Despite ban efforts, two (more) US police forces buy DJI drones

Two additional U.S. police departments have been equipped with new drones for use in their law enforcement duties. And once again – despite proliferating government attempts at dissuasion – those forces adopted DJI craft as offering the best solutions available to their budgets, opting for pragmatism over politics.

Those aerial supply moves by Washington State’s Blaine Police Department and Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana are the most recent series of U.S. law enforcement and first responder decisions to buy DJI drones despite expanding federal and state blacklisting of the company. Similar procurements have been made by forces in Grand Rapids, MI and Baltimore, MD, with audits last year showing the Shenzhen-made craft dominating public service fleets across the country.

That has to be frustrating to national and state politicians and U.S. drone sector lobbies behind recent blacklisting of drones made in China, and supporting communications campaigns calling them a threat to data security. 

News of the purchases by Blaine and Evangeline Parish police – neither of which, without doubt, want anything to do with geo-political polemics noted in this post – came less than a week after the Federal Bureau of Investigations and Department of Homeland Security issued  warnings to public agencies, companies, and consumers about using DJI drones. 

The craft, which have been banned from use in official federal administration work and by several state laws – are accused of leaking data to government authorities in China, who allegedly compel the nation’s companies to serve their espionage activities. UAV gathered data on enterprise and public facilities and infrastructure would be presumably valuable to that plotting – a kind of underhanded and potentially dangerous activity few people would put past Chinese leaders. 

In response to allegations concerning it, DJI has repeatedly denied any cooperation with or leaking to Beijing officials. It has also pointed out users can configure its drones so they don’t broadcast information collected, with data instead being directly downloaded to computers via hardwire by wary operators.

Blaine and Evangeline Parish officers are less concerned with those accusations, and instead sound enthused about the enhanced work the craft allow them to perform. The latter recently bought a $16,250 Matrice 30 drone, using funds redeployed from its now deactivated K9 unit. The former opted for Mavic 3T craft which – like its Washington sister force – is using it primarily for search and rescue operations. 

But not only. According to Evangeline Parish Chief Deputy Scott Fontenot, the new UAV will also lend a hand with any local Cool Hand Luke activity.

“The infrared lights will help us to locate missing persons during search and rescues as well as any inmates that may have escaped,” Fontenot was quoted saying in AirMed&Rescue. 

Meanwhile, Blaine police officer Keith Olson told local the Blaine newspaper The Northern Light that he’s been piloting the DJI Matrice drone to facilitate searches for lost or stranded people faster and more safely in Washington’s vastly contrasting settings.

“For citizens involved with search and rescue events, the goal is to find them sooner to get them out of danger faster,” Olson told the paper in an email. “Trying to find someone on foot, whether it’s on a mountain side or they’re out in the ocean, is already difficult as is. With the assistance of the drone, we increase our search capabilities to help those already working on the ground.”

And in addition to locating fleeing crime suspects and trespassers on local railroad land, Olson said he’d also successfully deployed the DJI craft in checking into reports of potentially dangerous bears roaming the area.

“Rather than try to confirm on foot if there was a bear and two cubs and risk getting mauled,” Olson wrote, “we were able to respond to the area and determine it was in fact two deer.”

Government officials in China were presumably the first to know about that case of wildlife mistaken identity.