Colorado police plan to use drones as first responders, calling the technology the “future of law enforcement.”

US News

By Teny Sahakian, Fox News

Several local law enforcement agencies in Colorado, including the Denver Police Department (DPD), plan to use drones instead of police officers on emergency calls in the future.

“Whether we like it or not, this is eventually the future of law enforcement,” Sergeant Jeremiah Gates, head of the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office drone unit, told the Denver Post.

At least 20 agencies in Colorado’s Front Range are already using drone technology for specific tasks, such as searching for missing persons, tracking fugitive suspects, mapping crime scenes or providing aerial surveillance for SWAT operations.

Now the sheriff’s office is considering using the drones to respond to emergency calls, as the drones could potentially provide useful information from the scene before police arrive.

In addition, the use of drones would allow officers to prioritize less urgent calls over more urgent ones.

“I could fly the drone over a reported suspicious vehicle and say, ‘Hey, that vehicle is not out of place,’ and I would never have to send an officer out to harass them, and I can get the matter resolved,” Gates told the Denver Post. “It saves resources.”

However, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado expressed concern about how the normalization of drone use by government agencies could impact people’s freedoms.

“We are concerned about what it would mean if the skies over Colorado were actually covered with drones everywhere,” Laura Moraff told the Denver Post.

“We are concerned about what this would mean for First Amendment activities, free speech, organizing and protest – because police surveillance, including through drones, can change the way people speak and protest.”

The DPD, which shelved its only drone in 2018 citing constitutional concerns, is now looking to expand its drone program with the help of a $100,000 donation from the Denver Police Foundation.

“In the long term, we are trying to use drones as first responders,” Phil Gonshak, director of the department’s Strategic Initiatives Bureau, told the Denver Post.

“Basically, it’s about having stations over each of our districts so we can use drones to respond to critical needs or emergencies that arise anywhere in the city.”

“We would never simply replace the response to emergency calls by police officers,” he continued.

“DPD would respond to any emergency call where someone physically requested an officer on the scene. But if there was a fight on the corner of Colfax and Cherokee and we sent a drone in the air and there was no fight and nothing causing traffic problems, we would redirect our officers to other emergency calls.”

Gonshak said the DPD hopes to create a publicly accessible dashboard that would allow citizens to track Denver police drone flights to allay concerns about potential violations of people’s personal freedoms.

Some police departments outside Colorado are already using drones as first responders. For example, the city of Chula Vista, California, has seen more than 4,000 cases since 2018 in which officers were unable to respond to a 911 call due to the use of drones.