Denver police to resume abandoned drone deployment

The Denver Police Department has long been drone-averse, having shelved the only UAV it occasionally operated way back in 2018. Now most underlying hesitations behind that decision have gone by the boards, with force reintroducing the craft in law enforcement activity amid significant budget cuts.

Denver police officials say they plan to roll out several new drones for response to certain 911 calls, awaiting a more ambitious program once funding can be generated. That may take some time, however: The force’s resumed use of its abandoned UAV activities coincides with a $8.4 million reduction of its budget – part of a wider $25 million reallocation of the city’s finances. 

Indeed, the department is reintroducing drones again using a $100,000 grant from the Denver Police Foundation. With that support, officials plan on launching UAV responses to some 911 calls as a means of getting eyes on non-critical situations, rather than having limited officers automatically roll to on the ground.

“The DPD would respond to any call for service where someone is physically requesting a police officer on scene… (we) would never simply replace calls-for-service response by police officers,” the Denver Police Department’s Strategic Initiatives Bureau director Phil Gonshak told the Denver Post. “But if there was a fight at Colfax and Cherokee and we put a drone in the air and there is no fight and nothing causing traffic issues, then we would reroute our police officers to other emergent calls.”

The development thrusts Denver police into a group of over 1,400 law enforcement agencies across the US using drones for a wide range of activity – from traffic surveillance and missing person searches to first response to crimes in progress. It also opens the force to criticism about privacy and surveillance that other UAV deployments have provoked – and which were central to the wariness of earlier Denver top cops to deploy the craft. 

With forces across the nation using drone units, and budget reductions encouraging more effective use of staff, attitudes toward UAVs have clearly evolved in the Mile High City–and around Colorado. Not only are Denver police authorities looking to have a limited number of 911 drones operating within six months, but are also readying longer-term plans to create a network of nested UAVs for systematic first response to 911 calls. 

“This really is the future of law enforcement at some point, whether we like it or not,” Sgt. Jeremiah Gates, head of the drone program at Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office – one of over 20 forces in Colorado operating UAV units – told the Post.

Image: Josh Berendes/Unsplash