A new technology integration from Flock Safety is further enabling law enforcement agencies that use its products to do timely, thorough policing.
The Dunwoody Police Department in Georgia uses a suite of Flock communications tools that include its Flock Aerodrome drone-as-a-first-responder (DFR) system, said Sgt. Michael Cheek, department public information officer. These are autonomously flying drones that offer the kind of incident situational awareness that enables quicker response times and improved safety.
The department has been using drones in limited capacities since 2015. It operates one drone with the Flock system, and “an additional drone for on-scene operations,” Dunwoody police Lt. Timothy Fecht said.
The Flock system includes Flock911, which manages emergency calls. The DFR system operates within this ecosystem which, generally, facilitates the quicker, more-automated dispatch of drones and the swifter intake of incoming real-time data. The police department in Alhambra, Calif., also uses the system in its own DFR Program. Created in 2019, Alhambra’s unit now has 12 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-licensed drone pilots and five in training, and fields 12 drones of various designs.
When a police drone launches in Dunwoody, it will rise to about 350 feet in the air and then move toward the incident. The drone starts its trip autonomously, but a human operator is required to take over the flight at a certain point.
“There are some things about it that are automated, 100 percent,” Cheek explained. “But for it to be fully automated where we don’t have to touch it, there’s some safety aspects to that.”
Drones cannot yet fly beyond the visual line of sight. That approval, from the FAA, is in the works. Currently, Dunwoody police must have a two-mile line of sight of the airspace around an incident in which a drone is used. Police are not required to actually see the drone, but must have a view of the airspace.
“We currently have somebody who is employed to be on top of our roof … that we have radio communication with, and we verify that we’re good to fly,” said Cheek.
By being integrated into the larger Flock911 system, the drones receive GPS coordinates related to incidents, allowing them to quickly fly out and begin relaying visual data back to the command center. This has been especially valuable in aiding response times related to traffic accidents, Cheek said, pointing to an example where officers needed to know which side of the freeway an accident had occurred.
“We can confirm the accident is actually there. We can confirm it’s actually in the correct location,” Cheek said, noting this is the kind of essential data needed for dispatching responding officers.
Within the Flock Safety system, which the Dunwoody Police Department has used for several years, are about 75 cameras positioned across the city of 51,000 residents. Data from the cameras is fed into a “real-time crime center,” which opened last summer and which uses FlockOS as its operating system.
“We’ve used Flock cameras to find stolen cars, wanted people, missing people. We’ve solved crimes with them, over and over again,” said Cheek. “So Flock, for us, has been a game-changer.”
The drones have a range of about 3 to 4 miles, said Holly Beilin, Flock director of communications, noting the company is developing devices with an extended range.
Drones are becoming part of a larger network of technology tools put into service by police departments, she said, which can include devices like license plate readers, gunshot detectors or traffic management technology to give emergency vehicles signal priority at intersections.
“This technology is transforming how law enforcement responds to emergencies, making it faster and more efficient,” Beilin said via email.
Technology is a policing tool, Cheek was quick to point out, but it is not the same as a police officer.
“Nothing is ever going to replace good-quality, foundational, boots-on-the-ground policing,” he said. “That will never occur, no matter what technology you come out with.”
Drones can offer an expanded situational awareness. Cheek recalled a recent incident when a suspect was apprehended with minimal use of force or safety risk, with the aid of a drone hovering silently overhead.
“From 350 feet in the air and 1,200 feet away, our drone pilot was able to zoom in, see people and start scanning to see where this individual was. And he found him,” the sergeant said.
“That gave us, literally, a birds-eye view of that area,” Cheek explained. “We were able to see how many civilians were around. We were able to see his avenues of escape. We were able to see areas where we could have a tactical advantage to safely take him into custody.”
