Building a defensible DFR policy: Inside Minnetonka PD’s approach

What I hear most concerning about DFR program is privacy. And that's why I think it's important to make this interactive and available to anybody on our website so people can look and see how we're utilizing not only drones but any technology that we have here.

So when not overseen of one of those incidents, the camera is facing forward and is utilized only for the operation of the aircraft to ensure safety of of the operators and everybody beneath the aircraft. Additionally, the aircraft is equipped with a parachute. So if there is unforeseen circumstances, a loss of connection, or a failure of one of the engines, a parachute automatically deploys.

That's a optional attachment that we believe is necessary to ensure the safety of those on the ground.

I think it's exciting to be the first in the area. I know it's worked well in other parts of the country. I'm just really excited that we are the first and our officers get to learn and provide some new technology that other departments are gonna then look at us to like how are we doing it.

Everyone. I appreciate you hanging out with us today as we discuss developing policy and SOP for DFR programs.

My name is Noreen Charlton, and I lead public safety strategy here at Skydio. And I spend a lot of my time helping different public safety agencies stand up their DFR programs from shaping policy and operations to preparing your department and the community for rollout, engaging with the media and the communities, and then communicating effectively on how you plan on using these programs, and more importantly, how you do not plan on using drones. And in a previous life, I spent more than a decade with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Super excited today to be joined by two people who are both directly involved in both building and running the DFR program for Minnetonka PD. So I'll have you both introduce yourselves, and then we'll jump into it.

Sure. Thanks for having us, Nareen. My name is Jason Tate. I'm the deputy chief police at Minnetonka PD. I've been in law enforcement for twenty three years. And yeah. That's a little bit about me.

My name is Gary Shirk. I am the supervisor of our crime and data analysis unit here at the Minnetonka Police Department, and that includes overseeing our day to day DFR operations from our real time operations center.

Sweet. Alright. So we'll go ahead and jump into it. We're gonna kind of establish where Minnetonka started and how they looked at adding a DFR program to the police department and what policies were super important to them because of statutes that were put in place by the state of Minnesota.

But I really wanna talk about and this is you guys are kind of an example used for a lot of other agencies. Let's talk about before you had this DFR launch. You did a lot of preparation, and you spoke to a lot of people. So can you guys talk a little bit about some kind of key groups that you felt you needed to engage early to make sure that your DFR program had a solid foundation?

Yeah. Absolutely. So there's a number of different groups that we've talked to. I think, you know, most importantly, starting with our local elected officials, a lot of prep work that went into before you go to council, just making sure they understand exactly what DFR is and what it isn't. And then, you know, as we're getting closer to preparing for this, we got a little bit of pushback from some different state agencies and some legislative groups just trying to navigate how does DFR fit into the state's drone law enforcement drone statute.

So we engaged quite a bit with those different groups just to get a clear understanding of their interpretations of some of the language inside of the statute to make sure that everybody was comfortable in what we were trying to do here in Minnesota.

Additionally, you know, some other things that we did that is really engaging our community. So before we went live, you know, Skydio through the Skydio For All program came out to to Minnetonka and participated in our nineteen nights events and really showed the community what we were doing. And I think that was really beneficial too just to make sure that we had a good every everybody involved in this from the community, state level, all different groups had a had an idea of what DFR is before we just threw it in their laps and and announced that we were we were launching this. So I think that was really important.

Yeah. I'd say, you know, you saw some of that in our intro video. So, we had a deliberate desire to control the narrative with accurate information in particular to what the aircraft are actually capable of doing. There's a lot of misinformation that can surround unmanned aerial systems.

So we wanted to make sure from the forefront that we were presenting accurate, truthful information before, you know, the rumor mill could get get going.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

To say, you know, we also engage with some of the the groups that are kinda anti technology too. You know, think about, like, ACLU.

There's some pretty strong data privacy advocates here in Minnesota. And they reached out to us, and we opened our doors to them and really welcomed them in to ask the tough questions so that we could provide them with accurate information and really make sure that they were comfortable with everything that we're doing as well.

Yeah. Like I said, I use you as an example to a lot of agencies because because I think you did a lot of things very well leading up to the launch of your program. You guys had a dedicated web page that was put together and ready to launch on that day that you announced the program.

On that web page, you have a community FAQ. So anybody can go there and kind of look at the most common questions and get answers before they really have to reach out. And then, you know, we showed a snippet of the DFR video, but I think it's really helpful to the community to see what this looks like in your day to day operations. And then I know you were gracious enough to invite some of the Skydio crew out for your media event, but you had a press conference.

You invited and elected. So really important to kind of illustrate how you had community buy in on many different levels. This wasn't just the police department saying we're doing a program, but you brought in electeds to say, like, yes. We absolutely support this.

And then you did a live demonstration. Can you just talk about a little bit about the importance bringing the media in or any of these other organizations, especially those who may not have been supportive about it before they met with you in person to really kind of show them the impact so that it could be happening?

Yeah. Again, like Garrett stated, it's really about controlling the narrative. Right? So making sure that we're telling our story before someone has an opportunity to tell the story for us, I think, was was really kind of what guided us through that.

And, you know, Garrett can talk a little bit about the demonstration and why we chose doing Yeah.

I think, you know, a a couple notes. It's it's all about being proactive. Right? Because if you're not if you're not proactive before you even start executing missions and flights, there's going to be that gap, that space where the media, members of the community, they'll ask legitimate questions.

But what's better than already answering the questions before before they can be asked. Right? So that that goes a long way. As far as in particular to the demonstration, you know, choosing a demonstration like a search and rescue type scenario, think, was wise.

As much as I, like many of you on the webinar, probably enjoy using these aircraft to capture criminals in action and seeing the arrest and seeing our officers do that hard and good work, sometimes it goes a long way to show some of the more subtle uses of DFR. In this instance, finding a lost person that needed help. I think that's where you start building community trust, where they see it as a tool that can impact daily lives, not just, you know, the apprehension of criminals.

We involved our fire department in that demonstration as well just to kind of show more of how it's not just a police tool, but it has other uses as well.

Yeah. That's excellent. And that kind of leads me into our next slide here, which is specifically about metrics. So what we encourage agencies to do as part of your engagement with the media and with your community goes kind of beyond saying, with the DFR program, we will see x of increase in apprehensions or whatever the case might be.

And then coming back and saying, like, no. No. No. Like, we can prove it. Everything that we said we would do with this program, we are doing it.

And you've done that very well. I think you guys are six ish months or so out. You invited the media back in, and you provided them with some of these metrics.

And these are the outcomes that you had, and it's really kind of the result of a DFR program that has a very clear structure and very clear objectives.

A lot of agencies position their DFR programs with these specific metrics. Right? And they're kind of there's a little bit of a guessing game at first. Right? We're using kind of industry standards, and maybe it's, you know, we want to clear x percent of low priority calls with the drone to eliminate those calls that are in the queue for patrol response. So when you were developing your DFR program, which metrics kind of mattered most to Minnetonka to get that early buy in?

Yeah.

I think, you know, it's it's great we can clear calls out, but it's all about just improving overall department efficiencies.

And that was really kind of our goal and kind of our message when we're trying to sell this.

We were in a unique position where we had just done a public safety master plan, and there were several recommendations that came out of that. And some of that was tied to staffing. So, again, proving that maybe there's a more efficient way to accomplish the same goals that we were gonna try and accomplish with bodies through different technologies.

And that's where really kind of efficiency became our message is we we can accomplish a lot of the recommendations that were in our public safety study through using this technology.

And I think speed speed is a big one. Right? So quality of service and the ability to get that service there quicker. And that, of course, looks different when you're, you know, two hundred feet above the ground, perhaps unnoticeable to those that call nine one one.

But when you communicate that to those decision makers and stakeholders in the community, there it's really remarkable that you can say, hey. You call nine one one. Forty five seconds later, we're gonna have eyes on this incident. And there's so much more value in that than perhaps, you know, witnesses attempting to get information to nine one one call takers.

So getting the drones there quickly was something we really wanted a message to all the individuals involved that this is gonna give our officers an extra edge tactically, an ability to deescalate, which is so important in the current climate, and then also critical information that will actually bring the right people at the right time to those in need.

Yeah. And I think you your police department is a perfect example. Like, we hear a lot of the time, you know, we aren't a huge agency. We're not one of the majors. We're not a major metro. We're not NYPD.

DFR isn't for us. And you guys really proved that wrong because not only were you able to implement, you know, this this program that you're using really well and effectively, but just looking at these metrics, you know, being able to clear calls with the drone, being able to provide that intel to ground units. How has this changed operations for your patrol officers on the ground? Is this something now that they're kind of expecting on all of their calls that they respond to?

Yeah. I would I would say kinda twofold. So you're correct. We're not a huge agency as a standard across the United States. We're we're mid sized, which most law enforcement agencies are. We have about forty two thousand calls for service. So when we're talking about metrics, you see all those metrics are primarily from two operators.

And, you know, when we start flying those, I I get a number of calls or if I'm not at my desk at that exact moment, officers looking for that drone. Right? So operationally, they become vital to our responses. And, you know, the deputy chief could probably talk about culturally and some of the the the patrol actions as well.

Yeah. I I I think it has been a big paradigm shift in our department on how we're approaching our response to calls. You know?

I think you notice it most when you know, we're not twenty four seven with DFR. We're still working through some staffing, but I think you notice it most when DFR is not present, just how different it feels when when we're not operating with DFR use and staffing constraints. That's when you see it the most, in my opinion, because it really has changed how we're we have approached our response.

Yeah. Thanks. I'm sure that's super helpful to most of the attendees here today.

What really, we're here to talk about your policies. You know, I think there there are a lot of agencies out there who feel like a DFR program is a heavy lift. How do you write these in a way that protects your program but also protects all of the citizens of your community?

And from all of the work that I've done with agencies across the country, there are three very specific questions that are asked all of the time. We do a lot of media interviews. The media asks me these questions all of the time. There certainly could be more. But for sure of these three, why do you need DFR? How do you intend on using it? And how will you prevent misuse?

And you guys spoke a lot about kind of making sure that you own the narrative. And my message here to anybody out there today is that if you do not answer these questions first, someone else will definitely do it for you. And it might be the media. It might be a Facebook HOA group, but someone will notice the program. They will start to make comments about how they believe you're using it. So it's very important for you to, you know, answer these questions before someone else does.

And you need a lot of internal alignment on these questions. Right? There will be differences of opinions in how you should use your program. And this does tend to be where some agencies get stuck in the process. So, which of these questions for you guys kind of required the most internal discussion, or did you feel like from the jump, you were all pretty well aligned on what you thought this DFR program could do for your department?

Well, for me, for I I think we both have a company of some different perspectives on that. You know, from the administrative perspective, I think it's the why. So for me, I'm looking at this through a lens of, you know, we already had it through our own program that was governed by policy.

And we're a we're a Lexapro customer, and I'm sure others have seen the Lexapro standard UAS policy. And when you look through that, it's not really intended for a DFR program, in my opinion.

You know, I talk a lot about when you add a DFR program, you're really almost adding aviation section to your police department, and it's very different from a patrol led drone response.

So for me, the why is just recognizing that difference and saying, we we need something more in here. And also, although I think there's a little internal pressure on being, you know, one of the first in the state to do this that we wanna set the stage for others, and I don't wanna be the agency that messes it up for everybody else. So making sure that there's really strong procedures in place to ensure we're running a really safe program.

And you do have to have that stratification that Jason was mentioning. Right? So from his perspective as a command staff, the strategic level alignment, how this fits into the whole department's capability. You know, you know, from my perspective as one of the main operators in the individual in charge of the the daily operations, how how are we going to use it?

Like, number two point there, and how will we prevent misuse? So, you know, coming from a military background with the safety mindset of any aviation operations, the SOP that Jason was mentioning is, right, incredibly important because that prevents deviation and that misuse. So really focusing on identifying in those documents, a policy perspective supported by the administration, and then the standard operation operating procedures where everyone's on the same page. And within that, critically, when those documents are under inspection, right, and review from all these different groups that we've talked about, forefront addressing in the forefront, the data retention, the privacy concerns, and safety.

So making sure those were specifically called out front and center on those documents. Because like you said, Noreen, the the those are the top three things. If we don't answer those right away, we're inevitably gonna have some confusion there.

Yeah. I think there are a lot of, you know, misconceptions with how law enforcement and public safety agencies are using drone programs, especially as now we are shifting to DFR, and they are more readily available for more calls for service. And so tackling these upfront, will definitely help you in the long term with your programs. But I think what is super unique about you in general for the state of Minnesota and, you know, attending conferences and events for the last several years before you stood up your program, I heard many times from a lot of different states, not just Minnesota. But there was this perception problem where people said, no, we we actually can't have a DFR program in our state. The law prevents us from having one.

And it truly is just you know, it's not a legal problem per se. It's just a perception problem on kind of the interpretation of that. And there was a real belief by many agencies outside of Minnetonka that they didn't think they could do a DFR program, and you did it first, and you've done it well. So can you talk a little bit about what you think made agencies believe that DFR wouldn't work in your state?

Yeah. I think it goes back to what we talked about earlier, some of that early engagement with some of those different stakeholders to really understand the words and how they're interpreted inside of the statute was really important.

And and really making sure everyone had a clear agreed upon understanding of what exactly the language in the statute is is really important.

And, you know, I'm not gonna lie that and I've said this before that when we were installing the docks on the roofs of these buildings, I was having a little bit of a concern. Like, is this actually gonna work the way we think it is? And I think we've shown that it is possible and really been very careful about how we're using these drones and very deliberate about how we're documenting their views to make sure that there's no questions about how it fits within the state statute.

Yeah. That that's incredibly important piece is is the documentation. Right? Making sure that we are accounting for every single one of our flights.

So this is this is not a, you know, choose your own adventure. This is following along with those requirements of our state statute, which is somewhat unique to our our country with defining the legitimate purposes. So we have to make sure our flights fit into the authorized uses in the state of Minnesota. Those those include eleven reasons, and then the twelfth reason would be with the judicial warrant.

So we're making sure every day that we keep those on top of mind. And as we examine our missions, if we're gonna fly to support a incident, making sure they meet that criteria.

Yeah. I think there's two key things here that stand out for me in the work that you've done.

Reaching out to the people who, a, created these laws and having these conversations and understanding very specifically what they intended when they wrote these versus kind of just trying to interpret what you thought they meant was super foundational for your program. And I did wanna point out, I've listed it here, but, you know, there there were strict retent there are strict retention requirements and limited authorized uses. And so those were all things that in your conversations, you were able then to build into your specific policy to make sure that you were aligned at the state level.

And our next slide kind of goes into what you touched on here briefly, but it's the you know, not that the law prevented DFR, but it did force discipline for your program and for other programs like yours.

And so you turned kind of this very specific statute into something that is operational. So you had mentioned the twelve categories. I would love to talk through kind of what that looks like for you in a post flight report. And for those of you who aren't familiar, when you complete a DFR flight in Skydio DFR command, which is our software for DFR operations, at the very end of your mission, you will be presented with a post flight report.

You guys did some customization to that, so I'd love to talk through why you did that and how that ties back to the statute that's in place and also aligns specifically with your policy.

Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. So you you have a screenshot there of our post fire report. What we specifically did was customize that to include those statutory reasons, almost verbatim, except, you know, the character limit on a couple of them. We had to get crafty.

But what we're doing there is attempting to get all of that data into one system because in our state, we are required to do annual report to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is the the state level law enforcement investigative arm. And then that gets, published to the public. So what we wanted to do is capture that data point directly in there. So when that annual reporting comes back, there's no issues of grabbing different pots of data from different systems.

Many on the call are likely aware of, you know, issues with data pulls from various law enforcement systems talking to each other. So the ability to, customize post fight fight report allowed for very quick cataloging of that and then easy export of that as well. And that just connects back to everything we're talking about, which is we need to have a linear approach to being able to trace all of these flights to their origin. Right? And for us, the majority of that is a dispatch call for service through nine one one or an officer generated call. But we don't wanna have to go scramble for that data, and that post flight report setup allows us to get to that quickly.

Additionally, you know, that's all included on the transparency portal too. So the BCA reason code is on our transparency portal too for anyone to consume outside of the audit as well. So just being as transparent as possible with all of this.

Yeah. I think I haven't seen too many people do the amount of customization that you guys have done with the post flight report, but I love that because, a, it proves that you can do it. Although, I'll take the character limits back to the product team and see what I can do there.

But it you know, it's just other agencies. If you have, you know, very strict laws in place where you feel like you need to over document things to make sure that you are checking all of the boxes of that statute, and for you guys, you were able to do this in the post flight report.

And I think you said that eleven of the categories are are tied to real time response. Is that correct?

Yeah. That's correct.

Yeah. So I think that this is just gives you another option. You also mentioned mentioned the transparency dashboard.

Every flight that you conduct in a Skydio system, you can push to a transparency dashboard. Of course, it's a it's an ongoing investigation. You can, you know, hold off and publish that at a later time. You can also choose what you publish and how much you publish for each flight.

But what you have done is kind of made it easier on your end with this report to push a lot of that information back to the reporting agencies.

And there's there's a clear shift, and I think you guys already mentioned this before, but you had a drone program. Most agencies have started with you know, maybe it's just a drone on a shelf. You're taking it out for crash and crime scene documentation, or, you know, maybe you're pulling it out for a call that, you know, happened thirty, forty minutes ago, and you're getting the drone in the air to try to find someone.

But there's a very clear shift from a drone program to the operational model of a drone as first responder program. So at what point did you guys realize that this needed to be structured as a full response system and not whatever policy you had in place for the drone program that you used to have?

I think it's just looking at it holistically, you know, with everything we were gonna be doing that, you know, you know, think about our patrol and drone programs going to a fraction of the calls we just shared with how many DFRs going. So just understanding that there's gonna be exponentially more flights of a drone in our city, I think, is really kind of what stood out to me in that this is different. Like, we need to make sure we're doing something different than what we were doing before when we were approaching this.

So And you look at the the modeling, you know, that's provided.

Right? We can look at our call load, what what we could fit under that statute, it became readily apparent that if we don't have a framework, you know, at the beginning of this, every time we do these things, it's gonna be different. And that's where you can get in trouble, right, internally and externally when you're not properly prepared for the onslaught of flights. You know, in our state, being the first with DFR even just the last part of twenty twenty five, we had the second highest flights in the whole state of Minnesota besides the state patrol who does crash reconstruction.

So we knew that, you know, this was gonna be a big deal in my preparing that framework ahead of time. We're not scrambling every time to repeat. Right? Let's just come to a conclusion ahead of time of how we're gonna do this and then execute each time uniformly.

Yeah. And I think that one thing that's really important to point out about your program, and I'd love for you to walk through this a little bit, is all of your flights are tied to a CAD event. So can you talk about how not only you're you're tying these into CAD for specific call for service that were generated, but also for your training flights?

Yeah. So that's a really good point. We talked about bringing in a number of different entities and and people from the public, but not to forget dispatch. So in order to create a understandable system for our our county wide dispatch center, we actually worked with them to create a a call sign specific to the drone operator, the remote drone operator. So for us, that's our agency call sign, which is six two and then DFR one. And what that allowed was a common understanding that when a CAT incident was generated in six two DFR one or two attached to that call, they knew that capability was present. So now you're treating the drone as a response capability, not just an officer with the device.

And that helps with data after the fact. It also helps with real time awareness from everybody in our dispatching system to know that a remotely piloted aircraft is in the area supporting.

And then when you have public records requests, you can quickly tell, okay. Six two DFR one is attached. Now I need to examine if, you know, there's footage available or what that aircraft did. And so it does that full life cycle of accountability and also efficiency to respond to request or know what was actually, you know, happened.

Yeah. I'll you know, I'll also this goes back to engaging with some of the data practices advocates that were very concerned about what we're doing. They we had invited the management over to ends through some of those conversations. They talked about, we reviewed this the annual audit that the BCA produces, and then we cross reference that with agency records.

And we're seeing a discrepancy in what they're reporting to BCA versus what they have internally. So we're trying to close that loop by having a a documented record through CAD with an incident number of every single flight. So that way, we're closing the door on the the the possibility for someone to say, your drone was up in the air. You didn't record it anywhere.

What were you doing? Were I'm sure you were doing something wrong. So really making sure that every single flight is categorized in the same manner so that that that that closes that down pretty pretty easily.

And that connects back to your point, Noreen, about training flights. We do that even for training flights. So we are pulling a call for service in our system, generally, information only, and we're recording what training flights we did and and why, right, if it was new equipment. Doesn't take much.

It's not hard. Right? It's just an extra ten to fifteen seconds of action on the operator's part. But that way, two months down the line, you're not spending four hours looking for a record of what happened that day.

You're able to look in Skydeo's portal, compare it to the CAD database, and you have your answer for that member of the public or other agency.

Yeah. And I think we talked about this briefly when we were prepping for this webinar. But I specifically asked you, are you seeing an uptick in foyer requests for drone footage or flights or information on what you're doing with them. And you very clearly said, like, we're being so transparent. The information's out there that you're not actually seeing those. Correct?

We haven't had a single one in six months. Knock on what you're saying.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we haven't had a and that that is something that has shocked me as well. I figured that there would be way more traction on this, but I think it just speaks to all of this, just putting it out there. You know? We have nothing to hide with what we're doing here, so might as well put it out and help alleviate some of that for us.

And if you're if you're prepared, you're professional, you're safe, individuals who want to find fault might go somewhere else. Right? You if you've established yourself as a credible program, the story is elsewhere. And we're quite fine with that.

Yeah. Couldn't agree more.

There are strict data retention pieces of the statute in Minnesota. So this has been kind of one of the biggest constraints. And I know we've heard it in some other states as well. But you kind of really designed your operations around it. And you made some alterations to it so that it's actually kind of you're not saving it as long as the state requested you to. So who owns kind of the retention decisions during a flight, and how did you write that into your policies as well?

Yeah. So the individual operator at the conclusion of of the flight, of course, safely lands aircraft, automatically uploads to Axon evidence dot com for us. Obviously, there's a lot of evidence management systems. And that operator, within about twenty four hours of their flight, needs to go in there and code that evidence.

So in evidence dot com, many other systems, you can do this. What we did was we actually created another category for that drone footage so you could quickly categorize it as miscellaneous drone is what we call it. And then that starts that three day timer to delete. So, the only things we're really retaining under state law are, evidentiary video clips or, you know, use of force, you know, on arrest.

Right? So those three things, crime and action, use of force arrest, which all kinda go along with each other. Everything else in our state, we can't keep. It's private nonpublic data.

We can't keep it for seven days. And, you know, speaking with Jason, we said, well, why do we even need it for seven days? Right? That's a legitimate community concern.

Why do we need it for seven days? And we agreed with that, and we said, give us three days. That way, if something happens over the weekend, we don't know we caught, you know, an evidentiary clip, we at least have time to go save that clip before it's purged.

Yeah. And I think you mentioned, tagging stuff in, evidence dot com, which kind of makes it a little bit easier on the back end, to ensure that you're compliant with these timelines that you've set in place. For those of you who aren't familiar, we have a strategic partnership with Axon. So that's just a plug in straight into our system. And when you've completed a flight, that will offload into your Evidence account. And so you can tag it appropriately as you would any other body worn camera footage or anything else similar.

I think transparency here is kind of a huge piece of your story. Obviously, I think we've talked about it a little bit on every single point that we've spoken about thus far, but you really do this well. We will be dropping a link to your web page in the chat if it's not already there, as well as a link to your policy.

But transparency for Minnetonka definitely was not reactive. It was very intentionally and thoughtfully built into your GFR program, and you have made your operations visible by design. It's all right there for everybody to see.

What role did the public transparency dashboard play in building trust with your community?

Well, I I can speak to a number of a couple of different instances that we've had where people have called in and say, why is your police drone flying over my house? Why are you looking in my backyard?

And either direct them here or call yourself a look and say, well, at that particular day and time, this is where we were flying, and it was not over your house. So it was not a police drone. So it helps with that a lot just to kind of dispel a lot of different reports that we get. And, you know, again, it's being steering the narrative, like, put this out there for consumption right away so that people have a place to go and can answer their own questions and and tell our story before, again, someone tells it for us.

Yeah. You know, even outside of that that map, right, we take diligent steps to engage community in a number of spots. So transparency is not just when we were launching. Right?

It's a continual act that builds trust. So the drone's always at our community open house events. It's always at our our summer fest. And we have signs that say, hey.

We're using a police drone right now. So that way, there's no questions, right, or concerns about what aircraft's overhead. We do a number of community events. Our drone operators from patrol have gone to the school district.

We go to our school district's aviation class every semester to to show the aircraft. And the more you get that buy in, you know, the less questions pop up, and then also the more support you have. So that way, when you wanna expand your program or, you know, the the contract price goes up, people are familiar at least with what you're talking about.

Yeah. You guys do a lot with the community, and we see agencies doing a lot of stuff. You know, all the touch and shack events and the community outings and the barbecues and the coffee with the cop, like, bring your drones. Right?

Drones and dogs. That's what everyone wants to see these days. And the kids are super excited about the drones, you know, these flying robots that are being used in careers that maybe they didn't consider. And then you bring out the, you know, the Xbox controller, and they realize it's just like a video game.

And so just really kind of build some bridges between the community and law enforcement for sure. And you guys mentioned the Skydio for all program.

Mira, if you don't know Mira with Skydio, she is wonderful, and she leads our Skydio for all program. And she will come to your community, to your agency, and help you put together a program where you can kind of bring out the drones and invite kids in and teach them more about what you do with the drones, teach the community about what you don't plan on doing, and just show them how the tech works, that it's not X-ray vision that can see in your house, but it's just a camera in the sky that can help you see more things at one time.

And then operational structure. So this is kind of where DFR programs become real. You're not just adding a, you know, a drone to a trunk or a drone in a dock. You're adding a tool and a flight capability.

And you mentioned this a little bit before, but I'd like a little bit more of your context here for how you think that agencies should think about DFR more like an aviation unit rather than just a traditional kind of drone unit.

Yeah. I got you know, for me, when I when I talk about that, it's just recognizing that, you know, these aircraft are flying autonomously throughout your city, and there's a great level of responsibility that we have as an agency to make sure that we're doing that safely.

So there's a lot of different steps that we wanted to make sure we built in that through our through our SOPs to make sure that there's some level of consistency in how we're doing that every single day. And Gareth can speak to kinda operationally how they're doing that when they when they show up for work.

Yeah. And, you know, safety is important. We don't wanna be the ones that have a downed aircraft that causes an incident. Right?

Because that makes it harder for all of us to do our job and use this technology. So here in our real time operations center where we fly all of our missions out of, every morning, we're using the the Skydio dock inspection mode, and we are looking at our aircraft, and then we're reporting that. We made a custom reporting form through ArcGIS, which many agencies have access to. And that allows us to have a a safety log, really.

So that way, if there is an incident, we know at what time they were inspected, who they inspected it.

We check the equipment status, the communications status, everything, the attachments, and make sure that those are airworthy that morning. So that way, something does happen, there is that record that we were taking necessary cautions in compliance with the regulations to make sure that that's safe. And we have that up on our video wall in our operation center so the pilots can quickly look at that and updates throughout the day with data from the FAA directly. So we have our aviation weather reports on there.

We have our temporary flight restriction zones, notice to airmen. All those pipe in directly. So that is a low cost thing that agencies can do. You don't have to pay for fancy subscription services through some of these providers.

If you have someone with a little GIS, knowledge, you could replicate that, very easily, and then you have a record.

Yeah. And that's something we're willing to share with anybody too. And it's just about a clear operating picture. So you think about you know, we're a small agency, two two pilots. But if you if you're a larger agency with multiple pilots, everybody's operating in that level set playing field. We know what air the aircraft have been expect inspected.

We know what the status is, so there's no confusion about which which aircraft is ready to go and which one maybe has an issue that day.

And this really falls back on those SOPs. Right? This is where really the operational structure meets our checklist and our SOPs. So when we have a remote pilot in command, right, what are their roles?

Right? That's defined. What is the assistant doing, or what are other staff in the operations center doing? And what if there is an incident?

Well, flip to the page on your desk, the downed aircraft drill. Right? Or who do we call? Who do you notify?

That's all defined in there. And no one has that memorized. You can't do that. But what you can have is have it on hand and readily available in your piloting area, and that's what's different.

Right? And that's what's different. We have officers at two AM driving fast to go get the burglar, popping open a drone, and tossing it in the air. Right?

And that works.

You know? That's effective. But that is a whole different mindset and approach than diligently managing airspace with autonomous aircraft.

Yeah. I think that's super helpful. In in the policy that we're going to share around and you'll get a follow-up additional information from Anatanka as well. But you guys have very clearly defined all of this.

There's no room for not knowing what to do with certain things and when to do them. And you know who's responsible for different things. So super important that you consider all of this when you are writing your policy for your program and thinking about it, you know, from the aspect, of course, of safety. So you mentioned your checks at the beginning of every shift or in the morning.

You know, some agencies are choosing to do that on a weekly basis, on a daily basis. They're trying to do it every flight, they're realizing that's not, you know, the right way to get a drone in the air fast. So kind of using yours as a template will be really helpful for other agencies here.

But you've taken you've done all the things. Right? You wrote the policies. You met with all of the people. You engaged with your community. And now you have this, fairly robust DFR program for the size of your agency, and you're you're seeing a lot of great success and great wins out of it.

I brought in this retail theft response at scale because this is where you're starting to see this, like, system wide impact with your agency and your community. So can we talk a little bit about this this whole operation and the impact that GFR has had on it?

Yeah. So I think this kinda goes back to what we're trying to accomplish here originally in the outset of establishing a DFR program is that operational efficiency. You know, that was really our goal in doing this. And I think the example of what you're seeing here is really bringing that all together and saying we're accomplishing those goals.

So we have a regional mall in our city, high amounts of theft and shoplifting, and we partner with a lot of our retailers to do these different saturation details throughout the year.

And what DFR brings to an operation like this in terms of efficiency is we're able to do these type of operations with less resources.

So maybe not as much of a a lean on our patrol assets where the drone can kinda fill some of those gaps. But also, what we're doing is the drone and its ability to to capture things and get to scenes fast is really reducing the amount of open cases that our detectives have. So we are making arrests in more arrests in real time because the drone is getting there, capturing the evidence we need to do that, and we're arresting people right at the front end rather than having to do a bunch of follow-up on the back end prior to DFR to try and get these same individuals into custody.

Yeah. I think, you know, this is obviously just one small story of how this has made an impact for your agency, but it's kind of all of the all of these things coming together to do this well and effectively and seeing the impact in your community. And measuring that impact of your program is extremely important.

You don't wanna just go out and deploy DFR. You wanna make sure that you're proving to your community that it's doing the things that you said it would do, whether it was, you know, a presentation you did to city council, and you said this is the impact it will have on our patrol operations and ultimately crime in our community. But this is also how you sustain the program. Right?

So showing the value of your program as you guys have done recently and and put out these metrics. You know, we said it would do these things, and here's the actual concrete numbers of what it has done. And making sure you're using things like a post flight report to track these metrics and potentially to identify trends. So this is also a space where you can realize, you know, there are opportunities to use the drone in ways or calls for service that maybe you hadn't anticipated, but you're able to track different trends and opportunities for your programs with these metrics as well.

And you guys have done that extremely well.

I wanted to add this quote in here before we get to a lot of questions and comments that we have from the webinar. But you guys talk about using this as an infrastructure for the city, which is something that we, very much believe in. Right? Drone as first responder has been very specifically geared toward law enforcement, but there are obviously so many other departments within a city that can use drones. Can you guys just touch on this concept and your idea here for using DFR beyond police operations?

Yeah. So I'll tell you the biggest group that likes these aircraft outside of the police are our firefighters. So something we didn't expect necessarily. We knew there was room for that.

But just speaking with them and seeing how they are using the footage to change their fireground tactics, Pretty impressive. So, you know, fire chiefs coming in and are talking to, you know, fist bump after a house fire because the drone helped reposition their firefighters. So that's great.

Our communications department. You know, you're you know, you're paying a drone operator to come do promotional video.

That can that can add up. So being able to alleviate some of those I'm not a, you know, expert cinematographer. However, we can get some of that basic aerial footage that they need to monitor construction zones and do Facebook posts, things like that. Public works for solar panel installation.

We can check the progress of that, construction. It's really been kind of remarkable, to have people from the city that I haven't even ever talked to in my eight years here coming over, and they're just amazed of how quick we can answer their questions for them. So it definitely builds goodwill internally, and then also positions those leadership, like the city manager, the city council, and the mayor to see just a wide ranging impact this technology can have. Yeah.

It's all what you just said, Naren. It's about sustainability.

So making sure that this is benefits for the entire city really helps us sustain what we're doing here.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think for those of you attending today, if you think about DFR programs beyond kind of just call for or response to calls for service for patrol operations and you think about the other departments in your city and or county that could use them, it will help you kind of build your program and grow at a faster scale than you would otherwise.

We're gonna get into some questions here. So if you have some, please go ahead and drop them. We have just, you know, just over ten minutes to go through some of them. So, guys, I'm gonna hit you with some of these here. So before launching your GFR program, how far out did you prepare or look for your pilots?

Well, I think we're pretty fortunate with we had existing staff that could kinda just add responsibilities to their job roles. So, you know, Gareth being one of them and then another employee that helps with that. And they came with their own skill sets, and we were lucky enough that we we had had them already on staff prior to starting a DFR program.

See. So we have a comment from a drone program supervisor, a sergeant out of Bloomington Police Department, that they have a lot of the same language in the Illinois statute. I've heard that many, many times. And they're installing three docks on the rooftop in August, and they think that the statutes will help guide newer usage. Any thoughts or comments on that?

Yeah. I would say, it certainly takes out, some complexities. So, you're able to trace that back. I would say, our state statute restrictions, if you look at the the plain language, like Jason talked about, the interpretation, it's gonna cover most of what a law enforcement agency needs to do. So there's some apprehension, some fear, but when you just step back and look at its utilization and understand the technology, I would agree with that comment for sure.

Yeah. And I would say, if I'm interpreting it right, too, like, lead to changes future changes.

Those discussions we've had very recently with some other state agencies about what do we need to change in the statute to make it more agreeable to DFR. So I know that there's some brainstorming about how to approach that with the legislature, but, yeah, ours our drone statute wasn't written for DFR either.

You know, it it was it was made time when, you know, drones were very new and not well understood. It it needs some updating, and I think what we're doing is and then and the more agencies that come on board with this, it will lead to some changes.

Absolutely. And you guys are doing the groundwork by building those relationships, which is gonna help push things along as well. You mentioned the twelve categories. Which of those twelve categories applies to low level crimes, such as retail theft, or mid level incidents, such as suspicious persons or prowlers?

Yeah. So, in particular, one of our reasons, to fly is reasonable suspicion of criminal activity in a public area. So, of course, like, parking lot that the public has access to is public area. Right?

So in some ways, the statutory language is beneficial to us where they didn't the legislature didn't write public property. Right? They were public area, which is a key legal distinction. So we fly under that for most of those calls.

I think one way to frame it or look at it is if an officer is en route and is going to make contact with an individual, you've probably already reached that threshold. Right? So nine one one response is already initiated. Reasonable suspicion, as all the law enforcement officers online know, is is not that insurmountable of a bar.

Yeah.

And that was one of the points too that we needed clarification on because there was a lot of disagreement on what that actually meant with the terms of public area and what that would allow us to do.

And part of those discussions we had is everyone came to an agreement on what public area is as Garrett described it. So that was one of those early things too that let's make sure we really understand what that means and can agree on it before we start applying it, DFR to it.

Yeah. Absolutely. Of the twenty percent of the calls cleared without a patrol response, what were those types of calls?

Yeah. Many of them are, fire calls. So, historically, our, procedure as a and many departments in our areas, of course, dispatch a police officer in in con conjunction with fire units. So apartment fire alarms, smoke scene, things like that.

So a lot of those are cleared by the drone now in conjunction with the fire department, control assets. Additionally, another large larger group is suspicious activity calls. So, you know, think things about a suspicious car at a park. Well, the drone can get there in forty five seconds, stay in the parking lot.

The car is gone. Right? Unfounded. The squads can cancel.

You know, people doing donuts. Some of those low level, I would say, you know, misdemeanor, petty misdemeanor, or disorder type things, that's where we're seeing the best, ability to cancel those officers.

Yeah. And we're seeing that consistently across the board, from agencies that are flying DFR, and it can be you know, there are a lot of agencies that are only flying to high priority calls for service. And so they, in turn, are not clearing calls for service with a drone, typically. If they are, it's, you know, one, two percent of their calls. But then there are other agencies who are very trying to, you know, resolve some of those low priority calls, and so that's what's kind of creating the difference here between an agency that's one percent calls cleared versus, you know, forty, forty five percent calls cleared.

And I think an additional point that goes along with that is, the drone is never telling the officers to clear. Right? So that's something that we really we are civilian pilots, intelligence professionals. We're not police officers.

So So we will give that info. We will make our recommendations. But at the end of the day, the twenty year cop that knows that neighborhood might wanna get his own or her own set of eyes on that, and that's completely fine. That is a cultural shift in the department that needs to occur, and it depends on officer.

There's so many factors. So I just wanted to call that out because as agencies utilize civilian remote pilots, that is a discussion that will need to be had. Right? The left and right limits of what, those individuals can can do and how they can guide the officers to the right decision.

And that's a topic that a lot of people are having these days. You know? Do you have to use commission? Can they be a civilian?

Where do we find these civilians? Who do we hire for this? There's, like, a lot of debate in the DFR space around this. And I would say, collectively, agencies that are flying Skydio DFR kind of do all of it.

Right? You guys are a great example of civilian. There are some who only do commission. There are some who are actively working with, you know, their tech high school, tech community colleges to bring kids out into law enforcement world to be pilots.

So lots lots of other things to chat about there. We'll have to schedule another webinar. Someone here would like, from Auburn Police Department would like more information on the g s GIS software that you use for weather and NOTAMs and TFRs. So, hopefully, I can get that from you guys, and we can pass that along in an email after.

Yeah. For sure.

See?

In your policy, who makes the decision to launch a drone for a call to service? Does the pilot or does a supervisor need to approve every flight?

So the individual pilot is in charge. So we have some, you know, references available. The pilots are are trained on the requirements, so it's up to their discretion.

You know, that's true whether it's a a DFR or a patrol drone. These individuals, we want trust. Right? We trust them with the safety of our communities, so we're confident with the proper training, they'll make the right decisions.

Excellent. How does weather play a part in your DFR program?

Yeah. Minnesota's got weather. That's for sure.

In fact, we're looking at more snow, which, neither of us are excited about here this With that being said, this winter is our first winter we've had operations in a northern wintery climate, and I can only think of five times that we were actually down due to weather. So very capable aircraft. The, launch sites, the docks, no issues whatsoever with the weather. So when we're talking about weather constraints, it's generally for us, you know, a heavy snowstorm, which usually passes within twelve hours, so you're down a day, or, low clouds. Right? So then you have the icing threat. So we we had some, know, adverse weather to work through, but I was actually this winter and hopefully the next, not too not too bad.

Yeah. The cold weather, you know, we had some pretty cold days that kept us down.

Yep.

I think we flew in, like, negative five or six degrees, so with no no issues.

And and that will reduce your battery life as I'm sure everyone is aware. But, you know, you get there in a minute, and then, even if your flight time is reduced by four or five minutes, most of our flights are only thirteen minutes. So we have plenty of time anyway, whether it's good weather or not, because we're getting that initial info to the officers, and they usually are there by thirteen minutes. If not, probably an issue.

Awesome.

So there's a question on whether or not you can send your SOPs for drone usage. We will follow-up with an email with all of the information that Minnetonka obviously puts out very publicly, and they are more than happy to help you develop your policies and talk through your DFR program along the way as well. So we're here for building relationships.

There's a question here about and I can kind of take this.

And if you guys have something to add, please feel free. What are the additional costs for DFR besides the actual cost for the doc and and things like that? So, obviously, there is infrastructure that has to go in place. I think what we're seeing, more specifically, one of the biggest costs of a DFR program is staffing.

Fortunately, you know, we have recently our agencies have recently received multidrone operation waivers, which means one pilot can fly up to four drones, which is helping part of that problem. You know, most agencies have a staffing shortage. And then if you go in and say, now you need additional people to potentially pull off the street to be pilots, that doesn't work out so well. So that is one of the biggest costs of a DFR program beyond all of the hardware, but there definitely is some infrastructure that you have to put in place.

And we have all the teams that will help you walk through this prop as well. I don't know if you guys wanna throw anything in there.

Yeah. And site prep is a big one. You know, you gotta get power up on the road and low voltage.

That was some additional costs and some training costs too just to get the pilots trained.

Yeah. That's awesome. So, yeah, there's definitely more beyond the hardware, but we can walk you through it and and make sure you're fully aware of that before you kind of jump all in.

We are at the end here. There were a couple other that I think we have answered in the chat for you regarding kind of waivers and some other operation stuff. But, if I did not get to one of your questions, the team will reach out to you after this webinar. This has been recorded if you need to go back and look at anything, and we will follow-up with some more information from my wonderful friends at Minnetonka PD. Guys, I really appreciate your time. This has been super helpful.

For all the times I heard, you can't have a DFR program in Minnesota or Illinois. This has been super helpful for those agencies understand that you absolutely can. You can have a lot of great success with it. So I appreciate both of you.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Alright. Thanks, everyone. We appreciate you hanging out with us today. Take care, and stay safe.