NYPD raft-carrying drones could join lifeguards in beach rescues
NEW YORK — This summer, struggling swimmers off Coney Island might be met not just by a young lifeguard in an orange suit but also by assistance from above, in the form of a buglike device delivering an inflatable float.
The raft-bearing drone is the latest in a series of gadgets promoted by Mayor Eric Adams as a way to improve life in New York City. Discussing the drone during his weekly question-and-answer session at City Hall on Tuesday, the mayor said it would begin flying as part of a pilot project to address a chronic summer problem.
“They’re going to start out with Coney Island, and they’re going to grow from there,” Adams said, referring to the entertainment mecca on Brooklyn’s south shore. “I think it can be a great addition to saving the lives of those that we lose over the summer.”
New York City may be known for its concrete-and-steel canyons, but it boasts 14 miles of city beaches: from Coney Island in Brooklyn and Rockaway Beach in Queens to Orchard Beach in the Bronx and South Beach in Staten Island.
City officials have long struggled to improve water safety at public beaches, with their strong riptides, legions of unskilled swimmers, and perennial lifeguard staffing shortages. Four people drowned last year off city beaches, all of them when lifeguards were off duty, and three drowned the year before that, city officials said. But there have been years with more drownings: In 2019, there were at least seven at Rockaway beaches alone.
Adams, a self-described “tech geek,” has already assigned a robot to patrol the Times Square subway station and promoted a lassolike device to restrain emotionally disturbed people.
On Tuesday, he said that the drone’s operators would use a powerful speaker attached to its body to communicate with swimmers in distress and with lifeguards trying to save them.
“Now you have eyes in the sky telling you, ‘The person is straight ahead; the person is off to your right; the person went under in front of you,’” Adams said.
A Parks Department official argued Tuesday that the plan represented a logical progression from the city’s current use of drones at city beaches to keep an eye out for sharks, which have been sighted more frequently in recent years.
Adams is nothing if not a drone devotee. After a parking garage collapsed in April, his administration used a team with drones and a robotic dog to inspect the building. A month later, he took part in a “Mayoral Drone Forum,” where participants learned about new uses for drones. His Police Department has used them to help control crowds.
In July, Adams released guidelines to facilitate more drone use across the five boroughs, including for purposes like inspecting building facades.
“We’re paving the way for the future use of drones here in our everyday lives, not just in emergency situations,” he said at the time. “And soon, they will help us monitor our beaches for unauthorized swimmers and hazardous conditions.”
Drones are already being used for lifesaving purposes at some European beaches, including in the Valencia region of Spain and in southwest France.
They have been tested on Long Island as well. Guards at Jones Beach, who already use drones to watch for strong riptides and monitor for sharks, have begun partnering with the New York State Police to test their efficiency as lifesaving devices, said Cary Epstein, a lifeguard supervisor there.
Water safety is a constant concern in New York City, where beaches and pools are some of the only sources of relief for crowds of often inexperienced swimmers from sweltering neighborhoods with few public swimming resources.
Affordable swim classes are few and far between, and every year, hordes of people who cannot swim flock to ocean beaches, sometimes in the hours after the lifeguards have gone home.
To locals, a Police Department helicopter hovering over a city beach has become a telltale sign of a missing swimmer.
Each winter, months before beaches and pools open, the city struggles to recruit, train, and certify new and returning lifeguards to bolster one of its most chronically understaffed workforces. In recent years, short staffing has resulted in the partial closure of beaches and pools to swimmers.
Last year, the city grappled with its worst lifeguard shortage on record, partly thanks to a pitched battle between the entrenched lifeguard unions and the Parks Department, which runs the beaches and pools.
This year, the city has been working to ramp up recruitment, promising higher wages and a bonus for returning lifeguards.
The Parks Department also expanded its marketing campaign, releasing posters that paired images of actual city lifeguards on patrol with the slogan “Challenge Accepted.”
The city added more testing dates and sites this winter, including more pools outside Manhattan, and loosened the requirement for an on-site vision exam, allowing applicants to submit an eye doctor’s letter instead.
Parks officials said Tuesday that 424 applicants had passed the qualifying test — up from 375 at this point last year — in order to take the 16-week training and certification course needed to become a lifeguard this summer.
Henry Garrido, executive director of District Council 37, which includes the two lifeguard unions, lauded the mayor’s safety initiative but added that “no amount of drones can replace a human being, which is why we’ve pushed so hard to increase wages and improve working conditions for our lifeguards.”
Drones at the beach may also spark privacy issues.
“Given the mayor’s propensity to turn high-tech gimmicks into a policing tool, I want to know what stops the NYPD from using drones between rescues to survey beachgoers,” said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a civil rights organization in New York.
“Given how these systems shift over time, something we purchase for rescues today might be spying on sunbathers tomorrow,” he added.
Ocean lifeguards typically swim flotation devices out to distressed swimmers and accompany them back to shore.
In situations in which lifeguards are off duty or cannot quickly access the swimmer, the drones could save precious moments before a swimmer goes under, Epstein said. But getting a flotation device perfectly into the hands of a panicky swimmer is not a sure bet.