The two-word phrase “first responder” conjures up images of Emergency Medical Technicians, firefighters and police officers – the Los Altos Police Department hopes to add a drone to that mental image.
Los Altos Police Captain Katie Krauss presented to members of the public and city council Sept. 30 a recommendation to create and implement a Drone as a First Responder (DFR) program, which would enhance emergency response, improve situational awareness and promote public safety, Krauss said. The program would allow drones to be able to be launched immediately after designated emergency calls.
Currently, the Los Altos Police Department has two drones that can be operated by the department’s seven FAA-certified pilots – some sworn officers and others members of records and dispatch staff – that are used in specific situations.
“What do we use the drones for? Currently, search and rescue, if we have a collision that we needed to get footage of from above, we have assisted other agencies with locating dead bodies in a marsh, we’ve used it for public works to do some roof inspections and we can use it for crime scene documentation,” she said during the Sept. 30 Los Altos City Council meeting. “… Deployment on that is reactive, so it’s not like it’s going out proactively and doing any kind of surveillance of anybody.”
The biggest difference between the proposed DFR program and the current program is that any initiation of drone usage currently requires a certified pilot and spotter present – it also needs to be within eyesight of the operator and spotter at all times.
“You can’t launch it from the police department and send it across down to Montclaire School because it wouldn’t be in line of sight anymore,” she said.
The DFR program differs in that it is connected to the computer-aided dispatch system, Krauss said, and staff can choose to deploy the drone for in-progress events. It will not be used for cold-calls or events that have already happened. Currently, there are DFR programs in Atherton, Campbell, Elk Grove, Fairfield and Vacaville. “The drone flies with the camera at a 45-degree angle, so what it’s doing is it’s catching the sky as it’s flying to the scene in order to protect privacy,” she said during the meeting. “The camera drops down when it gets in the range of a call.”
She added that the drone will often beat other first responders to the area of a report, and the live feed can be shared with officers who are still en route to the scene, providing heightened situational awareness. It can also help resource allocation – it will allow officers to decide if, when there are two separate incidents happening at the same time and one is more dire, it’s wiser to go to the other event or stay on the current scene.
But the use of data, and storage of videos, was a point of concern for some council members.
Los Altos Chief of Police Saskia Lagergren told the Town Crier that the drones aren’t a privacy threat because they serve in the same capacity as officer-worn cameras do. The data taken at the scene of an event will only be used by the police department and involved agencies during reports or if it is needed when related to a specific case.
Councilmember Neysa Fligor acknowledged that while the data will be used and collected differently that the city’s Flock Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRS), she said it would be important for the department to come back to council with a more refined policy that, like in the ALPR policy, highlights what any potentially shared data can or cannot be used for.
“It sounds like you’ll have more eyes on the drone, and using the drone – the person in the car, the person back at the PD office, so I just want to make sure that yes, we want as many officers having access and visibility, but then still be able to limit it so it doesn’t get abused,” Fligor told Krauss during the meeting.
Krauss responded, “Absolutely.”
The Los Altos Police Department is scheduled to come back to council in October with a potential vendor and input informed from concerns voiced during the council meeting.
