Cape Coral Police Department begins new drone program
Cape Coral Police Department's newest UAV program features five drones and nearly a dozen certified drone pilots that can help with everything from searching for a missing person, to assessing damage after a natural disaster.
- Flashlights, helicopters, and canines are some of the most common tools law
- enforcement agencies use for emergency operations.
- But now Cape Coral is patrolling from above with
- drones.
- Eyes in the sky is better than four on the ground.
- The high-tech tool can go places humans can't.
- It allows officers on the ground to get a bird's-eye view of the
- scene in minutes, whether it's surveillance or scoping
- damage after a hurricane.
- The
- possibilities are endless.
- In tonight's cover story, ABC 7's Anissa Bohannon gets you more on
- how
- drones will help make Southwest Florida's largest city
- safer.
- Cape Coral Police's newest program doesn't just take flight.
- These drones will help with everything from searching for a missing person to
- assessing damage after a natural disaster.
- Eyes in the sky is better than four on the ground.
- While Heath Rudy says the process of getting the new department's newest UAV
- program off the ground hasn't been an easy lift...
- It's a lot of paperwork, a lot of FAA, a lot of getting policies
- ready that we've never had to do before.
- These five new drones
- and nearly a dozen newly trained drone pilots...
- We're ready to go
- ... are just part of this new program designed
- to keep the Cape Coral
- community and its officers safe.
- They can go places we can't quicker, um, not necessarily speed-wise, but in
- a direct course. Search and rescue, um, emergency, uh,
- preparedness situations, disaster response,
- to get assessments of the scenes after.
- And the drones can do even more than that.
- Rudy explained how high-tech tools help them work in tandem with the
- department's K9 unit.
- We have the capability of tethering a beacon to the
- K9 operators where the UAV will actually follow them autonomously.
- We could be overwatch for them, so if they go to release their, their dog
- into an area thinking that everything's okay, that way th-
- they know that
- there isn't a fence with a child playground on the other side.
- In addition to being cheaper than using a helicopter, this new technology can be
- up in the air in minutes, saving precious time when it comes to
- responding to potential emergencies.
- Fiscally, it made sense to be able to use something
- like this, as opposed to
- trying to buy a fleet of he- helicopters or, or a fixed wing aircraft.
- From where we are right now, we could deploy a drone
- and help out the neighborhood
- right here where we're at right now, whereas the shared use helicopter might be
- in Estero.
- And depending on budgets and the need for newer technology in the
- future...
- If the need comes up that we might need possibly an underwater
- UAV or drone that we might have to take into canals to search for people
- or objects, that's always a possibility
- ... the program could always expand to even
- greater heights.
- We're gonna deploy them now, see how it works out,
- see where this takes us.
- We're pushing for what we can get to make things better for everybody.
- In Cape Coral, Anissa Bohannon, ABC 7.
Watch Time
2 Mins 59 Secs