FREMONT, Calif. — The fire and police departments in Fremont are incorporating drones into their first responder teams as part of a larger effort by the city to establish a mass surveillance system.
Heidi Kindorf, a lieutenant with the Fremont Police Department, explained the purpose of the drone as first responder program at a recent community meeting, highlighting its aim to enable swift emergency responses by both the fire and police departments. This includes handling tasks like assessing fires and traffic collisions, searching for suspects of crime, collecting evidence, and more.
“Ultimately we would like to have multiple locations within the city to cover all 90+ square miles, to be able to provide redundancy, so we always have a drone in the air, and we never have to be without this technology providing real-time information as we’re dealing with incidents,” Kindorf said.
The Fremont fire and police departments have been flying drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, since 2017. The police department reportedly has 14 drones, one of which is dedicated to traffic, and the fire department has 12, five of which are used to respond to calls while seven are used for training.
The current policy requires staff to launch the drones on site. The new drone as first responder program, piloted from December 2022 to February 2023, aims to change that by enabling remote launching and control of the drones. That would allow dispatchers to share real-time information about the scene with staff before they arrive, weather permitting.
Kindorf explained some instances where this approach proved useful to the department, such as determining whether a person reported in a suspicious person call actually possessed a weapon and using the drone’s infrared camera to detect a suspect concealed in an area not easily visible to the human eye at night.
The use of drones by law enforcement is becoming increasingly common, but it’s still a relatively expensive way of addressing public safety, Beryl Lipton, an investigative researcher with the San Francisco-based nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the East Bay Echo.
The drones the city of Fremont bought from DJI, a drone company based in Shenzhen, China, can cost as much as $5,500 plus an additional $10,000 for the camera attachments. Replacing and repairing equipment costs around $5,000. The annual cost of the program is around $50,000, which includes the software, drones, and training and built-in overtime budgets.
The rationale behind deploying drones often centers on their potential to assist police in addressing serious criminal activities, but it is more likely to be used to address minor incidents related to retail theft and homelessness, Lipton said.
“What we have as a casualty of that response is the privacy that other people in the area are expecting,” Lipton said.
There are situations where the use of drones can be helpful, but Lipton stressed the need for cities to craft responsible policies around how the drones will be used, as well as guidelines concerning the storage and sharing of the captured footage. When a drone is flying over a residential area where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy, Lipton said policies should require that cameras avoid capturing and storing footage from those areas. Cities should also be aware of how the companies they’re working with are storing, retaining and sharing any recorded data.
Considering that drones can be outfitted with various tools, including weapons, Lipton added it’s important to have robust public discussions anytime modifications to the drones are being considered.
The city of Fremont recently received a $2.5 million grant from the state to continue working with Peregrine Technologies to develop and staff a real-time information center, including a video wall that will allow police to monitor cameras throughout the city. In its grant application, the city of Fremont states the drone as first responder program is an integral component to the city’s mass surveillance system.
Sonia Waraich can be reached at 510-952-7455.
