How OKCPD Paved The Path to Drone as First Responder

The OKCPD has implemented a drone program in which patrol officers are equipped with drones for rapid response to calls-in-progress in a method known as Patrol-Led Deployment. An advanced and effective UAS program in law enforcement, OKCPD is paving the way for other agencies to build drone programs at scale, gain actionable insights from aerial intelligence, and increase safety for first responders and the communities they serve. Paving the way to automated dock-based Drone as First Responder (DFR), join this session to learn about their program, their future with DFR deployments, and the effectiveness of drones in real calls for service through case studies.

Alright, everyone. I know we have some more people funneling in, and we're bringing chairs for those of you in the back, but welcome.

Hope you all enjoyed the keynote. My name is Noreen Charlton, and I lead public safety strategy and marketing here at Skydio.

Really excited today to have OKC PD in the house to talk about their, path to drone as first responder. They have been a customer of Skydio for many years now, and have really led the way in what we call patrol led deployments. But they have, in recent months in the last year, moved into a patrol led drone as first responder when we introduced x ten, and then moving into dock based drone as first responder as well. So I'm going to bring them up here to introduce themselves, and, we will have a q and a session at the end.

So if you have any questions, just go on hold on to those for me. We are live streaming this as well. So we'll just make sure that when we do the q and a, we make sure you have a mic so that everybody can hear your question on the live stream. So with that said, gentlemen, you wanna come up?

It's not like you haven't heard from me already a lot, but I'm Jason Buswick, captain over IT for Oklahoma City Police Department.

I've been doing over IT since about two thousand thirteen.

And we got in the drone space. You heard that at the keynote. But what I didn't say is, as we as I was doing this, I went out to my pod of people who work with me and work for me. Said, hey. Anybody familiar with drones?

You know, do y'all know anything? And Dax went, kinda.

My my exact answer was they fly? Yeah.

So You're it.

You lead the way. But, it's been good.

And Dax likes to talk. I really don't, so you're gonna hear a lot from him.

Yeah. It's still morning. So good morning. Dax LaPorte, Oklahoma City Police Department, just shy of twenty eight years now.

I've been in the police IT for going on right at twelve years. So I was there just a little bit before captain Busser captain Busser came over to well, I hear too many people call you on the phone and use that terminology.

But as captain Busser said, you know, once this became available and an option to us, we kinda tag team projects within our office.

He said, it's yours. And what he didn't know at the time is in high school, I did my ground school. I did my private pilots with the intent of flying.

OUROTC changed my mind on that whenever they said fall of ninety one. If you're not an Air Force Academy graduate, you're not flying. So I went a different route and have enjoyed my career in law enforcement. So having that background helped me be able to get things started and have the mindset of of, you know, what drones do, what they're capable of, and and being able to employ them actually into our department, is just pure luck, the way that we've been able to manage things.

We are extremely fortunate, and we have had and and I hope that it remains this way. We've had support from the top down. We just had a chief that retired that was very, very tech driven.

And, you know, he he would bring ideas to our office or captain Buster would bring ideas to him. If it had anything to do with tech, he's like, go for it.

And so that's bringing us into December of twenty one. We took delivery of sixteen Skydio drones, Scott sixteen Skydio x two drones.

And although I'm the voice and, managing the program, the original concept is truly captain Busert's, vision.

As he said in the keynote, you know, there's a lot of agencies that have drone units, and, you know, I commend y'all for that. If you're trying to get into the space and that's all you have at the time, by all means, go for it. Don't don't sell yourself short, and don't take take advantage of everything that you can that you can get a hold of.

But our patrol led model, again, was captain Bussard's mindset. It's the officers that are stirring the stuff up that need the help are already on the scene. So it only makes sense to take that Pelican case, put it in the trunk with the officer, send them out into patrol because, as I just mentioned, either they are the ones stirring the stuff up or they are their district and sector partners. Terminology changes within agencies. But they're the ones that are coming to back up the officers, and therefore, you have drones on scene within a matter of moments.

We're fortunate enough that we do have an air support unit. We have three helicopters, but they don't work twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. As of now, that's changing. But even whenever they do work, those that are familiar with the air support units, if the weather's bad like this, they're not getting up. You know, they do a phenomenal job for us. I will never discredit them, but they're they have their limitations that with the drone space, you can get around some of those.

You know, if they're just arriving to work, they have to pull the aircraft out. They have to do a preflight. They have to do get the engines spun up. They have to get clearance for takeoff, and then they have to get to where that scene is.

That is at least twenty to twenty five minutes.

I I can't remember if Jason mentioned it or not, but we're a city of six hundred and twenty square miles. Our helicopter unit's pretty centrally located, but if it's on the outer perimeters of our city, you know, you may be closer to thirty minutes before they can respond.

So And those who had helicopter units, I mean, it was a bit of a challenge at first. There's, you know, fear and misunderstanding on how to work together. But we've resolved that over the last several years, and we actually work really well together now. And and part of the patrol led model is the officers in the field work together all the time.

So, you know, they trust each other. So when one of them their partner's watching overhead, there's a lot of trust. They're saying, hey. Yeah.

You need to make sure you go left, go left, go left. They they they listen and understand, and they know each other's capabilities and how to put the right people in the right positions to do to do the job the right way.

So with the patrol ed model, we're split up into four patrol divisions, Spring Lake in the northeast, Heffner in the northwest, southwest in the southwest, and then Santa Fe in the southeast part of the city.

Our patrol divisions are three shifts each. So four patrol divisions, three shifts each, that's twelve drones that are on each shift at each division at any given time during the day that are constantly out on the streets.

As I mentioned, we started off with, sixteen in our original purchase.

We acquired an additional one or two. I think that may be supposed to be eighteen, but we'll go with seventeen, for our undercover units. Our original deployments were, as I mentioned, one per shift per division in patrols, so that's twelve.

I am also on the crisis negotiating unit, so I kept one with me from a program managing standpoint, doing the software firmware updates, making sure that everything is doing what Skydio says it does, and then sending out the information to the other pilots to get those drones updated.

I put one in our VCAT, which is, some may call it a gang unit. It used to be our gang unit. They did a rebranding and a name change, but the Violent Crime Apprehension Team, I put one in our reality based training unit. So, it's an extension of our training center, our in service training. They formulate training for the officers to get our in service hours, but also having them, you know, with the mindset of drones are coming to the officers, drones are the officers are going to start using the the drones more, incorporating in services using the drone, and then also the obvious of being able to film different aspects and uploading the video.

And then the final one, if my math is right, in our special events unit. So those that manage, the parades the large parades throughout the city, the the, whenever the our Oklahoma City Thunder make the playoffs, they manage the Thunder in the Park, the pregame festivities and stuff like that. But whatever type of duties that special events has typically brings large amounts of people. And so, therefore, having the eyes in the sky and the overwatch, I just thought it made sense to include them.

So from December of twenty one, whenever we went live to present, these stats, I updated to miss Noreen probably about a week ago. So but as you can see, we fly and we fly and we fly.

In just shy of three years, we've flown four thousand seven hundred flights. We've accumulated nine fifty hours. We average four point seven flights per day, twelve point one minutes per flight, and each pilot has an average of about ten hours of flight time per pilot.

We do our pilot training in house.

We did kind of a soft launch, what what I call a soft launch in December of twenty one.

I mean, once you buy sixteen drones, it's not a trial any longer. I mean, you you, but we only trained about twenty people. That's why I call it a soft launch. And and so within December to March the second, those original twelve in patrol you know, the original sixteen that were designated to have the Pelican cases hung on to them full time. So we didn't have full time coverage throughout the city, throughout all of the divisions. But, again, I call it a soft launch, and and we built upon that. And we built upon that, very quickly.

It's not in this presentation, but it's it's important to to speak about that, like, what really blew up our program so fast.

March the second of twenty twenty two, we had an officer respond to just a general disturbance call. I mean, the the officers, the law enforcement in here, past, present, you understand this. You respond to these calls all the time. The officer finds the suspect that he's looking for walking down the road, gets out of his car, approaches him.

And, as he's talking to him, the suspect is bladed to him.

He comes up on him, the suspect is bladed to him.

He's trying to generate some conversation, trying to get some information out of him, realizes he's acting kind of weird. My training and experience is going to kick in. This guy needs to go in handcuffs. We're going to continue this in another fashion. Hey, while I talk to you, I'm going to pat you down, put you in handcuffs. The guy pulled out a gun and shot the officer in the leg.

So, gunfight ensued, suspect ran off, continued to to, to exchange gunfire.

The officer realizing the suspect was far enough away, realized his injuries. He disengaged. He put a tourniquet on himself, called for help, and this is where the patrol led deployment, like, truly took off for us. So we are literally two and a half months into our soft launch, and we had an officer involved shooting. He's struck in a gunfight for his life, calling for help. Within less than five minutes, we literally had two of our drones in the air looking for this suspect that just tried to kill one of our officers.

They find him in the backyard.

One of the tac team operators, did a phenomenal job.

This, at the time, until we get to this, was literally one of my favorite calls that we've done.

TAC team operator was one of the original twenty trained.

He was able to put a stack of officers together in front of the house. This is early technology for Skydio, so they did not have the live streaming capabilities at this point in time.

He shows the controller to the stack. Here is the suspect. Here is his positioning.

Here is his, there are no weapons seen, and walks them across the front of the house. They make a left hand turn. They continually giving the STAC verbal updates, allowing them to slow down, allowing them to be well informed coming into a situation, coming into a suspect that just tried to kill one of us and constantly getting them updates, slowing them down till they make that last corner, right before they make the last corner of the house. Again, his hands are here.

His legs are here. There's no weapon seen. That group of six officers round the corner, they're able to take the suspect into custody, get him the medical care that he needed, and he ended up expiring. But and our officer is fine.

But, you know, in the law enforcement community, especially, there is so much emphasis on de escalation.

And, you know, take that one step further, you know, that's what the public wants the police to do, but the police want to be able to not only keep ourselves safe, but we sign up to keep the community safe too. No matter if they tried to kill us, we're signed up to take care of that responsibility, And, you know, not to say that it would have been done in this situation, but there are situations, you know, the energy is is extremely rampant. The the you know, you've got so much going on. You're you wanna get around to that suspect, and you come around that corner, and you interpret something that could be perceived as a weapon, and we shoot that person or and in any situation similar to this, an officer involved shooting occurs, but there is no weapon. There was no justification for that shooting.

So being able to deploy the drones, being able to have that, you know, the technology we'll we'll fast forward today. You have that live streaming capability that you're streaming that information back to everybody that needs to have those informed decisions.

And, it's been extremely, extremely beneficial to us. So we've operated off of that until last descent, essentially.

And now then, we're moving to, kind of a DFR function.

Again, I give the credit to captain Busser. The patrol led model, has been very successful, working with Skydio, being able to have the the relationships and the conversations.

And once they introduce us to the x two dock, captain Busser said, there's no reason that we can't cover our entire city with this. You know, drone as a first responder is designed to help supplement the short the staffing shortages that you have, but it's also designed to, you know again, from the the law enforcement crowd, you know, how many times do you respond to this particular location over and over and over on the same type of call, the same type of people, and by the time that you get there, nothing's going on.

You you but you have to respond. So, therefore, being able to incorporate the the docs once we were given this information, coming up with the mindset of we're gonna start using the docks to supplement the officers.

And if we can fly a drone in a dock to this call, definitively be able to clear this call, and clear that officer to go take a call of priority, then that drone has absolutely done his job.

And we didn't do it just for police. Yeah. Was there Your fire department can use these drones just as effectively to see what's going on with the fire, how many engines they need to see. Is is there really a fire there?

What's the situation before they get there so they have the right resources? So we've I've partnered we've partnered with our fire department, and we're equal partners in this half and half. They're gonna be able to use them just as much as us. They have guys who we've trained to be able to fly remotely, so they have the tools and the buy in.

And it's always nice to run the fire department out in front of council because everybody loves fire.

And and it just makes life easier for us, but it's also it's a great partnership we have with them. K.

So I've pretty well covered the patrol led deployment.

I'm a little bit out of order with her slides, but I just wanna, you know, make sure I get the point across to you guys.

And it's been mentioned over and over and over the the autonomy of the Skydio drones. And, you know, whenever we were given that option, we tested it. Jason made captain Buster made the purchase.

You know, the emphasis is for us from the law enforcement side is, yes, this is another tool in the officer's tool built, but they need to focus on being police first and not having to worry about being these experienced drone pilots.

Yes. They need to to know enough and be smart enough to operate the drone, follow the rules, the FAA guidelines, the COAs, all of that. But their main goal at that point in time is getting the drone up in the air to get that overwatch, to get that search started or something along those lines. Let the drone work for the officer.

In that situation, it's not just a remote pilot in an office. Our officers can help each other out. From their MDC, they can fly the the drone thirty miles away to help officers who just had somebody run from them and threw the drone up, and they're chasing the guy. And so the you have that partnership when our Arctic is not available. Yeah.

And incorporating the live streaming, you know, as I mentioned earlier, being able to allow us to slow down, being on the crisis negotiation unit, if we're on a full tech team call out, tac team shows up, bomb squad shows up, the crisis unit shows up. You know, even though I'm technically on the crisis negotiation unit, my role over the last well, since we've had the extends, especially, is transitioning more to as soon as I'm there, getting a drone in the air, having the, we're fully integrated with Axon. So having the Axon respond to where the tac team commanders can pull that up and be able to assess the overall situation from the air, adding, additional resources that they can make informed decisions to manage this call out.

So So we always like to include some real life examples. You know, I I walked you verbally through one. Well, this is one that you can actually see. Larceny of an auto, female stole the vehicle, got into a seven minute slow speed pursuit.

Immediately once the drone or immediately once the vehicle stopped, again, the drone was already in the trunk of the car of one of the officers directly in pursuit. We don't have to wait for our air support to get there. Or if, in this case, it wasn't in that officer's trunk, you know, an officer's in pursuit. Everybody's heading that way, so it's gonna be there in a matter of moments.

So he deploys the drone, And again, the de escalation, slowing people, slowing your actions down, slowing the situation down, and using the tools available to you to be able to make well informed decisions.

So, in this particular instance, we're gonna probably lean towards a consumer.

I mean, yes, there is a in the state of Oklahoma, it is a felony to steal a car, but, you know, you you have the offense of of larceny of an auto. But once you deploy that drone and and so let me back up for a minute. You know, twenty almost twenty eight years ago, whenever I hit the streets so our uniforms are opposite of this. Our our shirts are about this color. Our pants are this color. You know, at the end of a pursuit, we're the gray tornadoes. It's how many officers can get up to that car, get their hands on the suspect, get them out, get them into custody, and on their way to jail.

Over the years, everybody has learned that those tactics are incorrect. Officers are getting hurt. Suspects are getting hurt. There's better ways of doing things. So now then, we would work this as a barricaded suspect.

And no better way than deploy a drone to see what this barricaded suspect's body language is. Are there any weapons?

In this particular instance, there there were not. So they were able to, walk up with a, ballistic shield, break the back window, get the door unlocked, get the front door unlocked, get the person into custody.

But, you know, again, just the way that we're able to use the tools available to us.

And we partner with the air our our helicopter unit in these situations as well. They have overwatch on the pursuit, but they can't see in the car like a drone can.

So do using both tools is effective.

K.

As I mentioned earlier, the officer involved shooting call happened to be my favorite call, not because the officer got shot, not because the suspect Yeah. It's sort of twisted, but It it's it's the way that we're able to use the tools and the resources for, the overall outcome.

And and also, like I said, this is truly that particular call is truly what accelerated our experiences, our involvement, everything that amplified from that particular call.

But this one now is my favorite call.

Nine one one call, Subject calls in on himself. He is in a cemetery.

He has a handgun. He's going to kill himself, and I'm gonna kill myself as soon as I see that first officer.

So, we have Tinker Air Force Base that's down in the south southeast section of Oklahoma City.

This was directly across the street from the south fence line of Tinker and just a little bit to the east, I believe.

The officers At the end of the runway.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At the directly end of one of the runways. The officers, get called to this.

Drone, is responding.

While they're out there, they call me. They're like, what do we do? I'm like, you call Tinker.

I'll Google the phone number right now, but you call Tinker Tower and tell them you have an emergency, that you're requesting to put a drone up. And, what's the worst thing to tell you is no? And so we did. We we called Tinker Tower. We said, hey.

We have an attempt suicide. We have a person threatening to shoot himself once the police are visible.

You know, would you mind suspending air operations? You you allow us to put a drone up to handle this call. Man, do whatever you need. Just call us when you're done.

Sweet. Thanks.

Can you reloop that, please?

But in this particular instance, the officers recognized that the cemetery is a wide open area, and so, as you can see, everything along Southeast seventy fourth Street, I know it doesn't mean anything to y'all, but a major east west street is southeast seventy fourth. Once the officer pulls up and clears that tree line, the suspect has told you what he wants to do. So, therefore, they parked literally a quarter of a mile away. I looked at the flight logs. They flew, like, almost fifteen hundred feet to get to the cemetery.

Stayed it, the major intersection, flew the drone, found him, so either the primary officer or one of the the officers on the call.

So the guy called in on himself. She got the call the cell phone number off of the CAD call, called the guy, was able to build a rapport, have a conversation with this guy, did a phenomenal job. And in the meantime, our crisis supervisor said, hey, patrol's working to attempt suicide.

Can we get a couple negotiators to head that way?

A couple of us headed out that way.

At this point in time, you're she's already developed the report. She's already got the dialogue going. We're not gonna step in and interrupt that. We're just there to help coach and stand by at that point in time. She was able to convince him to surrender.

And in order to do so, we told him, we know that you have a gun. We want to see you place it on top of that car. He he complies.

Man, thank you. You know, we're we're here to help you. We're gonna get you all the help that you want.

Just for our safety and yours, lift your shirt up.

Just lift your shirt up to your waistband. Do a three sixty. Let us make sure that you have no further weapons on you. He complies.

He does exactly what he's asked to do. Man, thank you. You know, what we need for you to do now is just walk down to the end of the road. I'm on the phone with you.

I'm gonna meet you down there. And the whole carload I don't know where it cut off, but carload of, four officers pull up. One of them deploys with the shield. They get out.

The guy salutes the drone.

They get him in custody, get him the the consumer mental health care that he needs.

I mean, the the guy like Adam said this morning, you're finding instances where suspects, consumers, are surrendering to drones. I mean, you you can't make this up if it's not, you know, in a video format that you can replay. You know, you try and tell this story, and you're like, no, they didn't.

But, yeah, that that's the the, the results that we're able to get.

So we're moving from the Patrol led model to a Patrol led DFR. Now then, the next couple of steps are as hybrid as hybrid can get.

Whenever I mentioned that Skydio mentioned the x two dock to us, we're like, let's test it. I mean, you you're bringing a product to us. We're gonna test it. We're gonna put it to our put it through its paces.

And, can you go back? I'm sorry.

Our state fair is usually about the second week of September, and, every year, same amount of people, same location, same same amount of days.

Let's use the hybrid method of DFR to patrol the State Fair. So, we set up two docks on top of the Safety and Security Center. We set up remote ops inside the safety and security center.

Skydio helped us get a regulatory Skydio regulatory helped us get a KOA, particularly for this, where we got a two mile radius around the dock.

And in layman's terms, it said, sparsely populated visual observers.

I interpreted that as the officers that I have working the fair walking around this square mile are now my sparsely populated visual observers, and we ran with it.

It. Nobody from the FAA in here. Right? Alright.

So No.

We fully trained them. They were all all up to speed. They they knew what they were doing.

We oh, it captain Bussard is, legitimately correct. At the beginning of each of the fair lineups, we explained to them, hey. We're having this is a trial. We're doing drone ops.

Whenever we say we're deploying a drone, you know, if whatever quadrant you're in, you know, start looking around, be an extra set eye. So we did brief them.

So we ran the fair, twenty twenty three, eleven days, eighty six calls for service, seven missing locates, missing adults, missing children, stuff like that.

You know, it was predominantly successful. So now then whenever I said we're running all hybrid of hybrid, we've got we just finished the state fair on the September the twenty second.

It was successful, but it was challenging.

The the the docks had trouble with the Wi Fi interference, and so we didn't have the level of patrols that we wanted to that we were able to this year. I mean, the the x ten's nine day difference, but Yeah. There was a difference in quality of equipment.

Yeah. Absolutely.

We partnering with Skydio, having their, their resources available to us, they said, we have a Skydio representative that lives in Oklahoma.

We're gonna test something that Adam alluded to this morning in the keynote, helping agencies, you know, that thirty, that sixty, that ninety day mark of having somebody on-site.

Well, we just piloted that and tested it.

We had, one of the Skydio representatives on-site, had a two way radio system separate from the police radio.

The officers would either see a call, hear a call, or just wanna fly, take you up, tell, Chris, hey, we're gonna fly. He powers it on, sets it outside. And now then, we're flying x ten, we're flying DFR.

We're have all of the functionality, the live streaming back to the real time information center, back to the state fair commanders, who whoever that needed or wanted to be able to see the feed had that capability.

And they're flying from both the safety center and the real time incident center. And they would take each other over when they needed to and hand off and they were just coordinate the efforts seamlessly.

Right.

So our real time information center is it's beyond its, concept stage. It it it's functional. We're just not twenty four seven yet. And until we get twenty four seven, as captain Bussard mentioned, my objective is to put the majority of the flight time on them, because I look at it from but we have the capabilities of any officer that's part one zero seven trained, that's been remote op trained, that's in our organization, that has a computer, that has an Internet connection, can be that remote op pilot. But I want to be careful with that, that the officer is in a safe, secure location whenever they stop to commandeer a drone because I don't want them focused here inside their car and and lose track of of what's around them. So my mindset is is pushing the majority of the flying to the real time information center, but that option is available to us should we need them.

And our analysts are civilians who are flying these out of the Arctic, and they've done a fantastic job. They've really bought into the concept.

So, one of our I mean, I think the first one that I know of that we truly, truly use the full functionality of the x ten. We use the full functionality of the real time information center. We have an officer that is, very proactive in his district. He recognizes there's a particular park that is known for criminal activity, gang activity.

He parks his scout car probably four or five blocks away.

He deploys the X-ten, he flies it over, and he's just doing a visual overwatch, and, something catches his eye. He's like, those two people are going to that car. I think I want to try and get a traffic stop on that car.

He calls the real time information center, says, here's my serial number. Commandeer this drone, and I'm gonna get in my car. I'm gonna drive over to try and get a traffic stop.

And he took it one step further that I thought was genius. I guess, maybe in the same situation, I would have thought of it too, but I not for sure. But he made the additional comment to the real time information center. It's like, number one, if I get probable cause, I'm making a traffic stop.

If I get into a pursuit with this car, just go back to the building where I launched from, put it on the roof. We'll get a fire truck to come get it later. I was like, that's freaking genius.

But, anyway, in this case, the suspect stops, and the the drone is overhead the whole time while they make the traffic stop.

They get the driver out, get him in custody, put him in the car, convicted felon in possession of the firearm off of this traffic stop.

So here's the park that he's watching.

So again, at some point in time I've seen this several times but something being proactive and knowing his district, something catches his eye.

He's like, man, I probably ought to make a traffic stop or see if I can find the probable cause to make a traffic stop on this car. And so, you know, it's about this time they're doing the handoff. The arctic is taking over. He's jumping in his car, and he's following every speed limit, every traffic control device to, get to this car that's going in the opposite direction of where he's coming from. But he does manage to catch up to him.

And I really need to pull the report to see what his probable cause was because I just I have the overview of it. I I can't I don't know what the probable cause was, but I do know that there's a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. So, you know, the real time information center, it they kinda condensed the video. But as they made that left hand turn on the traffic stop, the Arctic kinda, hangs a little bit left, cuts over the houses, makes a direct path to the cars.

Once the traffic stop is complete, the suspect's in custody. So this officer is actually training a recruit in this, and they're kinda towards the final phase of training, I'm assuming, by the amount of distance. But once once once the suspect is in custody, you saw him take the controller, and he re commandeers it. He lands it behind his car, get him in custody, and we go on.

Now then, with the announcement of today, who I mean, we were fortunate enough to, you know, as Adam mentioned, you know, they've had some Xtendox out in the wild. I don't remember the dates, but, they brought and they were very I will tell you, they were extremely hesitant to really do this. But they they've they're going through the paces to make their product better, and the only way that they can do it is is to get it out there. So they brought us an x ten dock.

We put it on top of our headquarters building, and Skydio literally not slept, but they camped out on our headquarters roof for a Monday through Friday. And they put it through its paces, said, you know, anything around here that you wanna see, what you wanna do? Like, no. I just I want you to fly it.

I want you to, you know and they were testing the cellular. They were testing the the SkydioLink.

And I think even at this point in time, they were testing the capabilities of what he was talking about, where it would mesh back and forth between cellular and SkydioLink to always maintain.

And so, you know, that's kind of where we're at.

This was last year's stats, three hundred and forty one flights, four hundred and thirty five acres, you know, just shy of a million people in attendance.

So twenty twenty three, Saturday night, the last night of the fair, some person decided to somehow or another sneak a gun into the fair. You can see everybody running. But the the whole backstory of it is, it it came out as an active threat, an active shooter. It turned out to be just a a banger on banger crime, but, you know, you don't know that at the time.

You know, being able to have the the the remote flight capabilities, being able to to expand the use of the dock in that scenario.

Here's the dock testing whenever they camped out on top of our headquarters.

And and this year's stats, it was a hundred and thirty Hundred. Twenty nine flights and thirty two hours of flight time. So they were used quite often.

Yeah.

And, you know, Jason already made the statement. But, you know, hundred and something flights, thirty two hours, over eleven days, forty one patrol election patrols, thirteen disturbances, thirteen missing.

They located a traffic collision.

They located an assault, domestics.

But one of the things that that captain Bussard alluded to in the in the keynote is this is the first year I mean, we we have a significant incident that they post every day, and and they did a fair summary that there were no auto burglaries and no stolen vehicles that occurred during the fair. And some of that is contributed to, you know, if you have not flown the Skydio x ten and you have not flown it with the visible night sense, they know it's there. And to the extent of when I'm flying on a tac team callout, I'm at a hundred and fifty feet in the air, and I'm orbiting or manually flying this location.

And I have the tac team you know, whenever we say we have the house surrounded, we have the house surrounded. And the tac team operators in the backyard are, like, who's flying the drone? You're lighting us up. I'm I'm at a hundred and fifty feet, and the tac team operators are saying that they're lit up.

So as they're doing these patrols and the extra patrols, and you've got this white light that's just zipping all around through the parking lot, they know it's there, and I absolutely contributed to the the deterrence of this year.

That's it for me.

We have, like, three minutes. So Yeah. Let's let's get to questions.

Yeah. Does anyone have any questions? I'll just come over with the mic so that we can catch you on the livestream.

Just on the comment you made about the tac team, I am curious when you started integrating drone response, how did you introduce it to patrol, or overcome, like, maybe any resistance to people who didn't understand the capabilities or the possibilities with the drone response?

From from the patrol side of it, I I think there's two questions. I understand that there's two questions. But from the patrol side of it, yes, most of the pilots that we selected are of the younger generation.

But, you know, one of the things that I've mentioned earlier, not here, but in other speeches, the like, I've got almost twenty eight years on. And, you know, I'm in the IT world, so I'm a little bit different. But there's other officers that are out of my class that still work patrol, that have only done patrol their entire life, and it's like, well, that's not how we do it. They were doing it this way. We've done it this way forever.

They they actually embrace it. It may have been a little bit slower, but one of the the slides in there, you know, recognizing the benefits, they truly have embraced and they recognize the benefits of, man, I could really use it. My my old knees, my belly, I'm not running after them. Get me a drone.

Let's go chase this. Let's go look for this guy. So in that aspect of it, yes. You know, it's not by design.

We don't know the pilots, that we have the division majors send us names, and then we train them off of that.

So it it's not by design that we don't select one demographic over another. It just happens to be that way, but the older generation does embrace it. And from the tac team side of it, we've we have brink lemurs. So they already had they they had a DJI that they, crashed into a tree.

And didn't get fixed.

Yeah.

But so they had a DJI, Mavic two, maybe.

We've had Brink Lemur one. We have Brink Lemur two. So the tac team had already incorporated the drone use into their own, but having me and the x ten having not necessarily me as a a whole, but it's more often than not me, but having me bringing my drone pilots to a call out or having a drone pilot that's trained on the call out and being able to delegate, it's like, okay. You're flying.

Either you here's your controller, work it out with remote, with the Arctic, but you're flying this call, here's the house, do what you need to do, and knowing that they know what to do. And then it allows me to do other things.

Our tac team I mean, September the second, just twenty three days ago, we had a tac team call out.

Suspect shot at the landlord. He shot at the neighbors.

Patrol responds. We've got a barricaded suspect.

It, you know, we tried all the de escalation techniques that we can do. We call him out on the PA. We try and call the phone.

We introduce gas.

We introduce the robot. We find out that he had crawled up in the attic. And while I'm doing a battery swap, I learned something. I've not never built the house, but the the gable.

So, like, the hit there's hip roofs and there's gable roofs. So, like, the the siding on the gable, the dude had kicked out from inside the attic.

And, of course, I'm on a battery swap. The tac team operators are like, what was that noise? And the tac team commander is used to seeing my livestream, and he's yelling at me, get me a drone over there. We need to see. And so I get it up, and soon as I get back into position, you know, he leans out, fires a shot out the front of the house at the bearcat and the rook.

And so then, you know, tactics are changing a little bit. But, you know, I keep keep an eye on, the the suspect. I'm live streaming back to the tac team commanders, and, he ends up leaning out and firing another shot. He jumps down. As he comes around, he encounters the tac team members that have the house surrounded, and and they stopped end?

Now people are raising their hand?

The end? Now people are raising their hand.

You mentioned that your fire department is is completely on board with you guys and y'all are splitting it. Are y'all splitting the funding?

Or how are you funding your programs?

Yes.

Hold on one second.

Can I just repeat that for the live stream?

I was gonna do it. Go ahead.

The question was about splitting funding with fire and how you're doing that.

Right. So, yes, it's fifty fifty. They're paying for half. We're paying for half. Straight down the middle.

Are you guys using alternative grants, or is it strictly municipal funds?

Municipal funds.

My question's around, community engagement, feedback you got from them when you initiated the program, pushback, and how if you guys do a transparency page, or how do you get your information out to the public if they're looking for it?

So, Captain Bussard just incorporated it in the Axon contract. We we have nine city council.

There's seven.

Seven. Most everything is a four to three vote. There's four that like us, three that don't like us.

And the mayor of the time Yeah.

You know, it didn't say drone. It didn't say s u a s. It just said something.

No. It said UAS.

Oh, it did? Yeah. Okay.

But, anyway, the black line in a twenty page contract, UAS.

The the fact that they didn't see it, I mean, we we presented it to them. They signed off on it, and we started rolling with it.

As far as the we have a very active, some use a PIO, some use office of media relations. Ours is now office of media relations.

Like that tech team call out that I just described, they just released yesterday.

They push everything out on social media. They, you know, we we use the transparency in that aspect. We do you know, I I like the transparency page concept. I've had other agencies talk to me about it.

I'm not interested in trying to do that myself.

If Skydio's dashboard does it automatically, I will absolutely roll with it, but it's not something that I want to maintain. I've got enough going on.

Anybody in our city can request the video and state law requires us to release it.

So it it we're we're not gonna hide anything from anybody on what we're doing Yeah.

On that.

But, you know, as he alluded to, we've been very fortunate for many, many years.

We've we have the overall support, of our community, of our community leaders, of our department leaders.

And I think that, you know, from a overall drone program perspective, we've really, really tried to make sure we did the right thing because, you know, I only know it from the law enforcement perspective. But you get something that's really cool out there, and you go live with it, and somebody does something to screw it up, and they take it away from everybody.

And so It just takes one bad incident.

Yeah. So we we train hard on you do it for business purposes only under these guidelines, and we we've looked at that pretty well.

K.

Alright. Thank you so much for your presentation and all of the information that you had on your drone program.

Thank you.

And I think it's lunchtime, so see you in the next breakouts.