Dallas Police Launch Drone First Responder Program

By Dronelife Features Editor Jim Magill

While initiating a drones as first responders’ program, the Dallas Police Department is seeking to connect its UAV data operations with its existing comprehensive data-collection and storage system.

In December, the Dallas City Council approved a $120 million security package upgrade for the department. Working with security software company Axon, the Council approved the purchase of nine Skydio drones, as well as other artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technology, such as body cameras with a real-time translation feature.

The police department hopes to link the unmanned aerial systems with its existing Axon systems, such as the company’s digital evidence platform, Evidence.com, and Fleet 3, in-car video and data-management system, Dallas PD’s Sgt. Adam Reinhart said in an interview.

Dallas PD’s security data management strategy reflects a larger trend among police agencies across the country to integrate drone-based systems with other data-collection and management tools, such as body cameras and license-plate reading systems.

Reinhart said the department plans to site the new Skydio drones throughout the city to test out their functionality and their capability to respond to emergency 911 calls. “We are still trying to identify what calls these will drones will go to,” he said.

Department officials hope to have the UVA system, dubbed First Responder Drones (FRD), in place in time for the start of FIFA World Cup-related events in the city in early June. Reinhart said the Dallas PD is using the FRD name for its program, rather than referring to it by the more commonly used drones-as-first-responder (DFR) name to avoid confusion.

“The acronym of drones as first responder or DFR doesn’t mix well in Dallas because we call Dallas Fire Rescue, DFR. So, we’re going to call it the FRD just because we don’t need people mixing that up over the radio asking for DFR, and we send a drone instead of an ambulance or vice versa,” he said.

The purchase of Skydio drones is a first for Dallas PD, which had previously relied on DJI products in its existing extensive UAS operations. In a presentation to the Dallas City Council public safety committee, the department said its drone fleet comprised 10 Matrice M30Ts used in outdoor high-zoom operations and patrols; 33 Mavic 3Ts, used for outdoors quick response, vehicle crimes and animal cruelty cases; 82 Mini 2s, used for indoors patrol response and SWAT situations; 12 Avatas, for indoors tactical response and SWAT; and two Lemur 2s for indoors tactical response and SWAT.

Police agencies across the U.S. are phasing out their purchases of new DJI products over lingering security concerns and supply constraints.

Dallas PD’s FRD program will mirror DFR operations employed by police departments in many other jurisdictions.

“The SOP [Standard Operating Procedure] for that is that once a call comes in that meets the criteria for that Skydio drone, we’ll then launch the Skydio drone, which will then go to that call location and do that initial first intelligence, the bird’s-eye view intelligence, of that call and then broadcast that out to patrol elements,” Reinhart said.

One Platform to Unite All the Data

The department’s existing contract with Axon covers body cameras and the company’s Fleet 3 in-car camera and Interview Room Camera systems. Data streams from the three systems are collected within Axon’s Evidence.com platform.

“With the body cameras, Fleet 3 and Interview Rooms, all the video that is recorded is uploaded to Evidence.com. So, one URL, one platform,” Reinhart said. 

He said that once the system has been fully tested, the department plans to tie its FRD drones into the Evidence.com platform as well, to create a fully integrated data-management system. 

“We have not installed the Skydio drone yet, so we don’t know exactly how that video from those Skydio drones will interact with Evidence.com or how it will get to Evidence.com, but I’m sure it will.

“We just haven’t gotten to that point yet to start testing and making sure, but the integration between Skydio and Evidence.com is tight,” he said. “Any hurdles to the integration or, passing of data, they cleared those hurdles to make it as easy as possible. We’ll see more about that functionality; about how easy it is once we get it up and running.”

Reinhart said the Dallas PD also is expected to establish the capability to conduct counter-UAS operations in time for the start of the World Cup games. He said the department has sent one of its sergeants to the FBI’s National Counter-Unmanned Training Center (NCUTC) at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama to received the training needed to conduct drone-mitigation operations.

In an interview, Travis Scott, vice president of commercial sales at Axon subsidiary Dedrone, said the company stands ready to expand on its existing relationship with the Dallas PD.

“As with every single agency that we have existing relationships with, we’re always looking to keep them on the cutting edge of technology. The goal is always to continue to provide necessary resources and technology so that they can expand their overall coverage and improve their overall safety and security,” he said.

“Our methodology and approach to every single agency that we engage with is to continue to invest not only our human capital or our personnel but also provide the technology and resources available for them to counter any sort of threat that could be coming their way, whether it be airborne or from an overall ecosystem approach.”

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Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.