Instead of dispatching an officer to the area to look for her, they sent a drone.
Detective Enrique Moreno sat before a computer screen inside the police station on Camino Entrada, launching the drone with a mouse click. A dock outside the building opened up and in less than two minutes, the “unmanned aircraft” was hovering near the intersection of Cerrillos Road and Cielo Court.
Callers had reported the woman had short, black hair and blue leggings and that she had used fake $100 bills to pay at Goodwill, Tortilla Flats and an Allsup’s gas station, all of which sit within a block of one another on Cerrillos.
A screen mounted on the wall showed the live feed of a video camera mounted on the drone. Another screen next to it displayed a map with an icon representing Moreno’s drone as well as others showing officers’ locations throughout the city.
Moreno navigated the drone to scan the area, zooming the camera in on two pedestrians who could be seen at the street corner. He flew the drone with the click of a mouse to hover near a bus stop nearby and zoomed in on a group of people sitting on the ground.
Not finding anyone who matched the suspect’s description, he moved on to another bus stop.
Santa Fe police in recent days has been testing out what the policing technology industry calls “drone as first responder,” a program that would represent a significant expansion of the use of drones in everyday policing by the agency.
The program, which involves dispatching drones to 911 calls across the city ahead of — or in place of — police officers, has been rapidly adopted by hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the country in recent years.
While many agencies have reported it helps to lower response times and use police resources more effectively, the expansion of drone policing has been controversial, with civil rights groups and others worrying it presents privacy concerns and could usher in a new era of mass surveillance.
LIFESAVING POTENTIAL
After searching the area for about 10 minutes, Moreno did not find a woman who matched the description given by dispatchers, and he directed the drone to fly back to the dock.
In other test runs, however, the new drones have yielded different results, said Detective Anthony Sweeny.
Earlier Thursday, they launched the drone to assist officers in searching for a man with an active arrest warrant who had been spotted in town. While officers looked for him on the ground, Moreno flew the drone nearby, across an arroyo and into an open field, where he saw the man and confirmed his identity using his driver’s license photo, Sweeny said.
And Santa Fe police said in a news release Wednesday a drone saved the life of a man who had overdosed as Las Acequias Park, off of Calle Atajo.
After receiving a call about a 47-year-old man overdosing at the park that afternoon, a drone arrived at the location in one minute, ahead of police and paramedics, according to the release. Police said other responders couldn’t find the man’s tent in the park but the drone found it just outside the park in minutes. An officer administered Naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdose.
“They were able to resuscitate that person ... and get him to the hospital where they are expected to survive from a lethal overdose, which is just amazing,” Santa Fe police Deputy Chief Ben Valdez said Thursday. “If there’s ever a good story, I don’t know what story can top that, that someone is with us today because of the technology and the teamwork that we were able to achieve yesterday.”
The city police department uses drones, but under the current program, officers must drive the devices to a scene to launch them and they have to maintain eyesight while flying them, under the licenses the agency maintains from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Valdez would like to purchase 15 drones to be launched from five different sets of docks — called “hives” — throughout the city.
The “drone as first responder” program would involve a new contract with Axon Technologies, a policing technology company that currently provides the agency’s license plate-readers, electronic stun guns, dash and body cameras and case management system.
Valdez said he is interested in buying more features and artificial intelligence tools from Axon for the agency, including a live language translation tool and a program that gathers the agency’s different video feeds and information into one platform the company calls a “real-time operations and intelligence” center.
The new contract will require City Council approval. The agency cited the “drone as first responder” program as about $500,000 when it was exploring the purchase last year, but Valdez said Thursday the expenditure would likely be higher, and “a pretty significant investment” in comparison to the department’s current contract with Axon.
The city signed a five-year contract with Axon in 2021 for $5.5 million.
“What that looks like,” Valdez said of the drone program, “is — we’re hopeful — less use of force, less injuries to our officers, being able to find offenders, being able to take them into custody.”
He said he believes the drone demonstrations this week have been “a testament to the technology and how it works with our staff to get them at the right place at the right time, to immediately provide lifesaving efforts.”
‘AERIAL MASS SURVEILLANCE’
The agency has at times received scrutiny for its large expenditures, from community members who believe public dollars would be spent better funding organizations and efforts that aim to combat poverty and serve people who suffer from addiction or mental illness.
Wren Sharkey, a founding member of the mutual aid group Burrito Brigade, which regularly serves meals to homeless people downtown, criticized the proposed investment in policing technology.
“The problem with modern policing that the city seems to constantly misunderstand is that money is a finite resource,” Sharkey said. “Whenever we give the police these large sums of money, we are not giving it to a community resource.”
The agency has received City Council approval for several big-ticket purchases in recent years, including two armored vehicles and a bomb disposal vehicle for $1.1 million in 2024 and a year’s subscription for gunshot detection technology approved last week for more than $350,000.
The department’s budget for the current fiscal year represented an increase from the previous year of about 5.5% — to $42.1 million, which included five new positions in the department.
“The conditions that create crime begin far before a crime happens — it begins in poor social services, in inequality, discrimination, in the creation of systems that make crime the only option,” Sharkey said. “Our city has an opportunity to fund community resources to change the condition — mental health, youth programs, substance abuse treatment — but they continue to prefer systems that jail people rather than support them.”
The proliferation of “drone as first responder” programs nationwide has garnered concern from some national civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which has warned the combination of drone technology with other tools like facial recognition and license plate-reading cameras are putting powerful surveillance systems in the hands of law enforcement officers.
The national organization Electronic Frontier Foundation has called for tighter standards and policies for agencies that adopt such programs, including those related to data collection and retention, the use of drones by officers and audits.
Sarah Hamid, a campaign director at the organization, said “drone as first responder” programs are branded as emergency response technology, but actually involve “building the infrastructure for a pervasive, aerial mass surveillance system.”
“What are they collecting as they constantly fly around responding to calls for service?” Hamid said. “What will they be collecting tomorrow as AI technology advances? The answer is images and data of everyday Santa Feans going about their business — which is none of the police department’s business.”
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