Innovative Policing: How Flagler County Uses Drones for Daily Patrols

Explore the transformative impact of integrating Skydio drones into daily patrol operations. This session features experts Commander Jonathan Dobbs and Sergeant George Fuentes, highlighting real-world applications, including high-risk traffic stops, perimeter security, and missing persons cases.

00:00:00:07 - 00:00:08:03 Unknown Rise right around those of us never launching a drone. Good. You.

00:00:08:04 - 00:00:18:10 Speaker 2 All units. Which I'm probably three signals turned out for. Signal 95 reference. A LCR is going to be on a yellow and red.

00:00:18:10 - 00:00:25:00 Unknown Will trust anybody else to trawl through it. Now that I have an open door over here that,

00:00:25:02 - 00:00:33:02 Speaker 2 You want me to fly it?

00:00:33:04 - 00:00:35:12 Unknown It looks clear. I can't hear the floorboards.

00:00:35:13 - 00:00:39:08 Speaker 3 If you guys want to go in, we can approach. I get out of the way.

00:00:39:09 - 00:00:48:04 Speaker 2 31 Brookhaven driver. Me is watching on the camera view. If I like my suit. Wearing hoodies and a backpack. The new apartment complex construction.

00:00:48:04 - 00:00:57:08 Speaker 3 Did you? Suspects are not moving right there. Your left. You're going towards them. People came off hard. Right? Should be right in front and 60.

00:00:57:08 - 00:01:14:14 Speaker 2 We're going to launch a drone and found the vehicle in an initial copy. Launching a drone. We have one military came out good to copy. Let me know for sure. The virus. Okay. We're on. Sure. We try to put the gun on the passenger side. We're not gonna try out here. They were already on the truck. The driver fell on foot out here.

00:01:15:00 - 00:01:15:07 Speaker 2 Press release.

00:01:15:08 - 00:01:29:03 Unknown Wood fire, County sheriff's office. We know you're in the woods. Here you come out. The sound of this on all of you. Now.

00:01:29:04 - 00:01:48:06 Unknown Potentially try to get directly. But yes. Yeah. It's behind one call. Meadows. Right here. Let's go wash your hands off you. Walk.

00:01:48:07 - 00:01:54:00 Speaker 3 Okay. You have the right to remain silent and say can be used as evidence against you. You have the right to talk to an attorney.

00:01:54:00 - 00:01:57:07 Speaker 2 Have him remember waking up. Hello and welcome.

00:01:57:07 - 00:02:18:13 Speaker 4 To today's webinar, buddy patrol led drone as first responder with Flagler County Sheriff's Office. We're going to be getting started in just a minute or so here. We want to thank our sponsors for today's webinar, Skydio. We appreciate them being here for today's webinar and sponsoring us. So, big thanks to Skydio for sponsoring today's webinar. All right.

00:02:18:13 - 00:02:41:03 Speaker 4 We have a fantastic panel joining us here today. Commander Jonathan Dobbs started his law enforcement career with the Flagler County, Florida Sheriff's Office in 2006. He has worked in patrol, crime suppression and major case units throughout the course of his career, with collateral duties as an FTO Bike Patrol Deputy and member of the Emergency Response Team, an unmanned aircraft systems team.

00:02:41:04 - 00:03:12:00 Speaker 4 He is currently an Evening watch Commander in the Community Policing Division. Sergeant George Fuentes started his law enforcement career in 2006 with the South Daytona Police Department as police officer assigned to road patrol. In 2010, he was hired by the Flagler County Sheriff's Office as a deputy sheriff. Assigned road patrol. In 2013, he became a major case detective with collateral duties of cellular mapping, digital forensics, and a negotiator with the Crisis Negotiations team.

00:03:12:01 - 00:03:34:12 Speaker 4 Deepu John joined Skydio Skydio as a solutions engineer in 2021. In this role, he collaborates with account executives and sales teams to conduct equipment demonstrations, technical validations and proofs of concept. He is widely recognized for his expertise in the use of drones and law enforcement. Before joining Skydio, he served 20 years in the New York City Police Department.

00:03:34:12 - 00:04:03:00 Speaker 4 During his tenure, he held the position of Unmanned Aerial Systems Coordinator within the Technical Assistance Response Unit. Norine Charlton has a Bachelor of Science in Biology from John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. For more than decades, she worked in the Crime Scene Investigation section of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in Las Vegas, Nevada. Throughout her time in the field, she responded to nearly 4000 scenes, including the route 91 Harvest Festival, mass casualty shooting.

00:04:03:01 - 00:04:11:14 Speaker 4 And with that, I'm going to turn the floor over to our panel right here, right now. Jonathan, George. Hey, Norine and Deepu, welcome. Good morning. Thank you.

00:04:11:14 - 00:04:13:07 Speaker 5 Appreciate it.

00:04:13:08 - 00:04:15:13 Speaker 6 Thanks for having us.

00:04:15:14 - 00:04:33:14 Speaker 5 Yeah. So we're going to go ahead and kick it off today. first and foremost thanks to everyone that is joining us. Really excited to share some of Flagler County success stories that they've had ever since. They've implemented drones into their Daily Patrol calls for service. so we're going to go ahead and jump into this. I'm going to pass it off to you guys.

00:04:33:14 - 00:04:41:01 Speaker 5 If you want to give us a little bit of background information for our attendees on your sheriff's office in the land area that you serve.

00:04:41:02 - 00:05:05:08 Speaker 4 Sure. Flagler County is a relatively small county located in northeast central Florida. We serve about 500mi². Of that 100mi² is the city of Palm Coast, which is our largest city. they contract us for their police services by 127,000 residents live in Flagler County, and our agency currently has about 185 sworn person in.

00:05:05:09 - 00:05:13:02 Speaker 5 Excellent. Do you have any, kind of stats on the number of calls for service that you guys get on a daily basis, on average?

00:05:13:03 - 00:05:31:10 Speaker 4 we run probably about 200 calls a day. That's 24 hours, you know, between day and night shift. primarily we're a suburban county. like I mentioned, Palm Coast is kind of our largest service district. but we do have a lot of rural, area on the western portion of our county.

00:05:31:11 - 00:05:50:02 Speaker 5 Excellent. Thanks. Appreciate that. for those of you joining, you know, it's always kind of good to kind of gauge the agency that you work for versus the agency that's using programs kind of like this. We hear a lot of stories in the news about, you know, the NYPD is, you know, where who came from or the Las Vegas Police Department where they're using drone programs.

00:05:50:02 - 00:06:06:01 Speaker 5 But truly, there are agencies of all sizes throughout the United States using drones in patrol operations. So just kind of wanted to gauge that for everyone as well. Can you go ahead and speak to the history of the drone program and how you got to where you are today?

00:06:06:02 - 00:06:35:03 Speaker 4 Sure. Back in about 2019, Sheriff Staley started looking at ways to leverage technology to improve law enforcement services that we provided to the county. So part of that had to do with implementing LPR systems in a real time crime center. But part of that vision, was a drone program. So in 2019, we started working with the Daytona Beach Police Department and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to start developing what our, policy should look like, or general orders.

00:06:35:04 - 00:07:06:03 Speaker 4 what this practice is in the industry where what kind of equipment was being used across the industry? if you remember, at that time, there was still a lot, a lot of unknowns because of the, the blue list and the state legislation in terms of what, platforms could and couldn't be used by public agencies. So we spent a lot of time developing, the foundation of our program, the general laws of our program, while we waited to see how that kind of work itself out over the following years.

00:07:06:04 - 00:07:25:09 Speaker 5 Excellent. And then, we have noted on here that in 2022, you started with three drones. Can you kind of just speak to the infancy of the drone program and how you decided to bring it into the agency, but then also find a way to deploy it out to, you know, people that were willing to become pilots.

00:07:25:10 - 00:07:47:08 Speaker 4 Sure. So when we finally had an idea of what platforms we were going to be able to use, with move forward with the purchase of three drones, we bought three Skydio, two drones in September of 2022. At that time, we only had three active pilots, in the agency. So we started trying to solicit, interest from the remainder of our agency.

00:07:47:08 - 00:08:14:13 Speaker 4 And we really had a hard time finding people that were willing to take on, the task of getting a certificate and taking it or taking and passing an FAA exam. So what we ended up doing was finding a local company that could provide some ground school training to interested candidates. we had a selection process and put all interested candidates through a ground school to kind of help facilitate the completion of that 107 certification.

00:08:15:00 - 00:08:31:09 Speaker 4 and then from there, we developed a three phase, training program for all of our pilots to help kind of familiarize them with the platform and where work on their proficiency as they implemented it into their daily patrol control duties.

00:08:31:10 - 00:08:32:01 Speaker 6 And commander.

00:08:32:05 - 00:08:34:06 Speaker 2

00:08:34:07 - 00:08:38:06 Speaker 5 When I was just going to talk, you so.

00:08:38:07 - 00:08:40:00 Speaker 6 Sorry about that.

00:08:40:01 - 00:08:52:09 Speaker 5 Now go for it. I was going to tag you in. I was just curious, you know, is this the story? That sounds like it's pretty common in law enforcement, and it's kind of hard to get these things up and running because nobody really wants to volunteer for another project.

00:08:52:10 - 00:09:16:10 Speaker 4 I think that's part of it is the I think it's just an overall, uncertainty as new things, you know, become available or new technology, comes to market, it's difficult to find people that know how to use it. and so when you're trying to deploy it in a real world scenario and use it in your day to day patrol operations, you obviously have to crawl before you can walk.

00:09:16:10 - 00:09:44:09 Speaker 4 And so you have to find a way to lay that foundation. but knowledge and understanding of what you're doing before you deploy it in the real world. And I think at that time, between 2019 and in 2022, while we waited for the legislative issues to kind of work themselves out, really gave us that that time and opportunity to get that foundation laid of a basic understanding and knowledge of what this technology could and couldn't do, what we did and didn't need out of it.

00:09:44:10 - 00:09:49:11 Speaker 4 so we were able to take that time and learn about the technology before we tried to implement it.

00:09:49:12 - 00:10:09:05 Speaker 6 Right. And when you, you know, there are a couple of different ways that you can deploy drone programs. One is a centralized, unit where, you know, there are the specially trained officers that are kind of requested out and they go out and then there's a patrol led deployment, which is, seems like what your, agency's doing.

00:10:09:06 - 00:10:21:03 Speaker 6 How did you decide to go towards that paradigm of deployment where, where your officers or your deputies could be carrying this equipment out with them and just using it as just another tool in the toolbox?

00:10:21:04 - 00:10:43:00 Speaker 4 So our objective when we first launched the program was that we wanted I mean, we wanted them to be as available as possible 24 hours a day. You know, we wanted the most bang for the buck. obviously the technology is not cheap. So purchasing drones gets expensive. we currently use we have six shifts, three, three on each rotations in the morning and afternoon and mid shift.

00:10:43:01 - 00:11:04:05 Speaker 4 So even if we assigned one pilot each of those shifts, we'd have to purchase six drones to assign one to each pilot, which just wasn't physically feasible. So we ended up with this hot seat kind of, program where the drones are in the ready room and they're signed up by pilots, moving shift to shift. so far that's worked really well for us.

00:11:04:05 - 00:11:19:11 Speaker 4 There's some drawbacks that type of setup, but it is definitely maximize the the availability of the drone. to the point we have at least one, if not 2 or 3, drones available and in service at all times uncertain.

00:11:19:12 - 00:11:33:14 Speaker 6 And when, when you're, when you were developing the program and building it out, did you was there any kind of community outreach that you did? was there any resistance from the community when, when you were starting the program? how did that all work out?

00:11:34:00 - 00:11:39:05 Speaker 4 The community, I think, is always a little apprehensive of new technology and, the fear.

00:11:39:05 - 00:11:40:11 Speaker 6 Of.

00:11:40:12 - 00:12:07:14 Speaker 4 Unchecked surveillance and law enforcement doing things that they, that they don't understand or that they don't, understand how it's being used. So we've taken every opportunity we can to speak at public engagement. public engagement events. we go to our home show, we go to our, shop with a cop events. We go to all of our, and any local event where we're deploying the drones as an overwatch asset.

00:12:08:00 - 00:12:29:14 Speaker 4 We try to take the opportunity to speak to the public about what we're doing, why we're doing it. We've actually had a lot of success with our, Citizens Academy program. We give presentations about the drones, what we're doing with them to our Citizens Academy programs, and those they've been a great asset. And getting word out to the community about what we're doing and how we're using it, and kind of putting people's minds at ease that we're using it.

00:12:30:00 - 00:12:35:10 Speaker 4 And they, in a way that augments public safety and doesn't infringe on people's rights.

00:12:35:11 - 00:12:38:00 Speaker 2 But.

00:12:38:01 - 00:12:38:09 Speaker 2 And then maybe.

00:12:38:09 - 00:12:39:04 Speaker 5 People, and again.

00:12:39:04 - 00:12:40:04 Speaker 2 You can kind of.

00:12:40:05 - 00:12:41:11 Speaker 6 Got right.

00:12:41:12 - 00:12:57:12 Speaker 5 That was just going to go back to one of the points you made. You know, you spoke about specialized units or centralized units where we call it kind of drone on a shelf where, you know, the drone is kept in some central location, not where patrol has easy access to it. And you've got this specialized unit that gets called out.

00:12:57:13 - 00:13:21:06 Speaker 5 You know, the biggest complaint is by the time that person gets the drone and brings it out to the scene, the scene may be static and it may not, you know, no longer be used or needed. and so my question there was, you know, did you start with that at all or did you just kind of jump right into, hey, we're going to get more benefits from this if we put it directly into Patrol's hands.

00:13:21:07 - 00:13:50:07 Speaker 4 So the initial, structure was one in which we didn't have enough pilots to make it available the way that we wanted to. So for probably six months or so, we were on a call out type of platform where the drone was kept with the pilot. The pilot got called out as needed. But like you, mentioned, oftentimes by the time the pilot especially if they weren't on duty by the time the pilot gets there, there's either no longer a need for it or, the pilot is unavailable, can't respond at all.

00:13:50:08 - 00:14:19:07 Speaker 4 So as soon as we were able to, we quickly moved to the platform that we're using now, we once we get our pilots trained and it's made a huge difference in our ability to respond immediately and effectively. you know, our, our goal is to have the drones on patrol ready to respond at a moment's notice, similar to our our canines, where they're they're available quickly and they can respond anywhere in the county, in a matter of minutes rather than, than hours.

00:14:19:08 - 00:14:42:14 Speaker 5 Excellent. Yeah, I think it's worth noting, for our attendees, you know, there's 18,000 police departments in the United States, and there's estimated that there's less than 10% that actually have drone programs. And the majority of those do operate in this specialized function, whether, you know, just a small specialized drone team that comes out to assist on Swat operations or crashing documentation or whatever it may be.

00:14:43:00 - 00:14:57:06 Speaker 5 But now we're seeing, you know, more use in daily calls for service because there's just so much benefit and value there. so that's it. That's interesting to hear kind of how you've grown since you started.

00:14:57:07 - 00:15:11:07 Speaker 5 and speaking of the benefits and the value of the drone program, can you kind of talk through some of the different use cases and the different calls for service you are using drones on, and how your agency specifically has seen the benefits from that?

00:15:11:08 - 00:15:30:14 Speaker 4 Sure. When we when we initially started the program, like we spoke about, you know, we were on a call out basis. So the drones were really only being used for higher profile types of types of incidents. as we've been able to get them more readily available on patrol, we've encouraged our pilots to be creative with how they're using them.

00:15:31:00 - 00:15:53:08 Speaker 4 so initially we were using them a lot for missing persons cases. if we had a high level, fugitive apprehension, mission where we've had somebody with felony warrants fleeing from us, we would deploy the drone. and really, that was within some of our larger, public events. We would we would work the drone team into the, the operations plan for Overwatch.

00:15:53:10 - 00:16:18:11 Speaker 4 But as we've gotten them available 24 hours a day and able to respond as quickly as we have, we're using the drones to do, you know, day to day tasks that oftentimes agencies are using, their personnel for a good example is clearing a vehicle after a high risk traffic stop. You know, typically, once we believe the vehicles empty, we're sending a team up completely blind to approach that vehicle to confirm that there's nobody else inside.

00:16:18:12 - 00:16:36:03 Speaker 4 So we've been able to leverage the drones in a way that they're they're on scene within minutes, and the drones can fly up and really give the teams on the ground a good, a good visual about what's going on inside that vehicle before we have to send a team up, to an unknown.

00:16:36:04 - 00:16:55:07 Speaker 6 And when you're when you're deploying this out to, to the officers, and your deputies are actually taking this out. so there is, that training and currency requirement. Can you speak to that a little bit, like how, what your training requirements were for your officers, your deputies when they volunteered to be part of the program, what kind of training they put through.

00:16:55:08 - 00:17:00:05 Speaker 6 And then what kind of, recurrent training they have to go through and stay in the program.

00:17:00:06 - 00:17:27:12 Speaker 4 So all of our deputies have to have the the FAA, the 107, certification for the FAA, which, like I mentioned earlier, we we put on a ground school that the agency paid for to help them get that initial certification. from there, they have to complete the nest assessment. the National Institute of Standards and Training Assessment, just showing a basic, proficiency and understanding of how the drone works and, you know, conducting basic maneuvers with the drone.

00:17:27:13 - 00:17:51:10 Speaker 4 Once they pass that assessment, then there's a phase three training, which is they have to conduct flights in the field that are supervised by either the program commander or the chief pilot. So those are then logged in like a training flight log where the deputy is flying the drone in real world missions. But those flights are being overseen by somebody with a little bit more extensive background.

00:17:51:12 - 00:18:17:07 Speaker 4 There's, once that flight log is completed, they're signed off and they're able to conduct solo flights and, real world missions without that oversight. As far as currency, we require them to fly three flights per month. one of those flights has to be, conducted at night. So they do have that recurring nighttime, flight proficiency and then those are just logged on, continuing flight logs.

00:18:17:08 - 00:18:27:03 Speaker 4 They're reviewed on a regular basis by our, our chief pilot to make sure that our pilots are getting those minimum flight requirements.

00:18:27:04 - 00:18:43:04 Speaker 5 Right. Excellent. So I think now we're going to jump into some of your success stories. I think that's what everyone wants to see the most, right? It's more exciting, the kind of set of us just going through slides that they can watch some video and hear some real life stories that you've used drones on and had great success.

00:18:43:05 - 00:18:51:12 Speaker 5 so we'll jump in to the first one. and this one is, I just wanted to know.

00:18:51:13 - 00:18:54:07 Speaker 4 Yeah. So I'm going to turn to sort of the thinking behind that.

00:18:54:08 - 00:19:11:12 Unknown You know, we can't see our.

00:19:11:13 - 00:19:28:06 Unknown Business on this map. This is the map. I think I'm not sure why we can't see our.

00:19:28:07 - 00:19:59:01 Speaker 2 There. So put your hands up. Put your hands up! Do it now. Put your hands through it. Now! Put your hands up. Hands up what you want. They can touch as long as you can. Stand up. Stand up. Keep your hands up, hands up I walk back, walk back towards me. Stop here. On your knees. Keep your hands up.

00:19:59:02 - 00:20:02:03 Speaker 2 Try. Drop your heart. My hand.

00:20:02:03 - 00:20:04:00 Speaker 6 My hands are all right.

00:20:04:00 - 00:20:04:14 Speaker 3 Keep put your hands on.

00:20:04:14 - 00:20:15:10 Speaker 2 Top of your head. Right.

00:20:15:11 - 00:20:23:06 Speaker 5 All right, so let me get some background on that video before we, and then we can talk through some of the things that we saw on there.

00:20:23:07 - 00:20:47:06 Speaker 3 Yes. This was a, attempted traffic stop that we made on our on the west side of our county, some rural area, deputy City was trying to catch up to a vehicle. It could see that he was trying to catch up to it and actually wound up, taking some corners is. And, the driver exited the vehicle and took off prior to deputy, like, me being able to actually conduct a traffic stop.

00:20:47:06 - 00:21:00:04 Speaker 3 So it was an attempt to try to stop on that vehicle. the driver did flee into the woods, and that's when they requested we did a perimeter and they requested to try to respond.

00:21:00:05 - 00:21:15:10 Speaker 5 Excellent. And I remember you, when we kind of were setting all of this up previously, you were speaking about just how dark it was and that the, you know, no one can really see more than five yards in front of them until we got the drone up. So can you speak to that?

00:21:15:11 - 00:21:34:07 Speaker 3 Yeah. So that area is it's not well lit. the entire the entire area. So as we're going, we just knew that the driver bailed. You went into the woods, we light it up the best that we can, that we can't see more than five yards into the woods. So obviously, this suspect has a tactical advantage over us because we can't see him.

00:21:34:07 - 00:21:57:03 Speaker 3 He could probably see us. So obviously that's alarming to us. The good thing with what we do is, like my commander was talking about, we actually spread out the drones throughout the entire county so that our response time is typically within minutes of an incident happening. So we were able to get the drone up in the air within minutes of the driver actually bailing.

00:21:57:04 - 00:22:01:03 Speaker 5 Next slide, please touch on I'm sorry.

00:22:01:04 - 00:22:11:03 Speaker 6 how did you, communicate that information to the to the deputies? how did the pilot communicate? Where to go? And, how did that communication part of it work?

00:22:11:05 - 00:22:38:04 Speaker 3 So that's very hard if you haven't flown or tried to navigate a rural area where there's no major landmarks, it's just basically woods. It's hard to do, that at that point. The, the deputy deputy, like the requested the drone. I was the shift supervisor at the time. So I responded as well. and we went there. They were able to launch is and basically once we launch, it's just kind of a hold your position and let's see what the drone can do.

00:22:38:04 - 00:22:57:06 Speaker 3 It's no point in us going into words or doing anything like that. It's not safe for us to do so. Basically, it's just drones in there. Let them do their job, let it do its job, and, help us. by the time he launched, he told us of the hot spot that was, I believe that was like ten yards into the woods right in front of us.

00:22:57:08 - 00:23:06:04 Speaker 3 and that was within maybe two minutes if that was him launching. So we had a general area of where the suspect was.

00:23:06:05 - 00:23:17:04 Speaker 6 Now that so you're able to find the suspect pretty quickly, right after the drone was in the air, and you were communicating all that information over the radio, have you are you using live streaming? at all?

00:23:17:05 - 00:23:41:07 Speaker 3 We do have live stream. We have access on live. axon respond, which does live stream. But with that, what we're actually doing is basically the pilot takes over communication. So basically the pilot acts as if a helicopter came over scene. So pilot takes over communication. He speaks with one person on the ground, team to kind of establish where they're going, and they work it out together.

00:23:41:07 - 00:23:48:04 Speaker 3 And that's how we kind of establish where where we're going from there. So the pilot takes over all communication.

00:23:48:05 - 00:23:51:07 Speaker 4 Got it.

00:23:51:08 - 00:24:13:06 Speaker 5 Yeah, that's excellent information. the only other thing I'd like you to touch on, on this, and I know this applies to several of the cases we're going to talk about today, but, I know you have access to kind of a shared, helicopter air unit. in a situation like this, would you have called for the air unit, the helicopter, or would you have done something differently if you didn't have a drone.

00:24:13:07 - 00:24:33:13 Speaker 3 At this time? We wouldn't have. We didn't have any felony charges. Like I said, it was an attempted traffic stop. this time tonight, our helicopter was not in service, so we would have had to call, assistance from another county. And even with that, it's just a possibility that they're going to come in as this in the fact that we didn't have an actual felony charge, I would not have called them.

00:24:33:13 - 00:24:54:10 Speaker 3 So I did not call them. And we did not have a K-9 available at that time. So this is something that we would have had to work through, with limited resources and the drone being able to get get in the air within minutes and locating the suspect within minutes kind of help the whole thing and help us catch them and put the case, to an end.

00:24:54:11 - 00:25:12:06 Speaker 5 Excellent. Well, I'm not going to hit next this time, and I'll let you know what the next video is so we can set it up beforehand. Learned my lesson on the first one there. the next one is the box trap. Do you guys want to give some, like, high level overview of the box truck scenario first, and then we can watch the video and we can talk through some things.

00:25:12:07 - 00:25:35:06 Speaker 4 Sure. With this one we had a, a license plate reader indication that a stolen vehicle had entered our county. We have some license plate readers, strategically placed at various, intersections around our county. So patrol gets an alert that a stolen box truck is northbound on us one. Patrol units are able to locate the vehicle at us one and, County Road 3 or 4.

00:25:35:07 - 00:25:59:13 Speaker 4 From there, they do a Irish traffic stop. They take the driver into custody. So, similar to what we were discussing earlier, we now have a box truck that we believe is empty. The debris from the driver says that nobody else is in the truck, but we don't know that for sure. So because there was a drone on scene, during the high risk traffic stop, we decided to launch the drone and clear as much of the cab of the vehicle as we could.

00:26:00:00 - 00:26:21:08 Speaker 4 before we send a team to approach, the truck. Now, nothing's 100%. You'll see in the video, we can't see certain floorboards. there are still some limitations, but we're able to clear probably 75% of the vehicle cab before our ground team has to make an approach. We're also then able to monitor the cab of the truck as they make their approach.

00:26:21:09 - 00:26:32:03 Speaker 4 So if any conditions inside the cab change, if somebody does jump up and gets presented, the drone will be able to provide that that information to them as they're making their approach.

00:26:32:04 - 00:26:39:09 Speaker 5 Right. Let's, watch the video and we'll talk about it tomorrow.

00:26:39:10 - 00:27:13:12 Speaker 2 Talk about any available unit. Signal 95 reference a LPR head for a signal ten northbound U.S one from plantation Bay, Virginia's have 1844 Papa kilo. It's going to be on a yellow Penske.

00:27:13:13 - 00:27:48:14 Unknown Where is the driver? Boy?

00:27:49:00 - 00:28:15:06 Unknown Well, here's our 37. Good.

00:28:15:07 - 00:28:25:05 Speaker 6 So I think this part of the video is quiet. I don't know if there's any audio on this inside the front doors. If you want to kind of talk through what's happening here.

00:28:25:06 - 00:28:47:01 Speaker 4 So what? I'm trying to get, you within the cab. The the flare is a little difficult to use through glass, so I'm using the flare and the 4K camera kind of simultaneously, patrol cars are being used to illuminate the cab of the vehicle, so I can see inside, as best as possible, you'll see through the windshield using the flare.

00:28:47:01 - 00:29:04:03 Speaker 4 There's a lot of difficulty in seeing through using the flare, but once I move around the side to where I'm looking through that open cab door, I can see a lot better detail using the flare up and see what's going on inside of the cab. I believe we've got some 4K video that's going to come up here as well.

00:29:04:03 - 00:29:24:07 Speaker 4 That shows kind of a standard, a standard video view of what we're looking at, the floorboard. There's obviously still kind of obstructed. There's some clothes and some, some, personal items in the truck that have some, some portions of the cab obscured, but generally speaking, I can get a much better view in the cab than what we would.

00:29:24:10 - 00:29:25:07 Speaker 6 Would.

00:29:25:08 - 00:29:31:00 Speaker 4 Normally have sending a team on foot to approach. And I know like this.

00:29:31:02 - 00:29:55:09 Speaker 6 Now, this is this is actually some really good flying. So you're flying at night, and and you're flying, low and close to some obstacle. So it's actually, really good. And I love this video because there's so much information that you can get just from the thermal, you know, if you didn't have much information about this, vehicle at all and you didn't have the suspect in custody, there's, you know, just looking at the thermal, looking at the tires, you can see that the tires are still hot.

00:29:55:11 - 00:30:20:05 Speaker 6 I'm here to. What you're looking at is a white hot view. So everything that's white is, warmer than the other. The darker parts of the, the scene. So you can see that the engine block, area is still warm and the tires are still hot. So you can tell that the vehicle was running recently. So even if you had no other information about it, you can there's there's some good data that you can get right from looking at the video.

00:30:20:06 - 00:30:46:08 Speaker 4 Yeah, certainly. And as you see there, we keep the the drone airborne as our team approaches, because not only are we trying to clear the vehicle before they approach and give them as much information as we can before they approach, but as I noted earlier, if anything changes while they're making that approach, we want to have that drone still in here and able to convey that information to them, that somebody just, you know, crawled out from the floorboard or somebody sat out from under the clothes, they're in the passenger seat.

00:30:46:08 - 00:30:59:03 Speaker 4 So it's not just that initial clear that's useful in this scenario, but it's that monitoring of the space as they make their approach to make sure that they're able to be informed of any changing conditions.

00:30:59:04 - 00:31:01:07 Speaker 6 Yeah. Awesome. Nice line.

00:31:01:08 - 00:31:03:06 Speaker 4 Thank you.

00:31:03:07 - 00:31:07:07 Speaker 5 So I think going to the next. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

00:31:07:08 - 00:31:36:10 Speaker 4 next one is a similar, set up. it's it's a stolen vehicle. this one, I believe they found northbound at 995, which is at the interstate that runs through our county. but it's a similar setup. There's a high risk traffic stop done on the side of the interstate. in this one, the subject is non-compliant, so he's refusing to exit the vehicle initially, and the drone is used to try to get a visual inside of the vehicle while they try to order him out of the vehicle.

00:31:36:12 - 00:31:43:00 Speaker 5 Yet we'll jump into the video.

00:31:43:02 - 00:32:07:12 Speaker 2 Back in the units in the area, U.S one and the station's going to be southbound and it's showing, signal ten LPR. It's a silver Chevy SUV and southbound on U.S one, all units switch over 93 and 60. We're going to launch a drone in front of the vehicle. See, we've seen launch of 1516 to Saint John's.

00:32:07:14 - 00:32:11:04 Speaker 2 Copy launching a drone. 313 fire flight watcher.

00:32:11:04 - 00:32:12:05 Speaker 3 Out to.

00:32:12:06 - 00:32:41:10 Speaker 2 Isolate 1600ft. Important moments during a deployment in any way. And there's other copy. 4442 said the passenger door is open. I got radio, passenger doors open. Step out and. All right, we got a white male red jacket exiting passenger side. we have one male. Security came out. The driver or the passenger side. We're trying to pull the drone up.

00:32:41:11 - 00:33:08:01 Speaker 2 Copy one male secure. The very second we're unsure, we're going to try to put the drone on the passenger side with open doors. Copy that. There's 161 Foxtrot, 226 to monk. Secure.

00:33:08:02 - 00:33:27:01 Speaker 5 While we watch this go low to the passenger side of the vehicle. can you just speak to how important it is for a lot of your scenarios that you're able to fly close to objects and that you don't have to stay, you know, hundreds of feet in the air and kind of look from with a zoom to come in real close.

00:33:27:01 - 00:33:33:13 Speaker 5 But you can actually kind of get in there and really see what's going on. How important is that to most of your operations?

00:33:33:14 - 00:33:57:09 Speaker 4 Yeah, you can see the the angle that he's flying now and that's giving him the best look into the vehicle is through that open passenger door. And when you saw the the, overhead view, you see there's a lot of pine trees off to the right there. So being able to fly between the vehicle and the trees with some degree of confidence is very important, to being successful.

00:33:57:10 - 00:34:19:04 Speaker 4 Skydio does have the, the daytime obstacle avoidance where it helps us avoid, collisions with things like the trees when we're trying to get in those tight spaces and get a view of what's going on in, in any given scenario. A couple of the things you heard in this video were this was daytime hours, so our helicopter was operational.

00:34:19:06 - 00:34:37:12 Speaker 4 We are able to operate our drones while the helicopters flying, we just de conflict the flights in terms of altitude and workspace. As long as we have that direct communication with the pilot of the helicopter, we are able to continue to work, drone operations with helicopter in the air.

00:34:37:13 - 00:34:52:04 Speaker 6 And are you are your pilots in direct communication with, with the aviation unit, with the air unit pilots as well? just to continually be complete because I know that tends to be like a stressful situation when you have helicopters flying around at the same time you're dropping drones.

00:34:52:05 - 00:35:27:06 Speaker 4 Yeah, absolutely. if we cannot establish contact for any reason, then we will ground the drone. We won't. We won't risk the flight if we can't talk directly to the pilot. We had an incident last week with Volusia County where their air one was flying, and we were there on a, mutual aid request. We weren't able to patch our channels with Volusia, quickly enough that we grounded the drone because we couldn't talk directly to the pilot, but to more directly answer your question here in Flagler, when we're dealing with our own helicopter, we're able to quickly get that communication on our our primary radio channel.

00:35:27:07 - 00:35:48:08 Speaker 4 And, we're constant communication with the helicopter pilot. And then if conditions change in any way that makes the helicopter pilot uncomfortable with the drone being up, we'll always defer to that manned aircraft. But, I don't think we've we've run into those scenarios yet. As long as we're able to talk with them directly, we're able to conduct both operations at the same time.

00:35:48:09 - 00:36:10:09 Speaker 6 Great. And then referencing back to the videos, it's just going back to it seems like it was kind of a windy day and you were flying low and close to that open door. you know how comfortable are your pilots using that? that visual obstacle avoidance, with the Skydio drones? you know, they do. They feel a lot more comfortable getting, like, real close to the objects.

00:36:10:10 - 00:36:39:04 Speaker 4 Yeah, during the daytime flight. That's that avoidance is very, very helpful. we use it around vehicles, around buildings. it gives us the ability to fly under overhangs for garages, carports, things of that nature. it is important to note that that's not in play at night with the X-2. So it's important that we trained our pilots to understand the difference, because a lot of times guys will be on Dacia for three months and they almost become accustomed to this daytime obstacle avoidance.

00:36:39:04 - 00:37:01:13 Speaker 4 And then when they rotate, we have three months troop rotations. So when they rotate to night shift, they have to kind of be constantly reminded that that's not that's not there. The crunch is there for them at night. So, that's the one kind of drawback to having it in daytime and not nighttime is we have to continually retrain everybody to make sure that they're not leaning on that.

00:37:01:14 - 00:37:03:14 Speaker 4 as soon as we lose daylight.

00:37:04:00 - 00:37:23:05 Speaker 6 And I want, I want to kind of, jump in there that our engineers did hear you loud and clear. This was, one of the one of the main, asks from our public safety operators. They loved, the visual obstacle avoidance of the drone and its autonomy during the day. And everybody was said, we would love to have this at night.

00:37:23:06 - 00:37:47:03 Speaker 6 so with the skydio extend, with the night sensor modules, which I do have with me, these nighttime modules enable the drone to have full obstacle avoidance at night as well. so essentially the drone just projects like either visible or infrared light all around itself and uses that, that light from the, the drone to be able to safely navigate, even in complex environments at night.

00:37:47:03 - 00:37:58:09 Speaker 6 So, yeah, that was one of the main requests that we got when we were out in the field talking to customers and, our engineers, I'd say it just knocked it out of the park with it.

00:37:58:10 - 00:38:21:00 Speaker 4 Yeah, that definitely makes a big difference. And it helps take that, that muscle memory, aspect out of that, that training, in terms of, like I said, that constant reminder that we have this capability in certain scenarios, but we don't have that capability in other scenarios. When you remove that variable, it just makes for better, better operations.

00:38:21:01 - 00:38:31:08 Speaker 5 Yeah, absolutely. All right. I want to jump into the under-construction apartment complex, want to set the ground for that. And we'll play the video.

00:38:31:09 - 00:38:51:04 Speaker 4 Okay. So this one is actually one of the, first flights that we did with two drones running one operation. this is a nighttime flight. And similar to helicopter deconfliction. When you have two drones in the air, you have to you have to deconfliction airspace, and make for safe flight operations. So this is a apartment complex.

00:38:51:04 - 00:39:31:11 Speaker 4 It's being built. We got a report of a burglary in progress. we've been having a lot of problems with construction, site thefts, people stealing materials, high value materials from these sites. But this was there's probably 5 or 6 buildings on the property, and they're each three or 3 or 4 stories tall. So we had a team on the ground that was starting to systematically, clear the first building, the first drone launched as Overwatch for that team as they worked through the first building, and then the second drone was launched to conduct overwatch at the entire site to make sure that, if the team was moving through a building that they didn't push

00:39:31:11 - 00:39:52:06 Speaker 4 a suspect out the opposite end of the building, and that they would be able to escape without being detected. So the second drone is really just kind of an umbrella overwatch to make sure that they're not pushing a suspect out, the opposite of the building. And then that drone is actually what ends up locating the suspects, in the sensitive.

00:39:52:07 - 00:39:59:09 Speaker 5 Right. We'll go ahead and start the video.

00:39:59:10 - 00:40:30:07 Speaker 2 Monitor 1824 1065 21 RV 21, our Romeo in progress. Charlie two 2431 Brookhaven Drive is watching on the camera. Two Hispanic Mike wearing hoodies and a backpack. The new apartment complex construction and video. Sorry, security. I'll be around as soon as you can use that drone. This is a bit of a challenge. 313 valor for two tenants and for we can get some more units.

00:40:30:07 - 00:40:32:10 Speaker 2 We've got multiple structures here under construction.

00:40:32:14 - 00:40:34:07 Speaker 3 One set of units, there's another heat.

00:40:34:07 - 00:40:38:09 Speaker 2 Signature to the, it looks like to the right of.

00:40:38:09 - 00:40:39:09 Speaker 3 Where you guys are on.

00:40:39:09 - 00:40:49:05 Speaker 2 The third floor. We can't make out what it is. all right, we're trying to play along the stairwell right now. 37 and one tower. I'll be launching again with the same deconfliction ten four.

00:40:49:05 - 00:40:52:02 Speaker 3 We're at 160. There's a hot spot to.

00:40:52:02 - 00:40:54:14 Speaker 2 The right of us, so we can't see.

00:40:55:00 - 00:41:02:07 Speaker 3 The two suspects are not moving. Hands are in there. Keep going. And then there will be. To your left. You're going towards,

00:41:02:08 - 00:41:17:07 Speaker 2 Keep on, keep on our great. Should be right in front of you. 110 313. Once you're clear with them, we're getting you guys another spot. We want to check. All right. Is on the fourth floor so far.

00:41:17:08 - 00:41:18:13 Speaker 3 It doesn't look like subject.

00:41:18:13 - 00:41:20:10 Speaker 2 I don't know if it's like tools or stuff.

00:41:20:10 - 00:41:32:03 Speaker 3 They collect this.

00:41:32:04 - 00:41:57:06 Speaker 4 So some of what you're seeing here, the radio traffic's been consolidated a little bit, but that was probably about a half hour that it took us to, to direct our team from the first building that they began clearing to where the suspects were located. and then we were able to establish communication with the suspects from the ground and then send the team up to them to take them into custody.

00:41:57:07 - 00:42:16:12 Speaker 4 the drone? No located the suspects, probably within 5 or 6 minutes of being launched at that second Overwatch drone located in there in that building very quickly. And if you see the size of the the building that we're dealing with just in that video, it's a fairly large building. And like I mentioned before, there's 4 or 5 of them.

00:42:16:12 - 00:42:43:07 Speaker 4 So trying to clear a, site of that size, is very difficult using ground units alone. And you don't ever know completely that you have it. Just push them out the opposite end, undetected. The problem we have, I think, like a lot of agencies have, is staffing in terms of having enough people to put together a contact team and set a good, solid perimeter around, incidents like this.

00:42:43:08 - 00:42:54:13 Speaker 4 So the drone becomes a great force multiplier where it's covering basically your entire perimeter, and helps you plug those holes when you don't have enough people to to set good ground unit perimeters.

00:42:54:14 - 00:43:15:10 Speaker 3 What was also nice about this one was when the second drone actually located the suspect, they started walking, across the building, and once our deputies kind of got situated in front of the building, the drone actually saw them walking to a window, which they would have been looking down on our deputies. So we're able to communicate that with the ground team.

00:43:15:11 - 00:43:31:13 Speaker 3 So they're able to look up and actually see the suspects, and the drone is able to see suspects. So if they did want to do any harm or anything like that, obviously, once again, they have a tactical vantage because we couldn't see them, at the time without the drone.

00:43:31:14 - 00:43:41:10 Speaker 6 And here's the question. Did you did your suspect ever know that the drone was there? Did they know that the drone was in the air when you when you spoke to them afterwards?

00:43:41:11 - 00:44:00:06 Speaker 4 No, they never knew that the drone was there. The there was a partial roof on the, on the building in question. so they didn't have clear visibility of the sky. But in talking to them, they never knew that the drone was there. They knew we were there when we started giving them verbal commands, from the ground.

00:44:00:07 - 00:44:01:09 Speaker 4

00:44:01:10 - 00:44:04:02 Speaker 6 It's amazing. It's great to get a jump on ground.

00:44:04:03 - 00:44:06:14 Speaker 2 Yeah.

00:44:07:00 - 00:44:13:03 Speaker 5 All right, next, we'll jump into the warrant service. You want to give us a little bit of background on that one?

00:44:13:04 - 00:44:36:06 Speaker 3 Yes. This one was a warrant service that we did. It's in the rural area of LA County again. So, it's a large property of multiple structures. We attempted this in the middle of the night. The suspect was known to carry firearms in fleeing, from deputies. So obviously we wanted kind of, eyes in the sky as we're approaching the property and walking on the property.

00:44:36:07 - 00:44:43:07 Speaker 3 So that's basically the gist of this one. It's the overwatch for for the deputies on scene.

00:44:43:08 - 00:44:55:03 Speaker 5 All right. We'll go ahead and get that started.

00:44:55:04 - 00:45:08:04 Speaker 6 And I'm I think this one doesn't have audio either. So if your, sergeant or commander, if you want to talk or talk through what's happening, just so our audience can, can kind of follow along.

00:45:08:06 - 00:45:26:13 Speaker 3 So this right now with the drones in the air, we launched it as we were approaching the residence. That is, two of us actually coming on scene to the residence, before we, before beforehand.

00:45:26:14 - 00:45:41:07 Speaker 6 Yeah. This is these, support services are some of the most, like, nerve wracking ones you can do, especially when there's, like, a sprawling property and you don't know where the suspect is. exactly. so having that overwatch is so valuable.

00:45:41:08 - 00:46:05:13 Speaker 3 And once again, this is in a rural area, so there's not that much light. So we can't see, they can't see us. So obviously we're coming onto someone's property. So we don't want them to get spooked and come out and think that we're doing a burglary or stuff like that. So the overwatch helps in multiple ways for the people at the residence and for us going on on their.

00:46:05:14 - 00:46:24:12 Speaker 3 And this is just basically us getting situated, going on. And we can't see that far into the property. We just know that there's multiple structures on the property. And obviously we're going to we attempt to contact at the first building. no one was there. Then we make our way to the second building.

00:46:24:13 - 00:46:25:06 Speaker 6 Yeah. Just kind of.

00:46:25:09 - 00:46:27:11 Speaker 5 You know, you mentioned this.

00:46:27:13 - 00:46:29:04 Speaker 6 Go ahead. No.

00:46:29:06 - 00:46:48:04 Speaker 5 That's okay. I know you mentioned this on another video. and this is another perfect example of using the drone to kind of keep a perimeter in case something happens or someone takes off on site. And, I love that you use drones in that way. I think patrol operations, you know, throughout the country could benefit from using a drone to set up a perimeter.

00:46:48:04 - 00:47:08:14 Speaker 5 I know, you know, often it's, you know, someone sitting down and looking at a map and calling out intersections. I need units in all these locations, but having the drone up and being able to see all of those locations at any one time, and then being able to immediately call out what's happening to your units on the ground is is so valuable to, to law enforcement.

00:47:09:00 - 00:47:33:06 Speaker 3 That's one thing that we've also strived for, is educating all the deputies, all the personnel within our agency, kind of what the capabilities are of the drone, what we're looking at so that so that they understand as well. It's a tool that we use. Obviously there's limitations, but a big one is a perimeter with this one specifically, we had the three deputies on one side.

00:47:33:06 - 00:47:48:01 Speaker 3 We couldn't really get one to the other side safely. So we knew if he took off and ran into the woods, the the drone was going to be able to pick them up and we they could guide us to with them instead of us running into the woods blindly.

00:47:48:02 - 00:48:08:13 Speaker 6 And just talking from the technology perspective, there's, there's a few improvements that were made after the Xt2 came out. So with the extend, you know, we we came out with the ready link, which is a quick way to share the live stream. So if you're if you're doing a live stream, you can actually, share it from the controller and everybody has, you know, basically the same common operating pictures.

00:48:08:13 - 00:48:40:10 Speaker 6 So and you can, you can split between the thermal and, the color camera. We also have thermal subject tracking, which we came out with, which is another request that came directly from the consumer, from, from our, public safety customers to be able to track a subject, using the thermal camera and have the drones camera stay centered on that subject, and you can actually move the drone independently, which again, gives you, good, you know, situational awareness of what's going on.

00:48:40:12 - 00:48:42:00 Speaker 4 Yeah. The livestreaming.

00:48:42:01 - 00:48:42:08 Speaker 5 Was one.

00:48:42:10 - 00:49:02:01 Speaker 4 Useful for us several times. I don't think we have an example of that, for this presentation, but a lot of times we can put, you know, for example, we use the, the live streaming where the, the On-scene supervisor can monitor the drone video from his vehicle while the pilot's flying and the pilot can focus on flying.

00:49:02:01 - 00:49:22:09 Speaker 4 And obviously he's looking at what the camera shows. But the sergeant was able to see things in the in the live feed video that the pilot wasn't even seeing, because the pilot's looking at a smaller screen. The pilots dealing with flight conditions, the pilots got glare on the screen. just some examples of, you know, even in smaller, patrol response type missions.

00:49:22:10 - 00:49:25:09 Speaker 4 the live streaming has been valuable to us as well.

00:49:25:11 - 00:49:46:06 Speaker 3 Not only that, with the live streaming, we have it integrated with AKS on. So all of of road patrol has accent. So when we pull up, axon respond, we're able to see where the drone is. So if the suspect's running towards a specific deputy or anything like that, we can communicate straight to that deputy saying, hey, look to your left, your right and whatnot.

00:49:46:06 - 00:49:55:02 Speaker 3 So with the perimeter set and the drone over top, we were able to see specifically where everything is, which is nice.

00:49:55:03 - 00:50:04:07 Speaker 5 So we have one more video and then we can jump into some of our Q&A. the last one is a missing juvenile. We want to talk through this real quick.

00:50:04:08 - 00:50:22:10 Speaker 3 Yes, this one is a missing juvenile. Obviously in law enforcement we deal with, runaway juveniles a lot. This is one that ran away. Was in the middle of the night. This is in a neighborhood in in Palm Coast. You juvenile ran away. Obviously, we want to locate them for their safety and to make sure that they're okay.

00:50:22:12 - 00:50:33:09 Speaker 3 We're not going to pursue or do anything like that, but we want to be able to locate them and bring them home safely.

00:50:33:10 - 00:50:36:01 Speaker 2 She ran well after those was over that way.

00:50:36:04 - 00:50:37:14 Speaker 6 Okay. I got in my truck.

00:50:38:00 - 00:50:53:09 Speaker 2 Go down that way. Try to cut off. She never came off the worse. So she somewhere in the woods.

00:50:53:10 - 00:51:00:01 Speaker 5 Has on a talk to her a little bit. What we're seeing, it's their, color image on the left and then thermal on the right.

00:51:00:03 - 00:51:23:06 Speaker 3 So this one is basically the juveniles jumped a couple fences and was running and hiding in the backyard. to the left there. That's actually one of our patrol deputies canvasing the area. At one point, the juvenile just jumped the fence and basically almost runs directly towards the deputy, but turns around once she sees him and runs back.

00:51:23:07 - 00:51:36:07 Speaker 3 So with that, what we were able to do is obviously have that deputy stop. We know the exact location of where the juvenile is, and the deputy was able to locate the juvenile and make contact with that juvenile.

00:51:36:09 - 00:51:47:13 Speaker 3 So you can see the difference there on what you see normally and with the flare, how good it is and how much that helps us.

00:51:47:14 - 00:52:01:11 Speaker 5 Yeah. Excellent use case, especially at night. You can tell on the left side you don't have much ambient light. So to be able to have the thermal is extremely helpful in locating people or and you know, anything in any scenario.

00:52:01:12 - 00:52:19:03 Speaker 3 and at the end of the day, obviously all we what we want is make sure that the juvenile safe in is doesn't get hurt or same thing like a resident doesn't come out and think that the juvenile is breaking in. so that's the ultimate goal. And this was a success for that.

00:52:19:04 - 00:52:19:08 Speaker 6 Yeah.

00:52:19:08 - 00:52:21:09 Speaker 2 Just just be happy there.

00:52:21:09 - 00:52:40:00 Speaker 6 So that really quickly and get that quick sight picture and being able to direct resources, you know, and being able to spot that, that heat signature that could be, you know, that missing juvenile especially like, you know, in the northeast, you know, we'll have missing pickets, in the winter time and, you know, the temperatures dropping quickly.

00:52:40:00 - 00:52:53:00 Speaker 6 And you got to find them very fast before, you know, before hypothermia and things like that kick and, you know, getting that, getting the drone in the air and getting that, that thermal image real quick. It's so valuable.

00:52:53:01 - 00:53:09:11 Speaker 3 Yes. And for us, obviously, running away is not a crime. So it's it we're going to limit our resources on what we're going to do. But being able to get the drone on time very quickly and in the air and locating, a couple houses down, it was key. So we were able to locate that juvenile and bring our juvenile home.

00:53:09:11 - 00:53:17:06 Speaker 3 And obviously now they know that if they do run away again, we could find them quickly.

00:53:17:07 - 00:53:44:09 Speaker 5 Excellent. Well, we, have reached the end of our session here, but we are going to take some questions. So if you have any, please feel free to throw them in the Q&A. and I can go through some of these. let's see here. what was the assessment called after the FAA cert is completed? I think they're referring to the next training that you do.

00:53:44:10 - 00:53:47:02 Speaker 5 unless there is something else that you mentioned.

00:53:47:03 - 00:54:13:08 Speaker 4 Yeah, I think they're asking about the nest. It's, National Institute of Standards and Training. it's there's, there's a specific, course that is searchable online. it's basically a three stage, course that goes over basic drone maneuvers. it's a little hard to describe verbally, but if you Google, the nest, drone assessment, there's all kinds of resources online.

00:54:13:08 - 00:54:39:10 Speaker 4 It's it takes about ten minutes to complete. it's fairly simple and cheap to construct. And, it just basically gauges a pilot's ability to, to conduct basic maneuvers. elevate, descend, rotation. it's just a very basic course, to make sure that the pilot can control the drone and can conduct maneuvers as instructed.

00:54:39:11 - 00:54:59:02 Speaker 6 Yeah. This is a really good job of designing those courses. and, you know, it's a government agency, and they they designed the course to be very accessible to pretty much every, any, any size. I want to build an essentially the materials I would need would be like, you know, the, you know, five gallon buckets from Home Depot, some two by fours and screws and things like that.

00:54:59:02 - 00:55:16:06 Speaker 6 There's no, you know, kind of propriety area the materials that you need to. And you'd be able to construct it and, and run these courses, you know, very cost effectively. And, you know, everybody that I speak to loves using that course. the agency that I was with yesterday, they run all their pilots through those courses.

00:55:16:07 - 00:55:25:09 Speaker 6 So, yeah, that's, a great resource. missed. And I asked, you can just do a Google search on and you'll be able to get the information.

00:55:25:10 - 00:55:48:12 Speaker 4 Yeah. And I just want to reiterate that it's not any, you know, advanced tactical type training, but it is a great resource for gauging, basic proficiency, in flight training. So that's why it's kind of the first stage of training for us after the the FAA certification is that Mr.. Assessment to make sure that they can conduct basic maneuvers with the drones.

00:55:48:13 - 00:55:53:05 Speaker 4 you know, conduct these maneuvers without without question, drones.

00:55:53:06 - 00:56:11:10 Speaker 3 And this assessment could also be it's timed. So puts a little bit of stress on the pilot. but you have an open area. It makes you actually maneuver the camera, take photographs and stuff. So it's not just flying. It's also doing everything that you would do on a normal, on a normal incident or flight that you would do.

00:56:11:14 - 00:56:22:01 Speaker 3 So it gives just enough stress where they have to move, they have to do what they have to do. But it's a controlled environment environment which is really nice.

00:56:22:03 - 00:56:36:13 Speaker 6 Now we have another question, from, from one of the viewers asking if you're doing any, any kind of integrations with, real time crime centers or, you know, like a centralized location where you're sending these live stream videos to.

00:56:36:14 - 00:56:56:10 Speaker 4 So we do have, real time crime center, and we, we have a mobile command center that gets deployed for bigger incidents. So, like Sergeant Fuentes mentioned earlier, we have, all of our drones are are integrated with AKS on. So if you use AKS on in evidence.com for your body cameras, you can integrate these drones directly with AKS.

00:56:56:11 - 00:57:26:01 Speaker 4 and you can add any sergeant or commander, crime center can log in to Exxon, respond through the evidence.com dashboard and can view the live stream from the drone just the way they would live stream with any body camera. So the benefit for us there is the ease of access because it's available to anyone. like I said, sergeants and commanders of the field, commanders at a in a, mobile command center or our real time crime center can access that.

00:57:26:02 - 00:57:39:02 Speaker 4 But it's also accessible in the exact same way that our body cameras are accessible. So it's the same dashboard, it's the same log in. It's the same process. It's not an additional system that anybody has to learn how to use.

00:57:39:03 - 00:58:01:04 Speaker 5 I want to take this to our last question, and then we're going to have to wrap it up. Unfortunately, we're close to the top of the hour. the question is about precision drone in a box at, key concern areas. And yes, we have a lot of agencies doing that. we have several agencies that are currently doing that, and we have more that are going to build upon those deployments.

00:58:01:06 - 00:58:29:11 Speaker 5 We call them doc based, drone first responder, where they're choosing areas of their jurisdiction, typically, which have a higher crime rates so that the drone can respond to incidents in less than, you know, 90s, and the overhead and then often with automated trigger integrations, you know, such as something like a gunshot detection, a shot spotter, the drones getting there before 911 call can even be made because it's automatically triggering it to go to that location.

00:58:29:11 - 00:58:36:06 Speaker 5 So yes, there are several agencies that are doing that now and definitely more to come in the near future.

00:58:36:07 - 00:58:57:12 Speaker 4 That's one of the one of the hopes that we have for our next phase of, as we move through this program. One of our limitations there has to do with the range of the drones that we're using. And we're looking at the, you know, the next phase of drones or the LTE, capability, which would give us that further range and the ability to start building that infrastructure out.

00:58:57:13 - 00:59:13:05 Speaker 5 So, for those of you who did not get to your questions, they have been logged. We can reach out. We can answer them for you. you can also reach out to any of us if you need anything. you have any further questions for us as well? There were several questions about whether or not this is being recorded.

00:59:13:07 - 00:59:40:02 Speaker 5 it is. The On-Demand version will be available at police 1.com on the webinars page. and with that, I just wanted to thank Flagler County. Really appreciate your time and sharing these success stories. Deepu, as always, love doing webinars with you and to police one, we appreciate you hosting for us. hopefully this was beneficial to those who attended and kind of gave you some new ideas about how you could be deploying drones in law enforcement.

00:59:40:05 - 00:59:44:02 Speaker 5 So with that, we thank you and stay safe.

00:59:44:03 - 00:59:45:05 Speaker 3 Thank you. Thank you so.

00:59:45:05 - 00:59:45:08 Speaker 2 Much.