Elk Grove Police could soon remotely dispatch drones to emergency calls

If you call Elk Grove Police during an emergency, you may soon see an unexpected kind of response: The arrival of an aerial drone.

The Elk Grove City Council recently voted to approve $2.1 million to the city’s police department for a new Drone as a First Responder program. 

Police say these unmanned aerial systems would respond to calls for service within minutes, gather data, and allow the department to more efficiently dispatch officers.

But it’s also raised questions and concerns over possible invasions of privacy.

“I'm sure there will be a lot of eyes on us to see how this program plays out, and we’re well aware of that in terms of the attention and people watching,” said Sgt. Jason Jimenez, a public information officer with the Elk Grove Police Department. “That's not lost on us, but … the most important piece for us is making sure that we do this right by [the community].” 

He added that the department is aiming to get the program up and running “within the next six to 12 months.”

Jimenez spoke with CapRadio’s Vicki Gonzalez about how the new drones will be used.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

EGPD already has a drone program that's called the Unmanned Aerial Systems Program and it's been in place now for a couple years. How will this new program be different?

Yeah, so this will be in addition to our current program which has been in existence for approximately the last five years. We've had great success with that program keeping both our officers and the community safe, but this will be slightly different in the fact that the drones will be housed or docked in three separate locations within the city. They will be remotely flown by pilots here at the PD within our real-time information center. Those pilots will be able to hear those 911 calls that come into the comms center and be able to determine whether or not that's a call we're going to go on, or [if] they're going to launch the drone.

So the person who is manning the drone will be at a fixed location and it could be maybe miles away from where the drone is actually going?

Correct. Currently our drones are much smaller and are either housed in [a] patrol vehicle or a different other police vehicle. Once that decision [is] made a drone needs to be utilized, then we're then launching that drone. Whereas here, we have a pilot actively listening to that call come in make that decision and remotely launching that drone to assist.

What conversations were taking place among Elk Grove Police to not only have an unmanned aerial system for the last five years, but also continuing to expand the program with this latest drone program?

We're in the process of doing our research, right? We want to make sure not only are we finding the right program for our community, but also making sure that we're fiscally responsible when it comes to purchasing the right program. So our officers and our folks that were in charge of this program visited over nine different agencies across the United States to ensure that we're trying to locate the right program for us. 

Ultimately we landed on Aerodome, which is the company we're going to be using and they feel — basically based on the package and the program itself — it's the best fit not only for our police department, but for our community based on several factors. It integrates currently with our current CAD system, our Computer Aided Dispatch system, as well as we're able to integrate our GIS mapping system. So our pilots, as they're flying, will have the map of our city overlay onto the video feed that they're seeing. In the event that we're actively flying over a scene where we're looking for a suspect, they'll automatically have the name of the streets and the landmarks already laid out visually for them. [The pilots will be] able to quickly relay that information to responding officers.

What are some of the benefits or advantages of having a drone show up to an emergency instead of having a first responder or a human officer?

I think the most important thing for us is we're able to get eyes on a scene within, on average, three minutes. When you're talking about different parts of the day — commute times, traffic — you may not be able to get an officer there within three minutes. Alright, so we're here now, we're able to get eyes on a scene to be able to decide what type of resources may be needed. Or maybe there may not be any need for any resources, and then we can redirect to a call that needs some additional resources. 

It seems like there's a wide spectrum of what these drones could be used for. Are there scenarios where a drone would not be appropriate?

Absolutely. Most importantly we want our community to know we are not going to be proactively flying these over the city just for the simple sake of flying them over. These are going to be used strictly to respond to calls for service. 

I'm a resident of the city as well, and my privacy is just as important to me as it is to everyone else. So ultimately these drones — just as our drones currently — [will be] used in response to calls for service.

Could this also be used to help the fire department or even emergency medical responders?

That's a fantastic part of this program that we're actually excited about. We have a great working relationship with the Cosumnes Fire Department here in Elk Grove. When a fire call comes into the fire department, they automatically start to send multiple engines and resources to a fire or potential fire. We will launch a drone to be able to get eyes on that scene, we’ll be able to stream that video back down to those personnel that are responding and let those fire personnel make the decision of what type of resources may or may not be needed based on what they're seeing in real time. 

When will this be up and running?

The goal is to hopefully have this up and going within the next six to 12 months. And again, we want to make sure that we have everything in place ready to go to be able to properly serve our great community because ultimately that's what it's all about.