Fremont’s drone-response program gets eyes on-site before emergency services arrive

However, as part of a collaborative initiative between the two Fremont emergency services, a drone will now frequently be sent in to respond to 911 calls from a rooftop close to the city center. The objective is to use the drone’s onboard video camera to capture important information before emergency responders arrive at the scene, according to Matt Snelson, a police captain with the Fremont Police Department. In addition to providing crucial context for individuals on the ground when entering potentially dangerous situations, that can aid dispatchers in making better decisions about what resources should be used.

These programs are made possible by more affordable drones.
Although the police and fire departments have been using drones since 2017, the joint DFR program was approved by the Fremont City Council last month after a successful pilot project. The drone in question, a DJI Matrice 30T, is being operated by police officers and firefighters who have received special training to fly it from a rooftop near Fremont’s downtown.

The Federal Aviation Administration has approved the program to operate beyond line of sight, so the user only needs to enter an address for the drone to use GPS to find it on its own. A human operator uses an adapted PlayStation 5 controller to take manual control of the drone once it arrives at its destination.

According to Snelson, the decision was made to use high-end consumer drones, which retail for about $10,000 US, because regular upgrades are more cost-effective than purchasing an expensive commercial-grade model that will become outdated in a few years due to the rapid pace of innovation. He claims, “We’re just switching to newer technology more quickly because the price is low enough.” “We won’t discard a drone that cost $60,000 or $70,000 just because a better model was released the following year.”

This is not the first DFR program in the US; in 2019, the Chula Vista, California, police department started using drones to regularly respond to 911 calls. However, according to Matt Sloane, founder and CEO of Skyfire Consulting, which assisted Fremont in setting up the program and obtaining regulatory approval, there are still very few of these programs in the nation, and this one is the first that is run in tandem by the police and fire departments.

According to Sloane, the method has two primary benefits: efficiency and speed. The drone usually arrives on scene well ahead of any human responders, unlike in the past when an emergency responder had to drive to a location before launching the drone. According to him, it also implies that a dedicated drone pilot is present, saving an on-site responder from having to take time off work to operate the drone.

The idea of using drones as first responders has been discussed for years with little to show for it, says Andreas Claesson, an associate professor at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, who has been using drones to deliver automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to patients having cardiac emergencies. “I’m happy to see that they have actually gone from just ideas into real-life operations,” he says. “It’s a great initiative.”

Getting drones to the scene of an incident quickly could help dispatchers better allocate resources, Claesson says, which could be invaluable for already overstretched emergency services. However, he says that making these kinds of decisions based on the limited amount of information available from a drone camera does carry risks. For example, Claesson suggests a scenario in which a drone operator sending a drone to investigate a house fire films the wrong building—resulting in the emergency response being called off. “That would be catastrophic,” he says.

Drone responders can save time and resources

It can be particularly useful for the many 911 calls that turn out to be false alarms, says Sloane, which can be a godsend for chronically understaffed emergency services. “About 30 percent of the calls these agencies get are for things like, check an open door, check an open window, somebody’s unconscious laying in the street,” he says. “If you get there in 2 minutes and see the door’s not open, there’s nobody lying in the street, that’s up to 30 percent of calls that you might be able to clear without sending an officer or a fire truck.”

The technology has already helped with more serious police work too, says Snelson. During the pilot program last year, the Fremont police received a 911 call about a man running through a residential area banging on doors. One caller reported that the suspect had a knife in his hand, which meant that officers were rushing to the scene anticipating a potentially dangerous situation. However, the DFR reached first and was able to both locate the man and establish that it was just a water bottle in his hand.

“That really helped the police officers make appropriate tactical decisions as they responded to this person,” says Snelson. “This kind of information puts the officers and the community and the suspects in a better position for a better outcome.”

However, Snelson says the force is conscious that not everyone will be comfortable with the increasing use of drones by law enforcement. In particular, there are concerns that the technology could be used for indiscriminate surveillance. These concerns become more pertinent under the DFR model in which drones travel long distances to incidents, potentially recording along the way.

In an effort to deal with concerns, Snelson says the department held several town halls with residents and consulted with the American Civil Liberties Union before deploying the technology. They have established strict policies governing the sorts of incidents the DFR will be used for and plan to post flight records on their website.

Ultimately, the departments decided to record the entirety of their flights, to provide full transparency of their operations and avoid accusations of selective recording. But their drone software also makes it possible for the camera to automatically focus on the horizon during transit and then only point down to the ground once the drone has arrived at the scene of the incident.

“How do we prove that we weren’t flying around trying to check people’s backyards and look into people’s windows?” Snelson says. “We have a recording to show, no, we set our gimbal at zero degrees, we flew 2 miles to the incident that qualified for deployment, we focused on that incident, and then we went home.”