Pasco County now deploying over 20 drones on patrol, daily
Captain Denbo of Pasco County Sheriff’s Office shares how their agency went from using drones for event overwatch, to assisting with calls for service and is deploying over 20 drones a day while out on patrol. Watch the video to learn how PCSO scaled their drone program to a patrol-led DFR model.
- Okay. So I kind of wanna touch on some of the
- current use cases that you have
- for your drone program. So you stated that you started with, um, kind of in
- a tactical SWAT operations, but where did you move from there
- and where
- does your drone program stand today with use case?
- Yeah. So the next, uh, venture we kind of made
- was special events.
- Uh, so we have, like, the county fair.
- There's various parades and things that go on like anyone has that, that, uh,
- have either thousands or tens of thousands of people coming out
- to them.
- So we started thinking, "Okay, uh, it's really cool when everybody sees the
- helicopter fly over at the parade," but then after that they get tired of
- hearing
- it. They, they, they don't wanna basically have to scream
- over that, uh, while
- they're trying to enjoy a, a festival or a parade.
- So we started thinking, uh, "All right, how can we employ these in these
- environments?" And, um, Florida has a bit of a unique legislative
- setup
- with the use of drones, uh, as far as, um, uh, when you can and can't
- use drones. But one of the ex- uh, times you can use them
- is any time there's more
- than 50 people, uh, gathered up somewhere.
- So, uh, we use that as a great, uh, uh, reason to, to have
- drones up and over a lot of events where we, um, have like, uh, all,
- you know, like all the little small jurisdictions
- within our...
- They'll have their, uh, parades, Christmas parades, things like that.
- So we started venturing out into that.
- Uh, that was initial, and then, and then, um, slowly we, we built
- into, uh, going out to, uh, in-progress calls.
- But then we, we started kind of at the most severe,
- so you have, like, those
- missing persons calls where there's hundreds of, uh, resources
- deployed or, or maybe you have these, uh, situations where there's a standoff going
- on and, and there's, um, you know, a, a need to provide
- continued support as far as, like, uh, watching a backyard
- or watching a side yard.
- So we started kind of a call-out team, uh, if you will.
- And, uh, more recently in the last couple years,
- we've gotten to the point where we
- have, uh, you know, well over 20 drones out with members
- of patrol in other, uh, areas of the agency.
- And those, those drones are basically, uh, spread out th- geographically
- throughout the county so that members can respond to in-progress
- calls with those
- things and, uh, and deploy them in the event of an
- emergency. So it's really...
- Yeah, it's gone, gone from literally just, like, three or four guys having access
- to a drone, uh, for special events to, to a team of, uh,
- 15 pilots that, that have access to a- uh, 20-something drones,
- uh, that they, uh, at any given time can deploy from their
- vehicles and,
- uh, and to... and respond to calls for service as they
- come in.
Watch Time
2 Mins 23 Secs