June 2024. Blues Vol 40 No.6

AROUND THE COUNTRY
NEW YORK CITY, NY.
NYPD to start Drone as First Responder program, allowing UAVs to respond
to scenes of shootings. Patrol officers will be able to watch live video feeds
from drones dispatched to crime scenes by a gunshot detection system.
By Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
48 The Blues - June ‘24
NEW YORK — Drones will soon
be accompanying cops on shooting
investigations and other 911
calls throughout the city, NYPD
officials said.
A new Drone as First Responder
pilot program will be in effect
in coming months, beginning
with five NYPD police precincts,
NYPD Deputy Commissioner of
Operations Kaz Daughtry announced
at a hearing before the
House Committee on Homeland
Security.
“The plan, to be rolled out in
the coming months, is to deploy
these drones in response
to certain 911 calls for service,”
Daughtry told the committee.
Three of the precincts participating
in the program are in
Brooklyn, Daughtry said. A fourth
is in the Bronx and the fifth covers
Central Park. The precincts
were chosen “based on recent
crime trends,” he explained.
The roofs of the precinct station
houses will be retrofitted
to support two drone platforms.
While the drones will be departing
and landing from the station
rooftop, the pilot will be stationed
at the NYPD Joint Operations
Center at police headquarters
in lower Manhattan and will
be sending video and telemetry
to cops in the field, Daughtry
said.
The drones are expected to
be deployed to shootings in
their precincts and respond to
ShotSpotter alerts from a ring
of microphones in the area
designed to detect gunfire, the
NYPD said.
ShotSpotter gunshot detection
system,” an NYPD spokesman
said. “Police officers already
receive ShotSpotter alerts as
they do other assignments: over
their police radios and on their
NYPD-issued smartphones, with
information that includes the
time and location of the gunfire.
The system will now additionally
send the longitude and latitude
of gunfire to [the drones].”
Drone pilots will then fly over
to the shooting location “prior to
the officers’ arrival on the scene,”
the spokesman said.
“Officers will see what the
drone sees in real time via their
smartphones,” the spokesman
said.
“The information provided by
DFR will be shared with responding
officers,” Daughtry told
the committee. “[It] will enhance
officers’ situational awareness
as they arrive on scene, promote
officer safety, and help us deploy
resources more effectively.”
The NYPD currently has 85
drones. The remote fliers are
traditionally used to cover major
events, such as the New Year’s
Eve ball drop in Times Square,
large protests, and major police
deployments. The drones have
also been called into service to
check on the structural stability
of buildings and bridges after
accidents, Daughtry said. Drones
have also been utilized to pa-