Aldermen and Mayor Tishaura O. Jones have blasted his plan as creepy and unwanted. Activists in a south city neighborhood where drones were supposed to start flying rallied dozens of neighbors to protest an invasion of their privacy. And the Board of Public Service sent him a cease-and-desist letter.
Now Johnson is calling for reinforcements. SMS Novel, Johnson's company, has posted on its website a call to drone operators from across the country to come to St. Louis to help launch its surveillance program early next month. It says they can fly in, stay at a company Airbnb and learn how to operate drones as they kick off the company's operations here.
And in a defiant statement atop the announcement, Johnson blasts the city's threat to ground his drone operators if they do not secure city permits.
"May we strive for a future where the entrepreneurial spirit thrives, unburdened by the constraints of a fearful government," he writes.
The announcement marks Johnson's latest provocation in his monthlong fight here, and continues a history of making bold statements to powerful figures. He started as a street preacher calling out profane rappers in Philadelphia, and then an activist calling on a sheriff to resign after people died in a jail in Georgia.
But it also sets up a test of Johnson's resolve amid rising questions about how serious his company really is: Officials in Los Angeles and Memphis, Tennessee, two other cities he has announced plans to surveil, told the Post-Dispatch in recent days that they've never heard of him. He has made multiple conflicting statements about his intentions here. And St. Louis neighbors aren't sure what to think.
"I don't know what's real and what's not any more," said Jake Lyonfields, who helped organize opposition to initial drone patrols in the Gravois Park neighborhood.
Johnson's push to bring his company's technology to cities across the country began late last fall with a TV news blitz.
He appeared on a WREG newscast in Memphis in November. He popped up again on ABC 7 in Los Angeles a couple of weeks later. And around that same time, he went on St. Louis' Fox 2 and said he would soon have drones in the skies over Gravois Park, which sits west of Jefferson Avenue between Cherokee and Chippewa streets.
Johnson cast his plan as a well-meaning attempt to curb crime in a rough neighborhood, where nine people were killed last year. He said the flying machines would provide a visible deterrent to would-be offenders, and that operators would be extra eyes and ears for city police. And he said after a test period, when drones would patrol free of charge, residents could hire SMS Novel's operators to patrol on demand at a low hourly rate.
But neighbors balked, calling it a gross invasion of their privacy. Activists like Lyonfields and Ellie Gund went door-to-door to spread the word about the plan, and held community meetings where the drones were cast as the second coming of a "spy plane" proposal rejected by the Board of Aldermen three years ago. They also got the attention of city officials, who last week warned Johnson he would need to get city permits to operate, and filed legislation to block his plans.
Johnson initially dismissed the neighborhood opposition, telling the Post-Dispatch he was coming regardless. He sent the Board of Public Service a letter threatening a lawsuit if they tried to force his operators to get permits. He even suggested his company's drones were already flying in St. Louis — before denying it.
On Friday, he canceled the Gravois Park test. But he said SMS Novel wasn't going away, and that the service would just offer a free trial to another neighborhood "at a time of our choosing."
And this week, the company quickly made good on at least part of that promise, announcing its "first-ever drone pilot work retreat" and promising "two weeks of fun flying and taking part in the movement for the safe and commercial use of drones in STL."
SMS Novel says pilots with federal drone licenses can pay $99 and get daily meals and four nights in an Airbnb while they work and film in and around the city. Others can pay $199 for the same thing plus one-way airfare, or $299 for five days of pilot training. The company also says it will visit City Hall "to advocate for drone users and businesses in the community."
Lyonfields said Tuesday he was taking the new threat seriously and had already alerted city officials. He and Gund said it was yet another reason to put rules in place prohibiting drone surveillance in the city.
But Lyonfields said at least part of him doubts Johnson after everything he's said and not done.
In recent days, Arlenia Cole, a spokesperson for the city of Memphis, said she was unaware of SMS Novel and its purported crime-fighting plans in the Frayser and Shelby Forest areas there. A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said the same about operations in that city.
Calls to neighborhood leaders in Frayser and Shelby Forest also came up empty. Claudette Shephard, an officer of the Frayser Community Association, said she hadn't heard of the company. Neither had Steve Lockwood, executive director of the Frayser Community Development Association.
A GoFundMe campaign for operations in Memphis raised $20 against a goal of $10,000.
Sheila Templeman, who lives in Shelby Forest, said she liked the idea of bringing drones in. "Crime is so bad here," she said.
But she hadn't seen any eyes in the sky, either.
And when the Post-Dispatch asked Johnson to name anyone who could be contacted to verify that the service is ongoing in either city, Johnson invoked his privacy policy.
"You want a client list? Sorry. We don't share that data," he wrote in a text message. "No comment apart from website."
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