy to respond because because the drone arrived and found out, you know, there's actually nothing going on or it was a false alarm or, you know, fill in the blank for all the reasons you might not respond. And so those are different metrics that you can put out to your community so they understand and the benefits. And I think that really helps with the buy in and the engagement that they're supportive of the program so that it actually becomes beneficial to everyone within the agency.

Yeah. And I think drone advocacy is a is a big part of that, as well, Maureen.

If you're out talking to your community, like, as a resource deputy, I've taught a whole day. You know, I would teach at least each year a whole day in some of the classes just about how drones are used, how drones are used in agriculture, how drones are used in law enforcement, and what I've what I've seen the future of drones, were going.

Moreover, I got a text last night to go back out to University of Central Florida. Good nights. Graduated from there twenty nineteen. Go back out there and, teach more, of how drones are used in law enforcement.

There's a professor out there that teaches criminal justice. So we're really seeing drones change the landscape, really, really big. And, again, like I said earlier, it's constantly evolving. It went from patrol led to, you know, within five years, the drone landscape is gonna look completely different.

And, we're gonna say, wow. You know, we used to deploy drones from a car, and now we're deploying drones, you know, from rooftops, of of buildings.

So, so, yeah, it's I think your community engagement is is really big.

Speaking with, our we have a civilian review board and whatever.

I've done presentations in front of them showing them, hey. These these are the drones that we use. There's no weapons on them. We're not dropping tear gas or anything like that from them. We're showing, like, these drones are being good used for, the good of our community, keeping our deputies safe, finding lost children or adults, and, keeping our community safe. So I think advocacy is is the biggest part there, though, for sure.

Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more.

You know, I just said that I was at at IACP this past weekend. Last year, conversations there were very tech folk like, tech spec focused. You know, what kind of Zoom does the camera have? What kind of cameras are on it? What's the flight time? What's you know, it was a very tech spec oriented and kind of just a general education on using drones in law enforcement outside of these specialized units.

And this year, it was much more, we need drones because we need, you know, our our length of time for before we respond is way too high, and the city is not happy with it. And we don't have enough officers to respond to all these calls, and they're just sitting in the queue.

And, you know, we're trying to reduce use of force, and we're trying to make our officers safer safer. And so the conversations have shifted significantly to the better outcomes that come with drones in law enforcement. And so to your point, yeah, I think the landscape is definitely going to be changing quite a bit here in the next couple years, and, everyone wants to be a part of it now. Everyone sees that having drones and patrol will just, you know, in general, make both the agency, the officers, and the community safer.

Sorry.

I thought you'd be on live.

Yep. We're live.

Alright.

So I did wanna touch on your, current flight metrics. If you guys wanna talk through this and talk about where you are today with the I guess, we're looking at since March of twenty twenty three.

Yeah. The, so from twenty twenty three to present, we've had two thousand nine hundred and ten flights.

That's a lot. We started, originally with just two, x two e's.

We again, when the law changed, in twenty twenty three from governor DeSantis, we obviously, traded out older drones that we had from countries of foreign concern and went with the Skydio drones.

We've logged six hundred and twenty eight hours.

We have thirty one pilots. We have about four point eight flights per day, and then, thirteen minutes is the average flight time, and then sixteen hours of flight time per pilot.

The you know, I wouldn't look at the hours or the minutes of the average flight time because I'm telling you these guys are out there flying the props off of these things, some days. So, but, yeah, our number our numbers, continue to grow obviously since twenty twenty three, although our program goes back even before, before then. But each year, I would say the numbers continue to increase.

Yeah. Excellent. And I think our next slide here is just on primary use cases. So when we look at all of your flights logged and we look at all the hours of flying and how many pilots you have, can you just touch on, like, what you're most commonly flying on and the, incidents that you're most commonly called to?

Sure. Persons of interest, searches, as we found out before I got on here, we were doing that. But, yeah, person of interest searches seem to be our our main, search followed by incident overwatch. So if we have a person that's barricaded or we have, you know, a large, domestic disturbance or a crowd, something like that, incident overwatch would be the next one that we fly next to, and then missing endangered persons.

And then you'll see others on there. Other basically, covers, like, as you can see in the picture, one of our forensics girls, article searches, three d mapping. They do any of that with some of the FARO equipment that they have. So or, you know, just random stuff such as the public information office.

They're like, hey. We have an event going on. We'd like to get a three second clip. Can you drive two hours out here to come get that clip for us?

So, that kind of falls under the other department, but, you know, we really enjoy it, though. So but those those are our categories that we we see the most.

Your last comment there sparked this question, and I didn't think of it previously when we talked about community engagement and transparency. But do you ever use social media to kind of, talk to the community about your program and how you're using drones?

So our social media goes through a strategic communications office. So, in part, yes and in part, no. Do they use, drone videos that we collect for them in their social media posts? Yes.

But, is it being posted out there like, hey. These are our drones. To that answer, I would say it's no. So except for recent.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of agencies I mean, there's it's all over the board.

Right? Some agencies are all in on, you know, the Facebook posts and the TikTok dances and whatever they're doing these days. And so, in that sense, they are, you know, talking about when they're using drones and, hey. They've had a great win or we had an apprehension because of the drones.

So just curious to see if you were using them in the same way.

Yeah. I don't TikTok dance.

I don't know about that.

You can speak for Rob, but I just definitely don't.

Alright. So now we're gonna jump into this case study.

If you guys could just give kind of, set the stage for the video that we're gonna see, and then, then we'll pop into the video, and then we'll kind of dive in deeper to some of the things that we see in there.

Sure.

So this is, our international drive area. So if any of you come to Florida, you've probably been on iDrive. If you've been to Florida in the summertime, you've probably waited on iDrive.

It's a large tourist area, has a lot of very nice restaurants, a lot of rides that you can go on. They have the Orlando I there. That's our international drive area. It is a big economic producer for Central Florida.

So the video you're gonna see occurred at a hotel, on International Drive.

It is a hotel. It's probably one of the biggest hotels right there on iDrive.

And I will say this going into this video. There is a male that, he's obviously having a moment of crisis that you'll see from the video.

The gentleman got the help that he needed. I mean, he's a human American. We wanna make sure that, you know, that that everybody understands that we got that individual the help that he needed. He barricaded himself in the hotel hotel room on the eighteenth floor.

So you have all of International Drive. You have this large hotel. You have this individual having moment of crisis on the eighteenth floor. And then, we were having little to no productive communication with the individual.

Yeah. I think, just before we jump into this video here in a second, I think, you know, we've all been in hotels before. We all know that once you're in that hallway, all you're seeing is the hotel door itself. We can't actually see anything that's happening in the room. So this video is really going to highlight the benefit of having that drone to be able to see from a completely different perspective that none of the officers had while they were in the hallway. So with that, we will go ahead and play the video.

We've all heard the expression that a picture's worth a thousand words, but it's it's even better with drone and law enforcement missions. If I can provide a watch commander or a high risk incident commander with real time video of what's actually happening at the scene, and they can make more informed and very likely safer decisions for everybody involved.

Nine one one. What is the location of your emergency?

It is nine eight zero one International Drive. Alright. And tell me what's happening.

So we have a very violent guest staying in this room, and he's yelling about killing a demon and he's, like, banging on the walls and stuff.

We're trying to make contact, but he is not compliant.

Sheriff's office. Sheriff's office already opened up.

So we responded, tried to establish communication with this individual, but it was clear that the subject was obviously having a moment of crisis.

Let's just walk through it. Okay?

We're here to help you. Alright?

Help. Help.

There were some concerns for his safety and the well-being of the guest inside the hotel. So to provide an advantage to develop a strategy where we could get him the assistance he needs, we deploy the drones.

Yes, sir. We do have a drone operator down here. Do you wanna see if you can throw that up as we get eyes in on that window?

Yeah. Ten four of them.

Mentally prepping is a crucial part of being a a drone operator. What resource are you going to be able to provide? You wanna be the pinnacle of that resource, I think, as a drone pilot to an evolving situation.

Where you see that guy moving? That's him. So he's pretty much knocked out a lot of the windows then, it looks like. Just signal fourteen.

I have eyes on him with the drone outside. He's got, like, a shower rod. Now he's hitting the window. Oh, I think, actually, he's gonna break it.

Hey. If you want a view of him, I just sent it to your email, the live link.

We were able to provide real time live streaming as to what was occurring inside of that room, eighteen stories up. We have a subject in there within crisis. We have a drone now outside that's providing video stream to the deputies are gonna make entry in into that room.

Are you spinning on this window? Yeah. Just try to barricade that now. Try to move stuff over.

It's got a desk and, like, a chair with the front door.

With the front door. Okay. And then on the side door, it's got a couch on this.

One of the dangerous or most scariest things to do is go into a blind room where you don't know where somebody is.

So knowing that there's now a tool that's able to provide me that sort of information that I can get to my phone and see live is is is crucial.

There's literally, like, yellow arrows. I think that's your fastest best.

So it looks like that they're in the system, and then the barricade is past the front door.

We're not sure if he's trying to start, like, something on fire in there, so we'll start working on breaching.

Through observations utilizing the drone that the subject was about to start lighting the hotel room on fire, and that's when we had to make the decision to go inside the room.

The situation included with the deputies able to make entry into the room and take the subject into custody or at least get him the help that he was needing at that time. So get him to a location where he's safe, the visitors in the hotel are safe, and and getting him, out of that situation.

Alright.

I think that video so clearly illustrates the importance of having these different perspectives and these views that you otherwise wouldn't have.

Anything specific that you wanna talk about? I know I would like to ask you about, the importance of the live streaming. And so, with Skydio drones, you have access to what we call ReadyLink. And that means anytime the drone is up, you can really quickly share a QR code or a hyperlink that enables anybody to view the livestream from the drone.

And it doesn't have to be within your agency. If you were working on something on a task force or multi agency, incident, you could share it with them as well. Doesn't require any type of login. So, that's what they were viewing on the cell phone, correct, in the hallway?

That's correct.

Yeah. And can you just speak to the importance of having that, like, on your cell phone in your pocket to be able to see what's going on in the room instead of just kind of hearing for radio updates, but actually having that visibility?

Yeah, Narina. I I think let's look at the situation and take the drone out of the equation. Let's take the live streaming out of the equation. And what you have, you have the potential we have a potential to have a helicopter up there, but the helicopter is not able to orbit or, able to hover.

It's gonna have to maintain a orbit, camera, you know, moving around up there in the helicopter. So that would present the first, challenge in that situation if we didn't have the drone. Add the drone in the equation, you can obviously see that we were able to get the deputies. Because, as I as I spoke earlier, you know, deputy safety is one of the main critical things, with the, with the drone.

They're able to see now what this guy is, where in the room he is, and then they're able to to develop the strategy, that they needed to, to get into that room to, to get get that man the help he needed.

Yeah. I think it's a a super compelling video all the way around, just, pairing the body cam footage with the live stream, and the drone feeds. I think it makes for a really compelling case and is the exact reason that drones should be moving out of these specialized units and into patrol operations so that everyone goes home safe at the end of the night.

Yeah.

The feed is really the critical part.

So and like I said, you know, before before we even started this, I was on watching on my computer the feed, you know, helping another deputy trying to find, you know, a guy in the woods. So, yeah, the the feed is, was definitely, definitely the top of that that situation there.

And and Noreen Yeah.

Excellent. What this what this video also showed was I've I've spoken to many of the people that were involved in that incident that night, and there was initially some concern that the individual had a gun. There was some some witness testimony that he was holding something out the window that appeared to be a gun, and we would not have been able to, likely negate that without the use of the drone. Because because as Mike was was, starting to allude to, the camera on the helicopter would have a very difficult time, seeing through that window with the angle.

And then the orbiting part, you're only gonna get that window potentially at the right angle for a very brief moment of the three hundred and sixty degree orbit. Whereas the drone can sit there and park, on a stable platform, you know, for the for the, basically, the length of the battery.

And that was that was very critical to, see what he was doing inside the room, what weapons he may or may not have.

In this case, it was a a shower rod, and we never saw the gun.

But we also, more importantly, saw the barricades. Which types of barricades was he using? Which doors was he barricading?

Which door is gonna be better for us to go into? And you're essentially getting, a a view of the room before any operators even enter the room.

Yeah. I think, another thing with drones is they're providing, you know, all the responders with the time and distance they need to make the right decisions instead of just running in blindly as to the point that was made in the video.

You know, unfortunately, working in Las Vegas, I had a lot of friends that were seriously injured because they were in a foot pursuit and jumping a wall and didn't know that the suspect was waiting for them on the other side of the wall. And so, or anything similar to that.

So when you have a drone in the air, it just gives you the ability to kind of stop for a second, wait for that information, make the appropriate tactical decisions to go in. And, again, this is just for the improvement of safety, for tactical decisions to go in.

And again, this is just for the improvement of safety for both sides of it. Right? For that individual safety that you were able to get him out and get him the help he needed as well as for all of those who responded to that scene.

We are gonna jump into some questions. So if you have any questions, please feel free to throw them in the box right now. I will start with some of them that are already in here. And the first one is, do you use any programs for accident reconstruction?

Do we use any programs? So I know we have a a Pix four d account, but do we, we don't really do any accident reconstruction.

I know our forensics girl well, let me back that up. I know our forensics, unit does utilize, FARO, that they're really big into FARO with using, the three d parts there. In regards to our patrol guys, they they don't they don't use the the three d, option or accident reconstruction.

Nora, we're we're I can tell you, we're not the best agency to ask about accident investigations. We just recently started working basic accidents. The Orange County Sheriff's Office is a is one of very few agencies in the state of Florida that has not worked traffic crashes for for decades.

And, literally, we just started as an agency working them this year.

And even then, they're minor crashes with no injuries, and we're still partnering with our with our our main agency, Florida Highway Patrol, to work the crashes. So if you're talking about THIs or significant crashes, no. We we do not do those. We will take evidence photos of agency involved crashes and significant crime scenes. I I you know, besides the PIX four d, I don't know how they're reconstructing him, but we don't do the crashes that this this, person's probably asking about.

Yeah. That's very interesting. I can speak to, our drones at least being used for crime and crash.

Skydio has an app called three d scan, which enables the drone to autonomously fly and capture images that you can use for, two d map capture to create that that foundation for your diagram.

You can use them to complete photogrammetry, so to create that three d model similar to the Ferro laser scans that they mentioned. And then also, it will create a three d model onboard the controller for you. And so, again, it's autonomous. You kind of just set your pillars of the area that you want to capture data. It does a quick check of that area, and then it goes off. It does its thing, and then it comes back.

And those images can integrate into all different kinds of photogrammetry software, Pix four d for sure, the FARO zone software as well for photogrammetry.

And then, you know, you can use that as the basis for all of your reconstruction.

How did you develop your drone policy and what resources did you use?

Well, Mike has a very good collection of individuals.

We obviously networked quite a bit. We compared other policies.

But as probably many of you know, this is fairly new.

A lot of our policy is is based straight out of the Florida law. What we can and cannot deploy on is literally cut and pasted, from our state statute.

We collaborated with, several other agencies, in Florida to have some local policies, and it's it's it's a it's definitely a work in progress.

I believe we've changed it three times probably in eighteen months. Minor tweaks here and there, but, there's there's definitely been some changes even from the original version.

Yeah. I will say, fortunately, there's a lot of collaboration in the public safety community, especially in law enforcement. So all of our agencies that are flying drones, they kind of just share ideas and policies, and, they kind of all pull from each other. So if you are looking to start a drone program and you're looking to start developing policies, there are a lot of resources out there to help you.

I'm guessing that this is specific to this incident in the hotel, but how many drones did you deploy, and how long were they in the air?

So we deployed one drone, into this situation. Each deputy has three batteries. The the the air was actually pretty still that night. So, that but he made it through through, all three of the batteries before the incident finally came to an end.

And flight time on a battery is about forty close to forty minutes. Really depends on pilot behavior and weather. But, he was able to push through all those batteries. So and we have inverters in the cars, so we can actually, I have a little rule that I tell teach the guys.

I'm like, hey. Don't be dirty. Come back at thirty, which is thirty percent of your battery. You need to start coming back.

And, we found that as long as that battery hits the charger, by the time they cycle through the batteries to get back to that battery, that battery is usually at full charge ready to go as long as they kinda follow that rule.

So Just tell me you have that quote on a sticker somewhere in their car in the in case.

I had to tattoo it.

I love that.

So, you know this question is specifically kind of about regulatory, but can you talk about, how you are operating as far as any potential waivers or ECOA?

So, no. We presently do not operate under ECOA. We operate under part one zero seven.

But as I think as DFR starts coming onto online, as we heard, New York City was able to to get a, you know, an FAA waiver on on theirs. They had to do it under ECOA. However, they do fall under the Mote C Veil, and we fall under the Mote C Veil here in Central Central Florida. So I think that process is actually gonna be pretty simple, but, and we'll probably have to go into a COA at that point. But all all of our pilots find under one zero seven.

Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. And thanks for bringing up, New York City Police Department. So their recent waiver was for, BVLOS operations without AVO, and without the use of radar at two hundred feet, AGL and fifty feet shielded.

So, yeah, now that they've gotten that, I'm sure it will be easier for other agencies to follow suit. But just the way the world is trending with drone as first responder, we should see a lot more of that here in the near future.

And I really just wanted to touch on just because it's kind of, you know, not necessarily, related to this particular webinar, but a recent event. Unfortunately, the state of Florida was hit with were you involved in any of those rescue efforts or search efforts? And, how did you deploy drones if you were?

So that's a funny story. I was at Ascend, and, I was told, hey. When you get back, we're probably gonna be deployed to go, work the first hurricane.

You know, it's interesting. I met a captain up there from Asheville, who's, you know, obviously, the Asheville took a a brutal punch from this, hurricane.

And he had no no expectation that it was gonna turn out the way that it it was. He's like, hey. You're gonna be breezy for the next few weeks, you know, while we're having breakfast. It's like, yeah.

I kinda think we are. I know when, Ian came through, we were deployed down there. We did a lot of flying over there, a lot of looting, issues, when Ian first came through. So I kind of expected something similar to what Ian was.

To get off, told, hey. Basically, when you get off the plane, you're gonna be shipped out. So I get back into town. That doesn't come to, fruition. But about a week after, they said, hey. We're gonna go up and we're gonna help, near the, the Big Bend of Florida. So I was prepared to go up there.

Then they gave us the orders, and I I text the, the supervisor. I'm like, hey. Are you aware there's another storm coming?

Apparently, we weren't aware of that. And then that's when, we we learned of Milton, so that got canceled.

Central Florida overall did fared fairly well, with Milton, and I've been I was born and raised here in, in Orlando. So I've seen my share of hurricanes in Central Florida.

I've said we you know, I say we fared pretty well. Did go out for a little bit after the storm to do some flying, to check on some of our facilities, but, they weathered pretty well.

Overall, we did we did pretty good. So, no, we didn't really have to get deployed. Now I say that I'll probably get a text after this conversation, relieve the West Coast, but we'll see. So as of right now, we have not, though. Okay. Yeah.

I know a lot of, you know, we had a lot of our internal folks go out and kind of help in those efforts, and they were doing a lot of kind of post storm assessment and mapping, as well as some search and recovery efforts as well.

Another question, and then we'll probably wrap this up. How do you, currently recruit deputies to be drawn pilots and then follow through with that necessary training?

Well, I with recruiting, that's just being out in the field, working with this, with the guys. You know, we we have a internal newsletter that we'll we'll share where we kinda highlight, and, I like to spotlight some of the deputies so that they can, you know, share with their friends or their coworkers, you know, hey. This is what the drone program is doing.

They see the videos. I put invitations out there for them to go do other events. For instance, SWAT Roundup is next week. And, you know, I sent an email, hey. If anybody wants to help out with, Roundup, the, public information office, want some cool drone shots. So that helps get them the training.

And, you know, they get to see their work on display. And I think if they can see that and be proud of that, I think it develops motivation. And then when they talk to new trainers or, or new trainees, and share that experience, I think that kind of plants the seeds. I will say that some of our pilots are also FTOs, field training officers. So these new guys who are very influential, you could sell them a flashlight for a thousand dollars if they had it.

You know, they they wanna be part of that. So, and I think they can see that that's something they they can build their career on.

So I think the combination of being out there, seeing their work, and then planting the seeds, I I think are the three things that could really help us, with the recruiting and retention.

And, Noreen, we also do a lot of information sharing.

We we host, an informational meeting because a lot of these individuals have never flown a drone.

They may think they're interested. They may like the idea, but I don't know if I can do it. I don't know what it entails.

So in addition to the sector recommendations that come from the sector captains, we also hold an informational meeting, where we'll actually set up a very basic, obstacle course and just a familiarization. You're gonna get some stick time. You're gonna fly the drone. You're gonna be with another instructor, and and figure out whether this is something that you're interested in.

We're gonna convey, what the policies are. We're gonna convey the laws. We're gonna convey what you can deploy on, and and and set our expectations. We want you to know, this is something we want you to get out of the car.

We want you to get, it deployed. It's not gonna be, a specialty weapon or a specialty tool that you're just gonna wait for the big call to come and and and respond to that.

No.

We actually want you to be self initiated, and seek out the calls that are appropriate to respond to.

That is an excellent program to have.

I think there's nothing worse than, not wanting to volunteer for something because you don't quite know what you're getting into.

So the fact that you give everyone the ability to just come check it out and make their decision that way, that sounds like a great idea. I think I probably would have volunteered for more things if I knew what I was getting into before I did it.

Okay. I think we are about to wrap it up. Steve. I'm gonna pass it back over to you.

Okay. Thanks very much, panel. Really great great presentation. A lot of great information. So thank you very much.

We wanna express our appreciation to our sponsor, Skydio, for being here and sponsoring today's webinar. So thanks very much to Skydio. And if you haven't had a chance, go over the related content tab there, the paperclip icon, and you can download some handouts from them. Unfortunately, I gotta wrap up here. But, Mike, Rob, and Noreen, I wanna thank you for a great presentation. Thank you so much today.

Take care.

Thank you. Appreciate everyone for hanging out. I thank both of you for chatting with me today about your drum program, and I hope everyone stay safe.