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DJI Matrice 210 with Zenmuse XT2 thermal and Z30 zoom camera. The ultimate police drone?

DJI recently launched the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual drone, which offers many advanced features that are useful for any police force. However, the DJI Matrice 210 with both a Zenmuse XT2 thermal and Zenmuse Z30 zoom camera may be the ultimate police drone, if there ever was one. As part of the expanding Santa Rosa Police Drone Program, the department just added this exact setup to their arsenal as the ultimate police drone.

About the Santa Rosa Police Drone Program

The Santa Rosa Police Department started their drone program in 2016 as a way to increase community safety and to help keep their staff be more efficient and effective in their work. The use of drones by both police and fire departments took off in the wake of the California wildfires in October 2017. Currently, almost 1,000 local law enforcement, fire and EMS agencies around the United States use drones. There are more than twice as many public safety agencies with drones as there are agencies with manned aircraft.

DJI Matrice 210 with Zenmuse XT2 thermal and Z30 zoom camera

The Santa Rosa Police Department uses a DJI Mavic Pro, a DJI Phantom 4 Pro and now a DJI Matrice 210 as a part of their drone program. Five police officers and a Field & Evidence Technician have been trained as remote pilots.

Craig Schwartz, Captain at the Santa Rosa Police Department said in a post on LinkedIn:

“The Santa Rosa Police Drone Program continues to grow, and our capabilities have taken off with our new DJI Matrice 210 with thermal (XT2) and Zenmuse Z30 zoom camera. I’m grateful for the role I could play in bringing this beneficial technology to policing and very happy with the direction of our program as I retire this week!”

The ultimate police drone

The DJI Matrice is an enterprise-grade drone that is weatherproof and allows for two gimbals to be operated simultaneously. The Zenmuse XT2 is a dual sensor camera that provides both a thermal as well as regular images that can be overlayed on top of each other to provide a high-resolution thermal image that also shows the outlines of buildings, people and other parts of the image. The Zenmuse Z30 zoom camera offers 30x optical and 6x digital zoom. Combined with the Zenmuse XT2 and the DJI Matrice 210, this seems to be the ultimate police drone setup.

In case of budgetary restrictions, the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual offers similar capabilities at a lower price point and with a lower resolution.

What do you think about the use of drones by Police Departments? Let us know in the comments below.

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Avatar for Haye Kesteloo Haye Kesteloo

Haye Kesteloo is the Editor in Chief and Main Writer at DroneDJ, where he covers all drone related news and writes product reviews. He also contributes to the other sites in the 9to5Mac group such as; 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys and Electrek. Haye can be reached at haye@dronedj.com or @hayekesteloo