Police drones start to think on their own, raising civil liberties concerns
CHULA VISTA, Calif. — When the police in Chula Vista, Calif., receive a 911 call, they can dispatch a flying drone with the press of button.
On a recent afternoon, from a launchpad on the roof of the Chula Vista Police Department, they sent a drone across the city to a crowded parking lot where a young man was asleep in the front seat of a stolen car with drug paraphernalia on his lap.
When the man left the car — carrying a gun and a bag of heroin — a nearby police car had trouble following as he sprinted across the street and ducked behind a wall. But as he threw the gun into a dumpster and hid the bag of heroin, the drone, hovering above him, caught everything on camera. When he slipped through the back door of a strip mall, exited through the front door and ran down the sidewalk, it caught that too.
Watching the live video feed, an officer back at headquarters relayed the details to police on the scene, who soon caught the man and took him into custody. Later, they retrieved the gun and the heroin. And after another press of the button, the drone returned to the roof on its own.
Each day, the Chula Vista police respond to as many as 15 emergency calls with a drone, launching more than 4,100 flights since the program began two years ago. Chula Vista, a Southern California city with a population of 270,000, is the first in the country to adopt such a program, called Drone as First Responder.
Over the past several months, three other cities — two in California, one in Georgia — have followed suit. Police agencies from Hawaii to New York have
used drones for years, but mostly in simple, manually flown ways: Officers would carry a drone in the trunk of a car on patrol or drive it to a crime scene before launching it over a park or flying it inside a building.
But the latest drone technology — mirroring technology that powers selfdriving cars — has the power to transform everyday policing, just as it can transform package delivery, building inspections and military reconnaissance. Rather than spending tens of millions of dollars on large helicopters and pilots, even small police forces could operate tiny autonomous drones for a relative pittance.
That newfound automation, however, raises civil liberties concerns — especially as drones gain the power to track vehicles and people automatically. As the police use more drones, they could collect and store more video of life in the city, which could remove any expectation of privacy once you leave the home.
“Communities should ask hard questions about these programs. As the power and scope of this technology expands, so does the need for
privacy protection,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Project on Speech, Privacy and Technology. “Drones can be used to investigate known crimes. But they are also sensors that can generate offenses.”
In Chula Vista, drones are already an integral part of the way the police respond to emergencies. After an emergency call comes in, officers give the drone a location, and it flies to that point on its own.
For Mr. Stanley, the concern is that increasingly powerful technology will be used to target parts of the community — or strictly enforce laws that are out of step with social norms.
“It could allow law enforcement to enforce any area of the law against anyone they want,” Mr. Stanley said.
Drones, for instance, could easily be used to identify people and restrict activity during protests like those that have been so prevalent across the country in recent months. Capt. Redmond said the Chula Vista department did not deploy drones over Black Lives Matters protests because its policies forbade it.