The Oceanside Police Department (OPD) hopes to make its Drone as First Responder (DFR) pilot program permanent, despite pushback from a privacy rights group.
The department said the program has been successful and reduces response times.
“Priority one calls for services, which are the most dangerous to the civilians that we're responding to, those we need to be under five minutes,” OPD Lt. Michael Provence said. “With the drone responding, we're down to two minutes and 30 seconds, so about a 50% reduction.”
Provence oversees the DFR program. Since the pilot program launched last year, he said the DFR has been deployed more than 1,300 times. Provence credits the drone for the arrest and successful prosecution in at least one case.
In March, a young man sexually assaulted a woman in downtown Oceanside and fled on a Breeze bus. But because of the DFR program, officers were able to track him and make an arrest.
“(Without the drone) we would have seen another (person) assaulted by (his) activity until he was caught,” Provence said. “This person was found guilty, sentenced to several months in jail.”
And in about 400 of those DFR launches, the DFR’s presence alone helped de-escalate the situation without an officer being called to the scene, saving police time and resources, Provence said.
“We have a lot of calls where subjects refusing to leave for like a business, like a front of a business; the drone responded. The subject will see the drone overhead and simply leave the area,” he said. “Because they know if they don't leave, that the business owner has asked them to leave, that officers are going to be coming.”
The department will ask the City Council to expand and make the program permanent. Police are seeking a second drone to monitor the east side of the city.
The pilot program was funded by a $264,816 state grant. Expanding and making the program permanent will cost the city around $100,000, Provence said. That’s because the department is looking at self-docking drones.
“That way we won't have to pay for someone anymore to stand on the rooftop and watch the drone and make sure that there are no air (obstacles),” Provence said. “And change the batteries for the drone.”
But Seth Hall, the cofounder of the group, San Diego Privacy, said there are serious privacy concerns whenever law enforcement agencies use drones as enforcement tools. He called it the “militarization” of police departments.
“Once we start talking about how this technology is essentially military equipment being used to create a mass surveillance monitoring center, I think a lot of people have a question about whether that sounds like the country we live in or other countries that have totally different political systems that we often don't agree with, and that we don't typically strive to be like,” he said.
And, Hall said, there’s no way for residents to know whether the drone flying overhead is a police drone or a private one.
“Right away, it appears to a lot of people as being kind of an invasion of their privacy, even if they're near their home or out, you know, just on the street near their home,” he said.
OPD addressed that concern by logging every drone flight on a website that the public can check, and they also request the video via a public records request.
“If they have a real concern that there's a drone that's spying on them, invading their privacy, they think there's a law violation; certainly call our police dispatch center and ask for an officer response,” Provence said. “And that's something that either our drone pilot can confirm to them individually and say, ‘Yes, that was us.’ This is what we're working on, or no, that is not.”
Oceanside resident Allison Lehenbauer was leery about the program too. She hadn’t heard about it until now.
“I think if it helps them do their job better, that's fine,” she said. “But I do think that it's a lot of trust with privacy concerns.”
Hall admits there are some benefits to the DFR program but said there need to be robust public discussions about privacy and accountability.
OPD will present its findings to the City Council at the September meeting, where the public will have an opportunity to weigh in.
