Featured photo: A Winston-Salem Police Department drone. (Screenshot from a WSPD promotional video)

The Winston-Salem Police Department is currently using drones at one site in the city and has plans to expand the program to combat a lack of “manpower,” according to law enforcement officials.

At a city council public safety committee meeting on Oct. 14, Assistant Police Chief Jose Gomez gave city councilmembers an update on WSPD’s new program that uses drones as first responders, or DFR, explaining that the city has been using drones, “small unmanned aircraft systems,” since 2018.

They’re hoping that they can make drones a “force multiplier” to take some of the pressure off of the police department and other city resources.

 According to WSPD, they’re being used in emergency situations such as looking for a lost individual. The drones are equipped with thermal imaging technology, which can be used to locate people in the dark.

Right now, drones are restricted to the two mile radius around just one site at UNC School of the Arts. WSPD uses the rooftop of Artist Village as a launch pad. Three other locations are in discussions, and Gomez noted that they’re finalizing the details and contracts on those now. They’re ultimately looking to have five to six locations. Drones won’t be allowed in certain places; for instance, restricted airspace such as  hospitals. Locations are selected based on calls for service, according to the department.

However, Gomez added that these locations would not be disclosed yet “in case something falls through.”

So far, since June 5 when the program kicked off, the department’s drones have flown 175 missions and arrived at scenes 143 times before officers did. The average response time for the drones is 90 seconds. 

“Usually it’s even lower than that,” Gomez said.

Typically, the average response time of officers responding to a top priority call is 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

“This is a very manpower-intensive type of operation; we have to have a pilot in the DFR room and a pilot on the rooftop,” Gomez explained. 

The program currently has 27 pilots and 19 in training. Drones are ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice from the WSPD’s Real Time Crime Center.

Drone service area. (Presentation slide from the city of Winston-Salem)

According to the police department, the use of drones can save the officers time because the machines are able to get to sites more quickly. One “success story,” Gomez explained, involved a bank alarm being triggered which prompted a dispatch of two officers. However, the drone arrived at the scene before the officers and determined that it was a “false alarm” caused by an ATM being serviced by a technician. The drone operator communicated that information which allowed the department to cancel the need for one of the responding officers. 

In another instance, a drone helped locate a dementia patient and direct officers to their location, while another found people suspected of robbery.

Gomez also noted that young people are utilizing Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School’s Career Center to learn to fly the same drones as police. They’re coming out of the program with credentials and certifications; that means that the police department is “looking to hire them.”

Gomez said that part of the police department’s policy on drones is to not aim the cameras at people’s homes when they’re flying overhead.

“We will not allow the misuse of technology to erode our trust with our community,” Assistant Police Chief Wilson Weaver noted during a March 2021 public safety committee meeting about the department’s drone usage.

Weaver explained that it cost the department $18,000 for four drones plus their equipment. Some of the drones were purchased from Taser International, now known as Axon Enterprise, the company the department purchased more than 600 body-worn cameras from in 2014.

Forsyth County also has a drone program, and will have a new equipment in their arsenal soon: GPS tag launchers that can attach themselves to fleeing vehicles. 

As law enforcement agencies expand their surveillance capabilities with each passing year, public wariness and distrust lingers. 

The ACLU encourages safeguards for drone usage, such as deploying them by law enforcement only if they have a warrant, only retaining data and images in certain circumstances such as “reasonable suspicion” of a crime or relevance to an investigation or trial, as well as allowing for accountability and open audits. They also recommend that drone usage policy be decided by the public’s representatives, not police departments.

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