Streetsboro Police Department uses drone to take flight

The Streetsboro Police Department takes flight from time to time with the use of the drone they received in September — a tool officers say will soon become indispensable to their arsenal.

Chief Powers decided to bring a drone program to the department after attending a conference in DC last year, and now they have one. Reporter LiAnna Schwerer has more about how they plan to use it.

Drones nationwide have become increasingly popular. The FAA Aerospace Forecast for Fiscal Years 2017-2037 indicates that the preponderance of drones in flight will only continue to grow. In fact, the FAA predicts that there will be more than 3.5 million unmanned aircraft systems nationwide by 2021.

An increasing number of police departments are purchasing drones. The Streetsboro Police Department is no exception.

A press release from Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office notes that the drones could be used for investigations, crime scene and traffic accident investigations, missing persons cases, SWAT operations and active shooter incidents.

DeWine also formed an advisory group on unmanned aircraft systems, creating a “model law enforcement policy to guide departments in the use of aircraft systems,” DeWine wrote in a letter to law enforcement personnel. Cuyahoga Community College Police Chief Clayton Harris chaired the advisory group and they released their recommendations.

Scott Hermon, a Streetsboro Police Officer licensed to fly the drone, said the unit can be especially useful in Streetsboro’s rural environments.

“[The county is not] necessarily compact, so you can’t really drive places,” he said. “We’re mostly using it to search for people. Or if there’s a stolen vehicle out in a big field that we can’t necessarily get through, we can send this up to see it.”

The department acquired the drone, Hermon said, when Streetsboro Police Chief Darin Powers named him the project coordinator and asked him to find something that was useful within a budget. The drone as-is cost about $3,000 and is what Hermon called a “civilian drone.” That is, you could buy an identical model from a major tech retailer.

But it’s what law enforcement officers can add to the drones that makes them especially useful.

“In the next month or so, we’re going to be adding infrared technology, which will basically make it so we can see heat signatures,” Hermon said. [The drone is] useful now. It’ll be indispensable once we have that infrared.”

The infrared camera will roughly double the price of the original drone, and the additional technology necessary for transmitting the infrared data will cost another $1,000, so costs in all should be around $7,000.

Some citizens may be concerned about privacy — something Powers is aware of.

“We also understand there’s concern over privacy rights and those are being addressed at both federal level, local level, state level, and we’re going to comply with whatever we need to,” he said.

Bob Ellis, a Columbus-based attorney, said law-enforcement is limited in what they can do.

“They can use drones in the same way they can use any tools differently than civilians,” he said.

Hermon echoed this, saying the department would obtain a warrant for everything except for a “hot pursuit.”

“‘Hot pursuit’ would be, let’s say we have a bank robbery and the person runs to a field behind a house,” he said. “We’re not going to say ‘Can you wait right there a minute while I go get a warrant to search this field?'”

Aside from that, Hermon has to keep the drone in his sight at all times – even though it has a GPS unit.

“Even though on my screen it tells me, it shows me a moving map of exactly where it’s at, I have to be able to see it with my plain-Jane eyes,” he said.

In the meantime, the department does all training flights over public property.

The department has used the drone a total of three times. It has no offensive capability.

“There’s no weapons,” Hermon said. “You can’t put weapons on it. Some people are concerned about putting weapons on it. We can’t legally drop anything from it.

Despite plans to comply with all FAA regulations, the police department does plan to get a waiver so they can operate the drone at night. According to the FAA’s report, these are the most common type of waiver requests, comprising 65 percent of all waiver requests for drone operation.

Streetsboro Police now have a drone to use. Check out our story for #JMCRPP tomorrow!

— Andrew Atkins (@andrewjatkins) February 15, 2018

@andrewjatkins and I's latest is up on the reporting public policy website. Check it out and let us know how you feel about law enforcement using drones! #jmcrpp

— Anna Nicole Schwerer (@Anna_Nicoles) February 15, 2018