Fremont police using drone fleet in searches

A teenage boy hid in thick bushes near the BART tracks in Fremont. He’d just run away from the California School for the Deaf, and police officers were searching for him in the dark with little luck.

The boy’s friends had started their own search party, and every so often they shined a flashlight up to alert the Police Department’s eye in the sky. Overhead, a drone was tracking their movements with an infrared camera in an effort to find the boy.

The search, which could have taken hours, ended in mere minutes thanks to the drone, police said. The heat given off by the boy’s body helped authorities locate him.

“The ability to quickly search a large area and then find the person greatly reduced the time it would have taken us to get that person help,” said Lt. Matt Snelson, administrator of the department’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Program.

The incident occurred about 8:30

p.m. on Feb. 5, when the CHP asked Fremont police for help in finding the boy, Snelson said. Social media posts and interviews with the boy’s friends helped officers determine that he was probably hiding near the BART tracks.

“The whole area is very dark,” Snelson said. “It is wooded, overgrown tall grass, large bushes. It would have been really hard for people on foot at 8:30 at night to try to locate this missing person alone.”

The drone, a DJI Mavic 2 Pro, was purchased less than two months ago. It was the department’s 12th in a growing fleet.

The Mavic 2 Pro has a FLIR, a thermal-imaging camera system that can sense infrared radiation. The camera can tell the difference between a warm object (a person) and cold objects (grass, trees, etc.), Snelson said. He said the drone also has a spotlight, and a loudspeaker to “give announcements and commands.”

Four of the Mavic 2 Pros, and eight DJI Phantom 4 drones, which have color cameras that can shoot video and still photos, are now in use by the department.

Fremont police began a joint program with the city’s Fire Department in early 2017 to use drones in instances of barricaded suspects, rescues, hostage-taking, active shooters, mass casualty events and missing or lost people.

Eleven officers in the department, mainly within the patrol unit, are registered pilots, Snelson said.

“Once they are certified, they can take these UAVs in their vehicle,” he said. “It gives us a quick response.”

When storm water flooded Niles Canyon on Jan. 26, 2017, officers used a drone to track down a man who drove into the creek. The drone allowed them to check to see whether he was still inside the vehicle, Snelson said.

“You can’t do that with a helicopter,” he said.

The use of drones in police work is becoming much more common, raising privacy concerns. The Alameda County Sheriff ’s Office boasts a dozen drones that have been used in critical incidents.

“The camera is what makes it a great tool,” said Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Sheriff ’s Office. “The drone basically flies the camera.”

The office used drones to search for missing people during the Ghost Ship fire that killed 36 people in Oakland in 2016. Drones have also helped create 3-D maps of the destruction from deadly California wildfires.

Burglary warnings: Drivers on Interstate 880 in Fremont will soon see digital billboards announcing steals, but not the kind shoppers are searching for.

The city plans to replace some advertisements along the freeway in a few weeks with stern warnings about locking cars and hiding valuables. The move comes after an eye-popping increase in car break-ins, said Geneva Bosques, a Fremont police spokeswoman.

Smash-and-grab thefts have been on the rise for years in Fremont, police said. But the beginning of 2019 has been especially bad for the East Bay’s second-largest city, with 319 reported auto burglaries between Jan. 1 and Feb. 12.

“The intensity of it in the first couple weeks of the year was like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ ” Bosques said.

Half of the victims in the burglaries lived outside city limits, and most of the thefts occurred at shopping centers and gym parking lots along I-880. That, Bosques said, spurred the department to post roadside warnings.

Auto burglaries shot up 87 percent in Fremont from 2014 to 2017. The number dropped 16 percent last year, but police said 2019 has brought fresh concern.

The good news, police said, is that 11 suspected auto thieves were arrested in Fremont in recent weeks. Authorities say small crews of burglars can have an outsize impact when it comes to car break-ins.

Overall, Fremont is one of the safest big cities in the Bay Area. And it isn’t alone in seeing a sharp rise in auto burglaries. During the last month, the Marin County Sheriff ’s Office and the San Mateo Police Department also issued community alerts about thefts from parked cars.

In January, San Francisco saw 1,750 car break-ins, according to police data — a big improvement from the previous two years.

Authorities around the Bay Area have stressed the same message that will be on the Fremont billboards, that vehicles typically won’t be targets if drivers don’t leave valuables in plain sight.

“We absolutely have control over making ourselves vulnerable,” Bosques said.