How to Get City Officials Aligned for Your Drone as First Responder (DFR) Program

Alright. Welcome everyone. My name is Phil Gonshak. I am the director of strategic initiatives here at Skydio.

Today, we're moving beyond a bunch of buzzwords, and we're actually gonna be talking about what's happening right here in our own backyard here in the city of San Mateo, California, where drones are really already part of their public safety team, but more importantly, gonna be talking about how that vision could someday be part of a bigger team, not just with public safety. I am super blessed here, to have my friend, Alex Khojikian, from the city of San Mateo. He is the city manager for that city, but he's got a a ton of background that kind of goes before the city of San Mateo. City of San Mateo, just so you all know, is about a hundred thousand people.

And, he is gonna be joining us here to have this conversation with me to have topics of conversation really related about not just his decades of experience in in leadership and city management in the Bay Area, but more importantly, how he and his chief of police and his staff drove that smart tech conversation into the public safety environment. And then what does that look like in the future for he and his team and anybody else that's watching to develop those kind of conversations and tools and techniques about drones or drones as first responders in their cities and their municipalities?

With that, Alex, would you mind giving us just a brief rundown about who you are and how you're happy to be here with us?

Yeah. No. Thank you, Phil, so much. And just it's great to have Skydio here in our city of San Mateo.

You know, your your headquarters located here. So just a little bit about me. I've been in local government for a little over twenty three years. The last two years, I've been, the city manager here in with the city of San Mateo.

And before that, say seventeen of my twenty three years, I've been working in the city manager's office in four different cities throughout California as well. So excited to be here and talk about technology and, real time information centers.

What were those four cities?

So the four cities before that was Redwood City, is where I was at previously, just six miles down the road from here. Then I was out on the coast side in Half Moon Bay. And then, before that I was down, in, Paramount, California, actually down in Southeast LA County.

Alright. Another Southern California local native to me here as well. I'm from Long Beach area. So we talked a little bit about that Paramount area in Disneyland and Yeah.

Anaheim. That's where I'm from.

It's good to have some peeps from back there.

Alright. My background, as most of you or some of you do know, I'm a police officer at heart. I, grew up throughout two organizations, really, the city of Tempe, Arizona, the city of Seal Beach Police Department, where I left there as a chief of police and became a county manager actually in Summit County, Colorado, which is up in Breckenridge, and then left there and became director of strategy for for the city of Denver Police Department where ultimately led me into the career of drones and drones as first responder here at Skydio. So we're gonna go through a quick slide deck.

As you all can see, on the screen there, that's my name and and, a much prettier and handsome, more picture of Alex than me. And so we're gonna kinda go through a quick series of slides about the city of San Mateo. We are here and not just the city of San Mateo, but but also Skydio. We're trusted by over eight hundred public safety agencies currently, and that is increasing almost daily as we continue to roll out new products, which we'll talk a little bit about.

A lovely little quote there from our friends down at Miami Beach Police Department, but really what he talks about, my friend Anthony Loperfido says that, when someone is in distress or needs assistance, our drones are first responders as well, and they can get out there with the cops and give us an eye sky full of what that perfect perspective is. And so when we look at municipalities or counties or agencies or governments, we look at dock based systems. And what that is is we put our drones inside of a dock or called a Skydio dock, and our Skydio x ten flies out of that dock autonomously and can respond to different calls for service and incidents throughout your areas.

And so when you have this dock based system on your screen here, what we're talking about is you can respond to fires, you can respond to traffic collision, you can respond to calls for service or foot pursuits or whatever it is your law enforcement or public safety officers are responding to. But holistically, what we really like to do is get to this point someday where we're not just doing public safety and emergency management, but talking about things like utilities or boat rescues or, parks and recreation or streets or roads and maintenance and things of that nature. So really that's our end game and our goal to make this not just a public safety asset, but more importantly infrastructure for governments to utilize in their equipments every day almost like a fleet vehicle.

So we're seeing a ton of real results. We've just put a couple up there from our friends at San Francisco Police Department, Lakewood, Redmond, and Oklahoma City. A ton of different statistics out there, but things like San Francisco seeing a forty two percent reduction in auto theft. We're looking at the city of Lakewood, Colorado, where they've had a forty one percent call for service cleared without even patrol.

That means forty one percent of their calls for service in their police department are responding with nothing but a drone, not even a police car, and clearing that call for service so that those police officers have other abilities to do or other jobs to do and respond to and have time to respond to emergencies much quicker. The city of Redmond, Washington has an eighty eight second average response time now, meaning that whatever it was before that has been reduced now to over a minute and twelve, a minute twenty two seconds about. And then forty percent of Oklahoma cities are actually fire related calls.

So we're seeing that integration into fire departments.

Now we're talking about city of San Mateo here. It's at the at the very low end of our our screen here that I put on the on the board here. It's sixty thousand annual calls for service. But yesterday, I was talking to your lieutenant, and and lieutenant tells me that and this lieutenant Riccardi tells me that you guys are up to almost ninety thousand calls for service.

That's about seventy or so that are actually called in and then another twenty thousand or so that are actually called in for the police department. So seventy thousand from citizens and twenty thousand yeah. Very proactive response. And the reason I put this up here is we're also in the city of New York where it's seeing calls for service in the upwards of seven million calls for service.

So it doesn't matter how big or small your agency is. This topic of conversation is relevant no matter where you're at.

City of San Mateo, we talked about this really briefly in the beginning. A hundred and five thousand people. Land area is about twelve square miles. Is that right?

Yeah. Not counting the water.

Not counting the water. Correct? Largest city in the county, centrally located between San Francisco, Oklahoma or excuse me, Oklahoma.

Okay. And San Jose.

Specifically, the police department. You guys have a hundred and sixteen police officers. You got forty professional staff. Your annual calls for service, again, are somewhere between eighty to ninety thousand.

Custom airspace certificate is a certificate of waiver, and that basically is cut through the FAA, and it sells where you can and cannot fly for the city.

She just got born.

Just say.

You got twenty pilots. That means that they're all FAA one hundred and seven certified, so they're they're guaranteed and capable of flying in your city. And so those really come down to what is important for the city of San Mateo. We'll get into this as part as the conversation is concerned, but number of Doronos first responder calls for service that they've responded to since its implementation of July one twenty twenty five.

Now you guys had a beta for a little bit before that, but now you're on the general availability list and you guys actually have your drones down. You're down or excuse me. You're up to drones for service, calls for service, about six hundred calls for service so far this year. Cleared about seventy of those calls without patrol responding to them.

Response times used to be between anywhere from six to ten minutes and are now down to two to three minutes with drone as first responder, and you're flying almost fifteen to twenty flights per day, which is phenomenal. So pretty good roundabout for the city of San Mateo. Couple of our products, we will talk a little bit about that, but we just released our f ten, which is the fixed wing on either the left or right of your screen depending on how you're looking at it. And then the r ten is our indoor drone.

You'll talk to my staff a little bit later if you wanna know more about that. So with that, let's get right into kind of our topic of conversation today. Sound good?

Yep. Sounds great.

Alright. So if you wouldn't mind, just we're we're really gonna try and stay away from question and answer and more of have, like, this conversation that you and I drive from. And what I'd really like to dig into is how does it look from the city manager's perspective and the chief of police perspective and a police officer's perspective? Where did that conversation for the city of San Mateo when you first begin about drones or drones as first responder in San Mateo?

So the city has a rich history of working with drones and having drone operations, not a, you know, DFR program, but overall utilizing, drones to to help clear, calls for service, depending on the type type of call. But, really, it was about a year and a half ago, I believe, we did a staffing study, resource study for the police department and presented to the city council. And, when we looked at just what the needs are for the department as we are a growing community too, so we're looking at adding potentially up to about nineteen thousand new housing units over the next twenty years as part of our general plan that was just, adopted by our city council about a year and a half ago. And so one of those things is just how can we meet the growing needs of this community.

And one of the things that I experienced was is I asked the chief to go out on a ride along, actually. And so going out on a ride along with our great, police officers, I realized just how depending on the call, it can tie up a whole bunch of officers in an area. And just seeing the amount of resources that it takes on that specific call, and what does that mean then for the rest of the city overall? And then add to that just, the growing needs of the calls for service in this organization or in this community.

You know, having that discussion, the chief came to me and said, hey, Alex, you know, there's this opportunity is looking at the DFR program, as a way to be a force multiplier to try to meet the the needs. And, you know, we have limited resources, of course. It's always challenging for us as a city, but how might we be able to leverage technology to close that gap as well. And so that's kinda where we started talking about, the DFR program.

And so nineteen thousand units, that equates to what generally population? Maybe two, two and a half per hour?

Unit. Yeah. So you you can see it scale up from there.

Yeah.

So you're gonna scale up almost, what, thirty eight to forty five thousand people maybe within the next twenty years.

I don't know if we go you know? I I'd probably have to go look at my documents again, to to really understand exactly the actual numeric number, and that doesn't mean that we're you know, that's just the potential that we can have just from, you know, from a planning perspective and infrastructure perspective. But, yeah, no. We're gonna see, you know, you know, few of that you know, ten thousand or more people coming into this community.

That's existentially a large amount of people, considering the amount of people that are already in the city of San Mateo.

Absolutely. And that's something we have to look at tackling the police chief and I as we look at just from our public safety needs overall.

Yeah. And so your staffing, you're at a hundred and sixteen police officers. You say you're on this call for service. You're seeing these calls for service, which I highly recommend any city manager or city staff do. In fact, we do it here at Skydio, go on ride alongs with our police departments to get an understanding of what it is they're experiencing every day. So thank you for doing that. When you had that ride along with the chief, you came back, what did the chief finally say to you, or what was his pitch?

It was actually with our staff, you know, with our police officers the ride along. No. But in coming back just overall a couple months later, actually, it wasn't just right after that call, but it was, or that ride along. It was just a couple months later just talking about there's this opportunity with the DFR program and just how we can actually one is officer safety.

That's of paramount importance. Right? Our community safety is of paramount importance, but our officer safety is also of paramount importance. And so being able to look at how we can pilot out a program, to be able to use, the real time information center, which includes these drones and be able to, you know, cut down on the response times overall, but then also the officers, knowing what they're getting into and what they're headed into in the call and whether there's the need.

You saw that, you know, seventy other I forget how many percent of the call you just said. Yeah. We didn't have to send resources once we had the eyes in the sky and being able to look down and understand what we're dealing with. And so that really helps then preserve our resources so that we can respond, to the other calls because our staff's going call to call to call.

It's busy out there. And so I think, you know, when when we're looking at the folks that registered for this today, what would be helpful is also having this conversation about how do we get DFR leaders ready to have this conversation. And and one of those things is not just having buy in from your inside your police department, but the external buy in from you as the city manager. How did you take that conversation then to your city council, or how did you broach that conversation with your staff after that conversation started?

So, you know, it already was helpful that the timing was appropriate that we did that staffing study for the police department. And so our city council is very supportive of our police department, and public safety is, once again, a paramount importance for us in this community. And so having that conversation and being able to, you know, use certain cases that our officers have been able to experience of success, not only of their safety but of community safety, it made it a lot easier to, you know, really move in this direction.

And so, you know, your chief or their staff may then draw a staff report up requesting the funding, requesting the equipment, requesting the staff to do it. City manager reviews it. It usually gets presented before city council. They take a vote on it.

Usually has some dialogue in between. Talk about some of those conversations maybe that you had with staff, not just, before those city council meetings one on one with you as city manager, but But also maybe some of those conversations with city council, how did they you said they're supportive of law enforcement, which is great. We love a very supportive law enforcement city council. But talk about that.

Like, how are those conversations?

You talk about you know, obviously, there's some concerns, both pro and maybe sometimes negative, but what did they look like?

Well, really, it's all about education and information right, upfront. And so that was a big thing. And so I had to be educated and informed too, not only by our police chief, but also by our lieutenant, our command staff who have been working with the program and really going over what the benefits are and actually seeing real world case examples of how the drones can really benefit our department, overall. But then from there, I need to be able to speak the language, right, and be able to translate that into layman's terms, just overall for, community members who might ask about these issues, but then also just in talking with our council members and, you know, having the police chief, with me in conversations or having him directly talk to the council members too really helps, because they're the professionals.

They understand exactly, how this meets the operational needs of the department. And so, you know, given that opportunity to be able to explain, all the benefits, of the program, is is huge. And so even before even going to the council, it's really how you go ahead and you got to build trust up front. And so our police department has a good, very, good reputation with our community, a lot of community support, a lot of trust with this community, but they always are really good at communicating and, getting out there in the community, going to where everyone's at and being able to demonstrate, you know, the drone activity, the program, the real time information center, and what the benefits are to our community and overall safety.

The piece you said about education is paramount, right? And so I think what's really important is we've had everybody from police chiefs, city managers, and even city council in the community come here to Skydio and experience our facility, which you even did with some of your staff probably about six months ago, just to take a look at what we're really doing here, what we're trying to do. And I think that educational piece of not just seeing what the drone is, but seeing what it's capable of doing. And then more importantly, seeing and experiencing our staff here at Skydio that really our vision is to make your community safer and help each other with the community finding the tools and the right time to make sure that it's applicable to the tools and the time that they're trying to make sure that we are moving our product forward and having an understanding for safety.

So thanks for that. Let's move into our first real question. How does how does really the city of San Mateo drive technology improvements, specifically you, into digital transformation for the city of San Mateo?

Yeah. So I would say that, you know, we're not just looking for the hottest, latest gizmo, gadget, gadget, what have you in technology. It's really how are we gonna solve real problems here in this community. And that's kind of, really the catalyst in all that we're trying to do and really try to pull back, the layers of the onion and really look at what's the problem we're trying to solve here, overall. And so really here for this program and the real and standing up a real time information center is just really about improving our public safety. How do we make data driven decisions? You know, really streamlining city services overall, and how can we leverage, understand that we have, you know, limited staffing resources, the technology to really help give us the tools that we need to be able to do the jobs, that our police officers have to do day in and day out to service this community and keep it safe.

And data driven decisions, you were an analyst. Right? Yeah. At one point. Yeah.

I think that's really, when we're talking about how to make decisions based on staffing, we talked in the beginning before the cameras went on about data and how important that is as it relates to, one, the amount of money you have, but, two, the amount of staff that you would be able to have, and then, three, the amount you can afford. Right? If you can't afford anything as far as these drones are concerned, then you don't have the staff, and it really doesn't make sense to move forward unless you've got all those things in order. And what's nice about Skydio is that we're giving you the ability to have these conversations with our staff beforehand, before you make the presentations to council so that you're able to see a more holistic picture.

And I really appreciate that partnership that we have with not just you, but your police department staff as well. What do you think's been most, challenging or what do you think's been the most challenging part as far as building support for the projects like drone as first responders in the city hall and within the community? We talked about that a little bit as far as transparency concerned, but what do you what do you think were some of those challenges or surprises?

Yeah. So I think our city council and our community understands and values the importance of our real time information center and really trying to increase our responsiveness. It's all about being a caring and responsive community. That's what I'm trying to drive into the DNA of our organization, and this really leads to that whole being responsive, piece of that.

But, really, the biggest challenge I would say is just making sure that we always have trust and transparency in all that we're doing. Right? And so, one of the big things is just how we communicate. You know?

If people have concerns, really having those conversations.

I would also just just say, you know, being very upfront. I have the real time information center highlighted in a city newsletter that has gone to every doorstep in the city. So literally the Arctic that we have, everyone's on notice in the city, whether it's our residents of every, residential address and every business in the city as well. And so it's something that we're trying to highlight, and totally understand that privacy is of, critical importance. And, you know, there might be concerns around that, but we can go into deeper discussion about that. But just with the automation that we have now, with the new technology and just having ninety degree lenses on the horizon, you're not really looking at anything below where you're going. And so we're just really looking at the event at hand, and just trying to help our officers and help keep safety in this community.

And so drones were never a secret, right? And so I think that when we have those conversations with the communities that we're serving and those folks that we're talking these conversations about is drones are not a secret. We're out there. We're we're telling the community that we have them.

We're showcasing them. We're providing real time information and data that is showing that they're useful in their specific circumstances and then more importantly, relatable. Right? So we try to talk about our students in the community and how they develop relationships with electronics such as drunk.

So what strategies do you think have worked well as far as building that transparency and trust?

So I think it's, you know, our police department really does a good job. They're literally everywhere when you talk about just going out and engaging from a community engagement, you know, forefront of thing they're at the forefront of all that they're doing here. And so we have a great communications apparatus.

We have a great team that engages our community at all different city events, and the drones are out there. And, you know, demonstrations, what have you. It's all out there. It's for the community.

They have a national night out? Of course.

Yeah. No. Absolutely.

Do they throw them out there during that event?

Drones out there too.

That's a pretty cool event.

Yeah. Always fun.

Any areas for improvements in those strategies or things that you can see later on being a developmental idea for it to get more approachable or more developed?

I think that, you know, when we look at just overall, I think the what we're doing, it's just ever changing environment. The technology just keeps keeps moving pretty fast. And so, as we adapt adapt to that and how can we actually utilize that to our benefit and being able to articulate and tell our story, right, of what are some of the successes that we're achieving because of, this technology that we're utilizing and how it's keeping our community safe. I think it's really telling the story. Yeah. The feedback loop, basically.

And so the feedback loop, are you guys using social media to tell someone The social media the social media arm is the big arm, but then I also will highlight if there's, you know, quick wins or big wins, really letting the council know about those as well of just how this, technology is helping us out overall.

And how do you let your councils know? Right? That's another thing we're gonna kind of demystify is the job of a city manager here. How do you let your council know? Is it a phone call?

So I have, you know, I have weekly one on ones with my council members so I can provide them updates when our chief of police at Barberini gives me updates. You know, we'll quickly get that out to them. But also we have a weekly newsletter that goes out to the council as well. And so when we have some great wins, we'll go ahead and get that out there. And usually, you'll hear about it from the community on all the PD social media when we're able to utilize this technology and, you know, help keep our community safe.

Having your one on ones with city council members. Right? Yeah. I think a lot of people don't really even realize that that you probably have at least a weekly standing meeting with every city council member, not just them, but your chief of police and your department staff. Right?

And do you share those wins along with across the board with other staff as well to say maybe someday we could do this in in our departments depending on how it looks?

Yeah. No. Absolutely. And so I think that goes into just bigger, you know, just how we, you know, expand drones to the work that we're doing across the different city departments.

I think this is just really, you know, newer technology. We're using it to, you know, map out some of our road resurfacing projects, you know, looking at just, infrastructure needs. I know community development are you know, I was here for a visit, like you said, six months ago, and it was just amazing because the drone's coming out of the hive and, literally, the the video can go right on the HVAC system, and you can see exactly all the intricacies of that system. And it's like, wow, you know, I wouldn't have to have an inspector up on a roof.

I could potentially utilize a drone to inspect. You know, whether it's roofing or whether it's HVAC systems, hard to reach places, you know, it can potentially help out in the future.

We have earthquakes here in, the lovely state of California. Seismic issues. Yeah. Seismic issues, number of different related problems as it relates to bridges and inspections and and equipment as well. So I think that, you know, utilization of these drones can be profound as we start expanding into the future here of municipal government. So how does your team leverage the drone data for proactive decisions?

You talked a little bit about, what the city and what the police department looks at it as far as going to calls for service, but what do you do with the data?

So really, you know, we're honing in and refining our just approach with the Real Time Information Center. As you said, we've just really formally stood it up, in in July of this year. Looking at just if we approach this looking for fast forwarding to citywide, it's gonna be a discussion really with our department heads to really think about their operations and where might, the drones be able to support, from a staffing perspective to make, you know, their jobs easier, overall, so that we can do a better job servicing our community. So that's something down the line that we'll have those discussions overall from an executive team level.

Yeah. And funding is obviously a challenge no matter what city relating the ability to both have some cost savings, not replace staff by any means, but also augment staff with the tools that can make their jobs a much more relatable tool as far as every single other municipality that's gonna start using drones as well. And so using that data to help them develop their job skills is gonna be pretty, exciting in the in the near future. Yeah. Yeah.

And what my focus is is really looking at how do we, you know, create efficiencies, right, in all that we're doing. And so and how do we streamline our operations overall? And so if this is a tool and a technology that can help us in that way, you know, I'm all for it to really investigate that and explore that avenue further overall. But right now, we've been really focused on that, you know, standing up a real time information center at this point, but that is something that we can we will be looking at in in the future as well since we have the tool.

Since you have the tool. Yeah. And so the real time information center, if you wouldn't mind just kinda hitting on that, what drove that conversation as far as development of it and then the drone piece being integrated into it?

So that all kind of was the full when the police chief and the command staff came came and talked to me, that was kind that was the package you know, the overall package that we were looking at of being able to have that data.

And, really, it's all about starting with the pilot. That's what they did first and foremost and really testing that and being able to utilize, the Arctic and figuring out how it best meets our needs operationally. And so from there then, it was, hey. Let's double down on this, and how does this then become a force multiplier for our department overall.

A couple really good words there. So real time information center is r t I c. That's when he says arctic. That's what that means. When he talks about, augmenting the the police department staff, When you have an arctic, you can bring in a ton of different media into one room, have a ton of different screens with a lot of information or as minimal information as you want, but also broadcast things. And that's one of the things that's really neat about Skydio X ten is we're able to broadcast with a QR code what you're visually seeing on scene.

Have you done that yet or I have, actually.

Yes. No. I have done that. I think it was here, actually, that they did that. Yeah.

You were there. I was there. Yeah. So So one of the cool things about this is as a city manager, as a county manager, when I was there, I I would think that the ability to watch something live, not that you would give any feedback live, but at least the ability to watch it live, an incident unfolding or something of of that nature, that's gonna be a pretty cool experience. Yeah?

I would say, you know, first and foremost, I think it's better for the police chief overall, you know, to let them do do their thing. But if there's, like, a huge emergency and we have to do a response, absolutely. If they wanna send me over the link and so I can actually see so that we can make an informed decision together, with my public safety team, that that is of, huge importance for me.

It's a pretty neat feature. And so when you're talking about partnerships, right, how does that look for Skydio and San Mateo? What kind of partnerships were you guys looking at as far as your growth and success is concerned?

So I think the partnership with Skydio where it's really helpful, one, is you guys are so close to us.

So when we if we ever run into any issues, you know, you you guys are right here. Right. We know where to find you, I guess. Yes. We do.

For some reason.

But yeah. Yeah. No. Exactly. Going both ways. But from a training aspect, I think, you know, being able to have the resources, to be able to, you know, work through how we can better train our staff to be able to, you know, utilize this technology to the utmost, capabilities that it has, I think, is of critical importance.

It's also I know, our lieutenant Riccardi mentioned to me a couple days ago that, Skydio assisted with we had a whole area, of the city. It's called our North Shore View neighborhood, which was under FAA Yep. Limitations of you can't fly there. And so I know that he worked closely with the Skydio team to, you know, break that break that down and be able to give us access and work with FAA to give us the access to a huge part huge swath of our city so we can service them as well.

Yeah. And so when we're talking about the abilities to kinda go back here and look at city uses. What other city uses could you see it be used for someday?

So we have stormwater, issues here, flooding issues. And so, you know, as we prepare for the wet weather season, we want to go and be able to get to those. It's kind of the hard to reach areas. Right?

Eyes that we wouldn't normally have, being able to look at our waterways, our canals, whether it's inspecting our bridges, community development opportunities. I kind of mentioned just road resurfacing resurfacing and paving. When you have to do mapping and really look at it, you can utilize these drones that are really helpful in that. And so there's different ways of being a utility that these, drones and the real time information center can bring to help our staff and our organization make data informed decisions.

I like that. And and building that culture that drones are acceptable in our work every day and not just a piece of technology that's just going to be put to the side because it looked cool when we bought it, but more importantly a piece of equipment that's gonna be continually built upon to make better decisions over there in the long run.

Yeah. I think it goes right back to what I was saying at the beginning is we're, you know, the only reason you know, big thing is is we have to solve real problems. If you're not I'm not doing this for gadgets and gizmos. It's literally how you're gonna help, you know, support my community and our city operations. And so that's what, you know, this is doing for us right now.

How about accountability?

When we talk about drones holding people accountable, holding holding our jobs accountable. When we look at look at our positions and our professions and the jobs that we do every single day, I think this would help build our credibility and hold us a little bit more accountable. Right? When you look at, holding these drones and responding to calls for service and making sure that when our calls are complete and we upload the evidence, that it's used accountable in court processes for evidence against whatever crime that has been committed. What do you think about that?

Yeah. So it's interesting because you talked about National Hideout. And so this past National Hideout, our wonderful district attorney, he always comes every year, to our Martin Luther King Center to our big events. And so I was talking to him and, you know, I was just talking about the drone program and I said, Hey, you know, how are juries taken to these drones?

And he's like, What a great asset. You know, this is really helping, you know, putting, you know, putting, you know, holding bad people accountable, really. And so that's been a big tool, he said. And so juries seem to really appreciate the drone footage and it really helps them, decide on different cases.

San Francisco just had a case with some street racers and some motorcycles that were seized. You talk about, holding the holding those that are committing crimes accountable, I think, is really important. And having that live footage and that live evidence to help our law enforcement officers, write their reports and and prove what's happening not just with their own eyes but with their body cameras and or our platforms here make it a really interesting tool for the future of our conversations. Yep. With new technology, privacy, and transparency at the forefront center, how did you communicate all of that as far as that is concerned with your city council and and other staff?

So it's really, you know, having a transparency page going on online and really showing what our policies and procedures are and the usage of, this technology, as well as, listing the number of flights and what the flights are for, is something that we wanna be very transparent about. And it goes to just what we were doing with, you know, making sure that our Arctic, know, letting our whole community know in the newsletter, literally paper, you know, hard mail to every single address in the city. Knowing about our real time information center as part of our overall city newsletter was very important.

And then also just constantly communicating, educating, and informing, our council members, but then also our social media presence. We have, I think, over twenty thousand participants just on our different platforms. And so being able to get the word out there, we don't shy away from letting the community know about just the utilization of our drones to, you know, really increase public safety and response times to our community.

And is your transparency dashboard, does it have the mapping ability so that the community can see where the drones are flying? Do you know?

I don't know if we're just there yet, up up on that. But I just know that we have listed the flights and what the flights were for Got it.

At this moment. And then does your staff have a future idea, or do you have a idea for your future staff to make presentations on any of the data, or has that come about yet?

Or have you No.

Absolutely. That that is something that we will want to you know, it's all about performance metrics. Right? Correct.

And utilization. I need to know, you know, what is my return on investment? And the community needs to know what's their return on investment. Is taxpayer funds paying for all this?

Yeah. So, you know, wanna make sure that we understand how this is supported and helping us out. And so that's one of the expectations that I have as a city manager, but also the city council and the community so that they know exactly how this technology and the price that we're paying, for the for the service and and this technology, how is it keeping them safe.

And we talk about KPIs. Right? Key performance indicators.

So things like real time response times for your public safety officers and emergency management scenes, the number of missions maybe that you've completed, some of the safety improvements that you've made, and any other thoughts that you can Those are the three three main main but it's also telling the story, you know.

So it's, you know, I'll give an example. It was a couple months ago, we I believe it was a robbery suspect or, you know, it was it was a suspect, and, it was late in the evening, and it was a multi agency call for service and ended up in a wooded area in Belmont. And so the amount of resources that you would have needed to catch, that suspect, it might not have even catch the suspect at all, but having the drone and having the heat sensing on it, they quickly could just use two officers to go and apprehend, the suspect, with ease and, you know, approaching it from a safe standpoint.

And how many officers did they say they would have needed normally for that call?

You gotta ask. Yeah. But I know it'd be way more if you can do perimeters in a wooded area, you know. I think it'd be way way more, than just two officers that I saw on the screen.

Yeah. And so for those who don't know what a perimeter is, when somebody escapes, there's usually a four corner perimeter. You'll put an officer or a staff with their lights and sirens both are sorry, not their sirens, but their lights at four corners of where that last person was seen. Right?

And so then you have an officer or two usually searching somewhere in between there or maybe a k nine unit. Now you're up to six or seven police officers, not including all the tech and the other things that would be called out for versus having a drone right there on scene, being able to search those areas with things, like the the ability to see during the night and seeing heat capturing and stuff like that. So remarkable ability to do different things that this thing, in my past twenty five years of public safety, I've never been able to do other than hands on work with police officers and other staff.

How about feedback? What kind of feedback are you hearing from city staff and, the police department even then in the community?

Oh, I just hear from, you know, our police officers and our staff in general at the police department just of what a great resource, this technology is to help you not only for their safety, but also for the community safety overall. And so, it's great to hear just how it's been embraced overall, with our police department. But then it's like we've already used it with the fire department. So we have a hazmat unit, hazmat team, and so we had a call for service out on Highway ninety two here, for some hazardous material, off of a back of a truck and typically would have, you know, locked up traffic for hours and hours and hours.

But being able to utilize our drone program, we were able to fly the drone right right in, get a picture of exactly what the chemical is, and it wasn't as bad as, you know, what we needed to do. And so, you know, we didn't have to suit everyone up, send the robot, or anything like that. You know, it really cut down on the time of just overall that's, you know, one of our, you know, highly utilized corridors, highway ninety two in this county overall. And so it's just like that's a great example of how you can use this technology and just cuts down on just response times and also just from a case standpoint.

And any of those the fire teams or emergency management teams that are watching or even even city staff, a chemical spell in and of itself can drive hours of traffic. Right? So things having to wear full and donning doffing of these suits, USCBAs or self contained breathing apparatuses can take hours to put on and off. Having the ability to fly over a situation and determine whether it is, let's say, some type of foreign substance like chlorine rather than salt or something like that nature can diminish times, not just in traffic, but in staffing as well.

Okay.

For leaders hesitating with drones, any good advice for them or any any topic of advice?

Well, I'd say first and foremost, what we've done in San Mateo, what helped us out is really, start small, you know, pilot a program and see if it works for you. Take that performance data and, you know, utilize that and see if you wanna scale scale it up further, but doing it incrementally, not all at once because it gets overwhelming, if you're gonna try to, you know, bite off more than you can chew, overall. And then how do you, you know, make sure you're communicating with your community and with your electeds overall? And also just how you train up staff too and get the buy in of your staff as well, regarding the technology.

Were you comfortable when that conversation first hit your desk or were you kind of I was well, I was first, you know, obviously, I was like, okay, you know, here here's another opportunity.

But I also knew in the back of my head that, you know, there is, you know, additional resources that, you know, it's evident in the studies that we have. And so it's just like, how could we potentially close that gap? And if I can pull it off and, you know, we're not we're not in the best financial, I guess, position right now, but at the same time, I'm like, I can't go and hire, you know, the x amount of numbers of officers at this time. And so, making this this investment can actually help be that force multiplier right now at least as a stopgap measure. Yeah.

And your finance team hopefully is always looking for different kinds of grants and opportunities to find funding, not just in law enforcement.

My my my PD team will. They they look at it. Yeah.

Everybody's looking for that.

They're looking at it all time. Yeah. I know. They're really good over there at our police department to go after aggressively after grant opportunities. Yeah.

And Skydio, we will try always our hardest to try and make sure that funding is, willing and able as far as federal funding is concerned. But we also look at private public partnerships or triple p's. Any of those been talked about, or have you guys talked about any of those?

I know there's been just initial discussion on that, but, haven't taken it any further than that. Really, I've asked our staff to really focus on just our you know, really refine our real time information center, getting that locked down before we go any further at this point in time because we're still, you know, in our infancy of this.

Yeah. I'd love to see what it looks like Yeah. When it's developed. Yeah. Any pitfalls? How about, any pitfalls that the cities or anybody else should look out for?

You know, I would I would say that for the most part, it's great to have Skydio as a thought partner and as support. The one area that I would say that just have to look at it further is, you know, once you start utilizing, this technology, you wanna have it twenty fourseven. And right now, we can't staff it twenty fourseven. So, that that that's a further conversation that we have to have to think about just how we can have those capabilities because it's amazing that you can just, you know, call in and the CAD system will dispatch this thing and go out there, onto scene.

Right.

But to be able to have that twenty four seven, is kind of where you wanna go, but it's difficult, you know, financially and from a Stafford Resource standpoint.

How did you guys develop your policies around it? Did you guys build them yourselves? Did you utilize other third parties?

Or did you look at I know they worked with you guys with Skydio and looking at, you know, just different organizations and how they're approaching this, but I know that they were working closely with with the Skydio team when we're looking at developing these policies.

Yeah. We always recommend looking at other agencies and building a type for your city attorney or for any legal services that your municipality or government is looking at. How about interdepartmental collaboration? Not just both with drones, but how does it work in the city of San Mateo? You guys are pretty well, you're not gonna talk anything bad about your staff here, but I would assume it's a pretty cohesive team.

No. Absolutely. No. For sure. But, you know, there's always silos, and we're trying to break down those silos.

And so this is another way of potentially having those discussions about how, you know, our, police department can help support other department operations utilizing this technology as well. And so I think there's opportunity to, you know, have cross pollination across departments, overall. And it's not just, you know, public safety. It's just how we look at it from a city infrastructure standpoint as well.

And so, you know, those will be conversations that we'll have in in the future since we have the technology. But I think it's the opportunity to, you know, cross the aisle, so to speak, from department to department.

One of the things that when I was chief, I would always look at is how do we build morale? And sometimes the simple things like technology or a new piece of equipment would help kind of just build a new life and give its own breathing to itself. Did that happen at all for any of your staff as far as morale was concerned in getting new technology into the city?

So right now, it's been solely in our police department. And so I believe we yeah. I know we have good morale, strong morale over there, and I know this is a great tool, that the officers really appreciate, overall as a resource. So they'll come up to me and say, thank you, Alex, for approving, the purchase of this technology because it's really not only helps, you know, protect them so that they can go home to their families in the evening, but also keeps our community safe and makes their job a lot easier.

Have you flown it yet?

No. I have not flown it.

Oh, we're gonna have I've just pressed the button.

The the The fly down. The fly down. That's it.

Well, maybe we could change that later today after this.

Well, I know it's, like, crash proof too. I've seen that.

It is it is completely, autonomous and has obstacle avoidance, which is neat. Right? And I think that's kinda giving us or giving me the plug to talk about that. We have obstacle avoidance. So if you're worried about crash, get into the side of the building. It'll basically either hover over itself or go around that obstacle.

I've seen that in action before. Yes. Test that.

Yeah. We'll let you try and crash it.

Nah. It's all good.

Alright. One of the last few questions that I think is obviously the most important here, but where do you see Alex Kojikian drones looking into the city of San Mateo and not just the city of San Mateo, but government in in general for the future? What does that look like?

So I just think it's really the adoption into the daily work life of our operations of our organization, of course, in our police department, first and foremost, to keep our community safe, but then seeing operationally and talking with our executive team with different department heads to really ask their staff, how might we be able to be more efficient and streamline our work, and utilize these drones and this technology, for our benefit.

And so I think what would be really cool is if we had some of your staff someday, whenever they're they're comfortable talking about it or bringing them over. It'd be really neat to kinda bring them over here and show them those different kinds of use cases, and we invite members of our audience to come out here, maybe a track if you're coming from the East Coast. But if you're local, California, please don't hesitate to reach out to me, and and we can try and make that happen. Alright.

Let's move to some questions here. It looks like we we have a few. What type of calls for service do you send a drone as first responder to? This is from Matt Whitman, who's a corporal at Temple Police Department.

Do you know?

So particular, I don't know. I just know, overall, they know exactly, the requirements that they have, that they would follow-up on. But I know that if they're going even on code threes, that that'd be something that they'd be flying that drone out there to get on-site first and foremost quickly. K.

But, like, robberies, I know that they just quickly, if there's a call for robbery at the mall, those things will go take off. It'll take our police officers maybe four or five minutes to get there, but that drone from the police station's a minute. Yeah. And they can start tracking people.

Yeah. It's a it's a really good question, Matt. And and what I will tell you is it depends on the agency how you look at what you're going to utilize these drones for. They could be everything from patrol checks.

We've had some agencies that are using them for vacation checks. So you could come in and write your name that your house is gonna be vacant for a couple days and you'd like a drone to to circle around to make sure that nobody's broken inside or that your property looks like it's still intact. Or they're only responding to priority zero or priority one calls, which is, a life or death emergency. And then a number of different situations where people are responding to people sleeping in a park to make sure that they're okay and don't need medical services.

So I think it's kind of a plethora depending on what your agency policy is. So great question, Corporal. Appreciate that. Okay.

We got howdy, Phil and Alex. I love the good howdy. Maybe this is somebody from the south. Tips to integrate drone as first responder in the bigger picture, overall policing data and technology strategy, digital evidence management, policy procedure, CJIS guidelines or criminal justice information system guidelines, cost benefit, and risk management.

How about how about when you look at cost benefit versus risk management, do you think about that at all, and what does that look like?

So I believe that, you know, the the safety side of things and the cutting down of response time outweighs a lot of the Sure. You know, the risk when you really look at look at that overall. And if you're doing it responsibly, the you know, it makes total sense. So having those good like I mentioned, the policies, procedures, and have being transparent in all that you're doing is of key importance.

But huge tool, that kinda as we mentioned, just being able to respond for calls for services and the amount of resources. Even if you really look at it, I could even go into just from a risk management scenario, just de escalation. Right? Yeah.

So you know what you're what you're doing going on-site. You know, having having the eyes, being able to tell our officers what they're going in on, can actually help them already with their mindset of, you know, how they're going to approach the situation.

Yeah and what they're looking at before they make the decision.

Maybe you even not even go.

Not even.

Yeah.

So that's, again dependent on your on your, community's needs, community's desires, your city manager's desires, what that looks like about whether or not you can send a drone without even sending a police response depending on if there is a caller that requests to have actual service or have actual people and a law enforcement officer make contact with them can drive that decision as well. That's from Doug Oates. He's a PMO from the Colorado Department of Public Safety. A big shout out to my Colorado peeps.

So glad to hear from you. Thanks so much for that one, Doug. Okay. This one is from Lieutenant, Ivan Martinez from Baytown Police Department.

Says I am the drone program manager for our agency. We have fourteen part one zero seven pilots and a fleet of about thirty drones. Our command staff did a five year strategic plan five years ago in which they prioritized developing a DFR program. However, since then, our drone program budget has experienced so many cuts that we cannot even afford to purchase one enterprise drone in the fiscal year.

How can I find or where should I look for funding in a DFR program? And I don't know if you have that answer, but I can also opine a little bit here.

Well, I can just say, you know, just at least for the city of San Mateo, what we're utilizing is is we had a revenue measure actually passed by the voters in twenty twenty two, which basically taxes the high, sales prices of properties here in the city of San Mateo, those that are selling for more than ten million dollars. One and a half percent has to come back to the city. And part of that is, dedicated to public safety, and so I'm able to pull, you know, for us, it's a multimillion dollar investment over a ten year period, in the DFR program. But I was able to, you know, identify that revenue source, as a way for us to help pay for this program, but I'm also letting the council know is just how this is helping us close this gap when, we don't have all the funds to hire a whole bunch of new officers Sure. At the same time.

So you're gonna have some cost savings at the end of every year almost. It's like, you hope to at least.

Well, you well, you well, you hope to overall. But I know that we're working through, you know, our drone programs through Axon. And so working through I know that our chief of police and his command staff, they worked on negotiating a really good deal where I could see, you know, strategies of being able to reduce costs on one end, but then also be able to make the difference in making sure that we can bring on this technology too so that it could fit our budget as well because we're limited on our budget constraints as well.

Yeah. And our hope is that our federal partners will start opening up some funding gaps that we've seen over the last couple years as it relates to federal grants and federal funding. So we're seeing some new changes as it relates to laws and some of these grants' utilization of the the language of using drones and some of these equipments for things like you also your emergency management and stuff like that. So we're hopeful that we'll see some of that stuff coming out soon.

Thanks for that, lieutenant. We really appreciate your your question. Okay. The next one is from sergeant Jonathan Cranston from the Kansas City Police Department.

Shout out to Kansas City. The question is if drones are funded through infrastructure or emergency management funding sources, will they be available to law enforcement agencies and communities whose elected leaders support law enforcement with only their words, not their actions or fundings? And so I think what's important to highlight there is if drones are funded through infrastructure or emergency management funding sources, will they be available to law enforcement agencies? And in my opinion, if I were the county manager or the city manager and it was allocated for emergency management public safety, then of course.

Right?

That's what it's gonna be allocated for. Yeah. For those services, and that's what you wanna be transparent about, what funds you're using for what. But then also, it's like you could look at, turning off and using some of the restricted funds if you're say, like, we have a stormwater fund here or a sewer fund.

If we're actually gonna use those drones also to help support that type of infrastructure, then there might be a little bit you know, a percentage of the revenue stream. We can't be the hundred percent of it. Right. But it could help supplant some of the, you know, drones costs overall if you're gonna utilize it for those services.

Yeah.

I think that, you could find a way. Right? Because officers are helping with traffic control when things get flooded.

You might be stretching here here and there, but it's like if you're actually utilizing, say, we have, like, a one billion dollar treatment plant that's coming online wastewater treatment plant out here. It's gotta be. If I'm gonna be able to utilize it, to you know, if I talk to my public works director or a treatment plant operator and they actually like, when we talk about just how we cross departmentally work together, if it we can operationalize it and it's actually gonna contribute to it, then there could be a percentage of that program that's dedicated to that revenue stream.

I love it. Thinking outside of the box on all of this stuff.

Yeah. No. For sure. It's informed risk taking and thinking innovatively about this.

I love it. Okay. How closely do your pilots sit with nine one one call takers and dispatchers? This is from Tim Wells. He's a tech, technician at Lee County Public Safety.

And if you know what CAD or public safety platform are you guys using right now for your local Well, the we have CAD, but, I would not have those details.

Yeah. As a city manager, that's probably that's in the weeds for me.

Yep. It is.

Overall, that'd be my police chief and command staff to be able to answer that question overall. But I know that our real time information center is just right down the hall from our dispatch center as well.

But I know that they're feeding, you know, just like you said, the QR code, you can put things up on the screen real quick Got it.

Wherever you're at.

Do you know if your call takers are sitting with your dispatchers or if they're two different rooms or The real time information center.

I the the real time information center is in a completely different room than our dispatch center.

Got it.

Okay. This is, Tony Abal excuse me. Tony Abdala, who's a sergeant, drone program supervisor for the Bloomington Police Department.

And his question is, looking back at the start of your drone as first responder program, is there anything that you would do different to lay the groundwork to make it more successful?

So, anything I would do differently? That's a good good question.

I I think the approach that the police chief and our command staff and how we went about it was probably the appropriate approach. Haven't had, significant haven't had any pushback, actually Yeah. With with the rollout of this. And so, you know, I I think I would stick with just the overall approach is communicate, communicate, be transparent, and be able to, tell the story of what the operational, impacts are Got it. Who brings this technology on board.

Yeah. I think those are really good key pieces of information to share. And so this next one is Jared Bierbaum. He's a sergeant drone program supervisor, also in Bloomington.

So we have another quote from him. This was more of a statement. Here in Central Illinois, we have twenty plus pilots and a fleet of four drones. Currently, we have four out there with our pilots to support each shift.

Illinois freedom from drone surveillance act is pretty restrictive, but he's found it really important to tell people what we are not doing with the drones, as well as just as important as telling what we plan to do with the drones. It's a really good point.

I know. Excellent point. And that's what our police department actually does. And so I failed to mention that.

But yeah. No. Absolutely. You gotta list not only the benefits, but also what we aren't doing with them overall.

And we talked about this kind of before the cameras went on, but drone as first responder, if if it's not on the table for other programs used within the city, you do see it someday in other government assets. Right?

Anything else that you So I'd say just having that discussion and, you know, as a city manager, you know, putting that as an executive team item of discussion and having each, department head go back and see, is there opportunity and benefits and efficiencies that might be gained from utilizing the drone in the work that they do?

So it's having that discussion and thinking about that and exploring that first and foremost. And I think that's just, you know, setting the agenda and making it priority to take a look at that too. And that's something that we'll look down the line. Right now, though, I'm really focused, to make sure that our real time information center, is just Squared away. Squared away. Completely. Yeah.

We were talking to a county down in South Florida, and we had this conversation with all of their department heads. I think it was about thirty different department heads on having a round table and what you can develop your use cases for these drones. I thought that was a really kind of interesting perspective to drive that conversation. So for some of those city leaders out here that are thinking about how do we utilize these drones in their spaces, I think to have some type of brainstorming session or at least a collab session with your staff to look at the future of it and what does that look like, I thought was a really genius idea and building kind of like this thought leadership within your own municipality because other agencies do have different issues. The East Coast is much different than the West, the South is much different than the North, and things like that. Any thoughts on that?

So I'll also say not only, you know, that's something that we'll we'll look at here in the future, but, you know, I have no problem when we talk about research and development, go looking at what other agencies are doing and, you know, just in professional, associations and networks, just where the drones might be, you know, advantageous overall, you start hearing about just the cutting edge technology to help, you know, streamline and create efficiencies within just the different professional areas of city operations.

So I could imagine that, you know, more and more that'll be coming to the forefront.

Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting Skydio will be at the International Association of Chiefs of Police here in a couple weeks. So if anybody has any questions, they're more than happy to come approach me. I will be there. But, any thoughts about ICMA coming up in Tampa?

I won't be able to make it, but that's always the but that's always a great place, to be able to have, you know, all the thought partners throughout the entire country come together once a year really to discuss, needs of, cities and the city management, you know, operations just from national level.

Yeah. So I'll be there as well. International City and County Manager's Association is gonna be in Tampa, Florida. Again, great topic conversation.

About five thousand staff from city services to be out there and have these conversations about it. Let's look at some, comments really quickly, and then we'll call a wrap here. We got thank you, for your presentation. We've got our primarily funded through other kinds of things.

And then we got Felix here. He says, it's currently what we have. Officers are dispatched. Hopefully, a pilot arrives on scene, gives us the drone capabilities.

I try to advocate drone response, launching the drones from the trunk of the car or calls for service that were currently until we implement the DFR. I think that's a really good idea that our new r ten product is actually gonna be kinda developed about, and r ten is being our indoor drone. And what we're looking at is how do we not just make sure that this indoor drone is being used when there's a tactical situation, but when our police officers go out every night, they have they take an automatic electronic defibrillator or AED or whatever device they take with them. But they also take this indoor drone with them so that if they ever need to clear a building or to clear a house, they don't have to wait for a ton of resources to develop it.

So I think that some of those new products that we said we can talk about here is kind of a good fit.

No. And it's just interesting because when when we're talking about this, I know our lieutenant was just telling me that, you know, the technology is there that you could have a single pilot to pilot multiple drones too, I guess. So that's kinda the newest cutting edge stuff that is happening, and so that will also help from a staffing standpoint as well.

Yeah.

And I think it's that indoor flying and the, you know Yeah.

Outdoor at the same time.

It's called our one to many.

Is that what okay. You guys have all your Yeah. We got all kinds of new Yeah. Let's see you guys. Yes. So you're learning.

Oh, there we go.

And then till close, we have our f ten, and that's gonna be our fixed wing.

That's a new product that we're gonna be rolling out here within the next year or so. We're really excited and pumped to have these conversations with anybody out there. It's, almost time for closing, and so we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up here. I really just wanna say thank you to the city of San Mateo, your council, your staff, and and most importantly, you.

I really appreciate your candid conversation, and and hopefully we get to do it again.

Okay, Alan? No. Sounds good. And just thanks for being, you know, a strong business presence in our community That's right. And for all that you're doing to keep our officers safe and our community safe too.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

And for all out there, if there's any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out on LinkedIn or any of your Skydio staff here in the lovely city of San Mateo. You all have a great day,