Inside Miami Beach PD's DFR Program: Lessons from Spring Break, FIFA, and 500+ Responses
Miami Beach covers seven square miles with 92,000 residents, 28 million annual visitors, and 48 special event weekends a year. With that much ground to cover and that many people passing through, MBPD needed a way to see problems before officers arrived on scene. In this session, Chief Wayne Jones, Lieutenant Raymond Diaz, and Sergeant Anthony Loperfido discuss how MBPD scales DFR through Spring Break and FIFA World Cup events, gets drones on scene ahead of patrol, clears calls without pulling officers from their zones, and shares live video across partner agencies. Hosted by Skydio Public Safety Strategist Devin Ross, the session concludes with live audience Q&A
- All right. We're live. I wanna thank everyone for attending our
- webinar today. Today, we're gonna be looking at Miami Beach's
- PD's DFR program, lessons they've learned from spring break,
- FIFA, and over 500 responses. So before we get into Miami
- PD's program itself, I wanna start with the why.
- Chief Wade Jones is here, and he's gonna kick us off
- and share why he made DFR a
- priority for the department and what he wanted it to change for the
- city.
- Chief, always good to see you. Great to see you again.
- Um, Chief, before we get into the details, what'd you see in Miami Beach
- and that made DFR worth investing in, and what were you hoping it would change
- for
- your offices and the city?
- Uh, Devin, great to see you again as always.
- Uh, look, that's a, that's a big question.
- Um,
- I've always had a vision for this police department, uh, having
- it leverage technology to help us work smarter, not, not
- harder, to help us, uh, solve crimes more efficiently,
- um, to help us put bad guys and bad gals in jail to make our community
- safer.
- A- and so as a, as, as a part of my comprehensive, uh,
- concept, which was to, um,
- implement and stand up a real-time intelligence center, which, which we have,
- I wanted to leverage and exercise the technology, uh,
- of drones.
- Uh, you may or may not know we currently have
- 24, uh, Skydio
- drones in our fleet. Two of those we use as, uh,
- DFRs. And I can tell you it has really become
- the nucleus
- of how we operate our RTIC, RTIC. Almost every crime is
- happening in real time, and our RTIC
- is operational, we launch a, a drone, the DFR.
- And it has paid dividends. Absolute dividends.
- Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to
- talk to us today, Chief.
- That really gives us the why. Uh, now we're gonna get into your team
- that actually
- built your DFR program, what it looks like when
- that vision becomes part of the
- daily operations of Miami PD. So I'm gonna be intro-
- introducing your team here.
- I wanna introduce, uh, Lieutenant Raymond Diaz
- and Sergeant Anthony Lopafido
- from the Miami Beach Police Department.
- Gentlemen, will you please introduce yourselves?
- Tell us a little about yourselves.
- Good afternoon, everyone. My name's Ray Diaz.
- I'm been right now with, uh, Miami Beach Police Department for over
- 16 and a half years, and I'm currently the lieutenant
- that oversees
- our Real-Time Intelligence Center.
- Sarge?
- I think, uh, Sergeant Lopafido's having some, uh,
- some technical difficulties
- right now he's trying to work through. I- I'll, I'll be glad to introduce him.
- So Sergeant Toner... uh, Tony Lopafido, um, he's been with our
- department for well over, uh, 20 years, and he's currently
- our unmanned aerial systems coordinator.
- Um, and he is one of the, uh, one of the pioneers for bringing,
- uh, drone technology to the city of Miami
- Beach.
- Awesome. Um-
- If, if you don't mind me sort of riding on
- both, uh, Ray and, and Tony for a
- second, I can tell you an old mentor of mine,
- which was a
- retired, uh, commander from New York, by the way, um, once told
- me, "Find good and smart people, put them in the right
- jobs, and then get the hell out of the way."
- And I think I have done that here
- with both Ray and Tony. Ray's a wicked smart
- guy, a rising star in the organization, and was a perfect fit to
- run the RTIC program and, and therefore our DFR falls under his
- umbrella. Tony, on the other hand, has been a pioneer, as Ray sort of
- touched on, in drones, um, in law
- enforcement and most recently in the DFR program, and has
- taught not only our guys internally, um, all the things they need
- to, they need to know about being successful
- in drones, but has,
- has taken his talents nationwide teaching police departments and officers
- throughout the country. And so he's really, really been, I think,
- um, a
- pioneer in the DFR space.
- Awesome. Thank you very much, Chief.
- So to understand a little bit about how Miami runs a
- DFR program and how you handle things like spring break and FIFA a-
- and other major events, let's talk a little bit about, um,
- the Miami PD, Miami
- Beach PD.
- You're geographically small area.
- You're eight miles long, and you're only one mile wide.
- You have 93,000 permanent residents, and with over 28
- million annual visitors. You're a department of 437 sworn,
- with 130 additional professional staff, and you receive over
- 130,000 calls annually for service.
- So basically, your city can operate at a major event
- tempo even when there's
- nothing going on. It's, it's a lot of people crammed into one
- small
- area. For someone who's never policed Miami
- Beach, what do these
- numbers actually mean operationally?
- Well, listen, in, uh, in short, Devin, they mean,
- uh, we don't have enough cops. Believe it or not,
- seven square miles from point to
- point, um, 437 police officers are full-time, 80 reserve
- police officers, and it's never enough.
- Uh, we have over 300 special events here in
- our city a year.
- Oftentimes we have to leverage relationships with other police
- departments to come
- in and support us. Uh, most recently we had events,
- um, related to FIFA here o- on Miami Beach.
- Although the games were held in greater Miami, much of the
- folks coming to FIFA games stayed here in the city.
- A lot of ancillary events related to FIFA here in the city, causing us to have
- to spool up our staffing. And quite frankly, um, as it relates
- to, uh, drones and DFR, used them multiple times
- each day.
- How could dramatically can the population change and call volume change
- from one day or one part of the city to the other in Miami Beach?
- Uh, dramatically Um, we, like you mentioned,
- have a population around 9,000, um, full-time residents.
- But we're a tourist town, we're a destination town,
- so we have a lot of service
- workers who come across the bay each day, up to 200,000 of them sometimes.
- And we have tourists who come to visit our city.
- Weekends, uh, our population will swell to 20,
- 50,000 to half a million
- depending on what's going on on a given weekend or if it's a holiday period.
- Um, and so, um, and it's, it's a dynamic city
- where we police not necessarily our residents, we actually police
- people visiting, uh, whether they're day-trippers
- or people here for an extended
- period of time. Uh, most of our crimes are committed by people who don't live in
- our city. Most of the victims of crimes
- are people who don't live in our city.
- Unique, unique situation here in our city as you
- leave
- other, uh, places.
- So when you get a, a thing like sp- spring break comes to town-
- Mm
- ... or you get a major scale event like FIFA
- come to town, how much did it, uh,
- additional demand does that put on your department
- and on your officers?
- Uh, huge. Uh, we often have to go to, um,
- extended, uh, configuration in terms of staffing.
- Uh, alpha bravo is sometimes become a
- four-letter word here in our city because we
- do it so often with our cops. They're exhausted. Absolutely exhausted.
- It's continuous.
- Well,
- that type of operational environment is why getting information earlier
- matters.
- And a drone is just part of, one part of the system.
- And I wanna talk, because of that, I wanna talk a little bit about your Real
- Time
- Intelligence Center, which you officially opened, it looks,
- in March of 2025.
- That's where you bring in all your intelligence.
- You have over 1,200 cameras coming in.
- You have ALPR coming in. You have over 24 drones between
- DFR and flown out of the trunk. You have 26 DFR
- pilots,
- 22 sworn, four professional staff.
- So this is where the program becomes an operating system.
- Walk us through what happens when a call, when ALPR starts coming into the Real
- Time Intelligence Center.
- Well, um, well, Devin, the way, uh, way it usually,
- uh, works out within the Real Time
- Intelligence Center, once a plate alert
- comes in, one of the intelligence specialists starts
- working, working the hit,
- uh, ensuring that the hit is a good hit and that, um, everything is
- valid. As that's occurring, um, everyone that works within the Real
- Time Intelligence Center is a certified Part 107 pilot and
- trained in the Skydio DFR solution.
- And immediately one person will launch and respond to the, uh, general
- area of the LPR alert. And, um, I'll have other intelligence
- specialists utilizing our legacy CT, CCTV,
- um, in the, in the vicinity to start working, working
- video, try to locate the subject vehicle.
- And as the DFR gets on station within a few seconds,
- immediately get eyeballs on our target vehicle and
- then vector that, uh, vector patrol officers to it.
- Who makes the determination if DFR is, is the right resource for an incident like
- that?
- Um, the, the way we, we, we train our officers, right, and, uh,
- train our staff
- is that we respond to in progress calls and priority calls for
- service, where, where having that eye in the sky
- is going to be able to provide, um, a useful
- tool, uh, for the patrol officers.
- If it's, if it's a, a call where having that aerial
- support is going to be beneficial, that's when we launch.
- So you talked about the, the responding officers.
- From their perspective, what does a good RTIC support
- actually sound like over the radio to them?
- So I can tell you before Real Time Intelligence went live,
- um, all, all the officers were getting was information provided by dispatch,
- which was usually provided, uh, via 911 caller.
- When the Real Time Intelligence Center went live, you immediately
- had virtual backup. You had someone working cameras.
- You have a dedicated, uh, drone pilot working your scene.
- So as you're approaching, you're not only relying on the information
- provided to you via your radio, you're now getting information
- from a fellow, uh, a fellow officer, a fellow professional staff
- member who's able to provide you a better picture of what's
- going on.
- It's a lot of information coming in at one time.
- Yep.
- They have ALPR information, maybe information from cameras,
- definitely information
- from the drone.
- Yep.
- Probably doing some intelligence lookups.
- What information is useful and what becomes noise?
- Devin, uh, Devin, um, do you mind? I'm gonna share a s- quick
- story with you, then I have to jump off. My, my boss is blowing up my phone.
- Of course, Chief.
- Friends of Tony and, um,
- and Ray.
- So two weeks ago my, my kids were here at the police department,
- a group of, of, I don't know, maybe 40, 50 kids
- going through a junior police academy.
- And one of those days we're taking,
- taking them to the RTIC. And my little girl, Chloe, she's eight.
- That evening when she came home, she shared an experience she had in the
- RTIC, and
- it went something like this.
- Stole a mo- stole a motorcycle, came across the causeway into our city.
- Uh, was alerted, um,
- in the RTIC. The LPR alerted the RTIC.
- They immediately launch one of our Skydio drones,
- DFAs, um, that tracked that rider of that vehicle.
- Police officers and cars were dispatched. Um, a stop was attempted.
- This guy fled.
- Unknowing to him, he's being tracked the entire time by, uh,
- one of our
- drones. Um, he temporarily lost the officer
- trying to, to stop him. He ditched a handgun he was carrying-
- Mm
- ... and, uh, ditched the motorcycle.
- Started walking up very casually into a neighborhood.
- And that drone, because of that drone, the operator of that drone directed a
- police officer not only to him, bad guy, and he got locked up, but
- also to where he ditched the handgun, right?
- So this is the power of operating a Real Time Intelligence Center-
- ... with a Skydio drone as the nucleus of
- solving
- crimes, preventing crimes, and putting bad guys and bad gy-
- gals in jail.
- So I'm gonna leave you with that. I'm sorry I gotta run, guys.
- I really wish I could stay the entire time. Y'all, you guys be well.
- Chief, thank you.
- No, I think the chief just put it great.
- You know, the drone gives you
- the view of what you're looking at down on the ground, but the RTC gives that view
- context. It gets the right information to the
- people making the decisions on the
- street.
- So
- I want to talk a little bit about spring break now.
- You've introduced DFR during one of the largest events that you deal with.
- Um, you're, you're literally up against one of the
- hardest operating environments
- that you deal with throughout the year.
- Um, and this gave the officers of your
- department to see, uh, whether
- DFR was actually gonna work. Um, you, you launched it during the
- 2024 season. It runs from February to mid-April.
- And this year alone you had over 200 plus firearms recovered during spring
- break. Uh, that's incredible. Um, I...
- You know, my department doesn't recover 200 firearms
- in, in a year, my former
- department. Um,
- so that's an incredible, staggering statistic.
- So why was spring break [laughs] the right moment to
- launch a DFR program?
- So for us, um, it was truly, uh, uh necessary.
- Um, spring break has been, uh, always a challenging event for us.
- Since I started the department in 2010, it's only been getting bigger and bigger
- and bigger. And, um, we wanted technology
- that was able to respond as quickly as our
- officers. Um, as you can imagine, we're not a very big city.
- So, uh, immediately a disturbance call goes out
- and our
- officers are there within a matter of 45 to 50 seconds.
- And they still don't have a clear picture of what's going on.
- To be able to utilize the drone first responder and that technology, we're able
- to get eyes on scene quickly and be able to paint pa- paint
- that picture
- for the officers responding.
- What did you have to get right before you went operational during that period?
- Um, uh, let me tee that up to Tony, our UAS
- coordinator.
- Hey. Good afternoon. I'm hoping you can hear me now.
- We started with some technical difficulties.
- Um-
- Gotcha. Gotcha, Sarge
- ... in order, in order to, to tell a tale of what we got
- right,
- we had to get a lot of things wrong. When we started this project,
- because it was so nuanced, it was such new,
- um, a, a, a venture for us as an organization, um,
- we had started as the first agency in Miami-Dade County to have an
- established drone program. Um, and
- we struggled along the way in the beginning.
- Um, and then when the concept of starting a
- DFR
- program was vaporware, it was just an
- idea, and it seemed like something out of The
- Jetsons, uh, years
- ago,
- seven, eight years ago. And then we were approached by
- Skydio to, um,
- pilot their dock solution.
- And we just completely rolled the dice on this, right?
- We didn't know if this was gonna be something that, number one,
- was gonna fit in
- our ecosystem, our daily operations.
- It was a gamble because nobody else was really doing this.
- Um, and we threw it out there right before
- spring break
- 2024. Um, and immediately,
- immediately, absolutely
- the success was within minutes of completing the training.
- Um, it showed its, its value,
- um, and, uh, its value and worth to our
- staff and our officers within a very short period of time. When our officers...
- You know, we deal with... Uh, obviously we have seven miles of beach.
- When our officers were at one point s- you know, standing at
- ground level looking at the tens of thousands of people
- that are just, you know, across the shoreline stretching north to
- south along our beach, we couldn't see anything that
- was happening at the water's
- edge. We had no, um, vantage point to anything that
- was going on in these crowds. And once we had
- that visual or that overhead perspective to see what
- was going on, um, the disturbances, the fights,
- um, you know, the other illicit activity that
- was happening in these very dense
- crowds,
- it changed the way we formatted our operations and the way that we deployed,
- uh, deployed resources during spring break.
- Spring break, like the chief had mentioned,
- is an all hands on deck, um,
- almost eight weeks of long hours,
- long, long shifts, and really just humping calls for
- service while all the, you know, visitors are coming to enjoy our city.
- What were you most concerned might not work about the program?
- You know, buy-in, um, was a huge thing for me.
- I wanted to make sure that our officers understood
- that w- the deployment of a DFR program was not
- to police the police. It was there to provide them
- actionable intelligence, things that they could use, gather
- information as they're arriving to calls for service, provide them that
- real time intelligence before they make an arrival on the scene,
- so that way they ha- they're better informed,
- they're better to respond,
- uh, with real information separate from the
- fourth party
- caller, uh, that spoke to a, a, a call taker in the 911
- center. So making sure that my officers understood that we are
- deploying a tool to help them was critical in making sure
- that we got it right. Separate from that was the buy-in from our community
- and our elected officials.
- When did you feel
- your officers' attitudes about DFR begin to shift?
- Uh, well, um, now that the chief has jumped off,
- and hopefully I
- won't get in trouble with this, the o- the officers, um, when...
- And, and Lieutenant Diaz mentions this all the
- time, um, when we're
- talking about our DFR program. When...
- You know, cops,
- cops are very, um-
- ... apprehensive to change. And, uh, at first not
- understanding the program, we used to get the one-finger wave as we'd
- say, um, when the drone would fly over the scene
- and, and,
- uh, you know, they would think that the drone is watching them
- when we're actually
- not. We're that backup officer that's in the
- sky.
- Um, we're no longer getting that one-finger wave. It's, um...
- And I say that, uh, in a, in a humorous way.
- Now it's a officers who know that there's value in the
- DFR program requesting the drone to respond out
- prior to them even taking an arrival because they know that we're gonna get
- information for them, we're gonna provide it to them in real
- time.
- We can s- they can see the live feed from the video,
- and it's actually been a
- tremendous benefit for them. So now it is, it is as necessary
- as their radio, um, as, as their handgun, as their taser, their
- body-worn camera. All of those things are now just necessary
- tools in their day-to-day operation as it is ours on the
- real-time intelligence side.
- Was there a specific type of call or mission that made officers start
- actively
- requesting DFR, or just across the board?
- Well, I think, and, uh, and Lieutenant Diaz, 'cause he, he's,
- he deeply embedded
- obviously as the commander over our real-time intelligence center a- and the
- day-to-day operations, and he sees firsthand, um, how things play
- out. But it was very early on in the program
- where a
- felony traffic stop was conducted and the officers
- had received information that the subjects might have been armed.
- Um, and our, our DFR, um, drone, which we've
- named Eagle, Eagle was overhead, and the officers, uh,
- needed to make sure that all of the occupants in this subject
- vehicle,
- uh, at this, during this high-risk stop had exited the
- vehicle.
- Um, so we took an initiative, uh, the pilot at the time, Mr.
- Eddie Diaz, to bring the drone down
- right up to the vehicle, right up to the windshield.
- The doors were opened from the car as the, the initial subjects had stepped out,
- and checked the interior of that car to make sure that it was
- clear for the officers to approach, and then obviously checked the trunk.
- So immediately they saw, wait, there is some tremendous value.
- We can, um, do this live risk mitigation, lower our
- risk, um, a- and, and, and give them an opportunity to take a
- step back, let the technology work for them
- in a smart way and a safe way. And it was only a couple of those where the word
- spread very quickly that this was gonna be a win for them.
- You know, Sarge, we see that happening, uh, through departments all over the
- country. Um, I just retired from the Nassau County
- Police in New York.
- Uh, we're on, uh, Long Island, so we have plenty of beachfront too.
- And when we first started with drones and, and DFR, of
- course, the cops being what they are, all the supervisors are watching us,
- making
- sure we're doing our job. And, and I remember the,
- the type of call it was
- for us in our department is when a drone got to a, an alarm
- call first and said, "Oh, by the way, the house you're responding to, uh,
- the back
- door is kicked in and a window is pried open,
- and now they're not responding to
- that house." And it went from apprehension to now officers are
- requesting, uh, on the radio, "Hey, did the drone get there yet?
- Uh, what does the drone see?" So it's, uh, I love to hear what type of calls make
- those transitions.
- Yeah.
- So we have a request for a question, and this is a,
- a good time for it since we're
- on that hybrid of calls and, and, and real-time intelligence center.
- Um, the question is, uh, from the audience,
- how do you prioritize calls for
- service between calls for RTCC,
- RTCC and DFR? For example, if your detective as a professional
- staff are working a call, let's say a jump and run,
- vehicle taking off,
- and someone requests DFR in another area, does the detective break off to
- take that call, or are the DFR pilots solely responsible
- for DFR calls only?
- So I, I'll go ahead and take point on this.
- Um, it all depends on what we're working, what's the priority call.
- Um, we're actually very fortunate where we do
- have, uh, multiple drone
- first responders. So, uh, we've had incidents where I
- had one, uh, drone first responder handling an, uh,
- in progress active, uh, a- aggravated battery call.
- He's on station handling that. Then another request came in reference a
- vehicle fleeing, and we're actually able to deploy our
- second drone
- first responder, uh, over to that incident.
- Um, if it's in an area where, uh, only one drone's available to respond,
- it's, it's honestly triage. It's one of those who's gonna benefit the
- most, uh, from having that, uh, visual perspective, right?
- So if we have a bailout, um, we have an active...
- we're looking for an active subject, that's gonna take priority over an alarm
- call. Um, and it's one of those, you know, we, we have an
- understanding, a hierarchy. So if it's a, a priority one call for
- dispatch where we're responding with lights and sirens versus a priority two,
- which
- is considered an in progress call, which is still routine, but a two officer
- response, the priority one's gonna get the resources
- first.
- All right. Thank you very much, Lieutenant.
- So we're talking about convincing officers for buy-in.
- Um, you don't build adoption with a
- presentation or, or, or, or a Google
- Slides. You build it by showing officers what the
- program can actually do,
- and so we're gonna get into a, a couple of incidents
- and a couple of videos I'd
- like for you to walk us through. Uh, the first one is an incident,
- it's a stolen
- vehicle recovery. It starts with an ALPR hit on a stolen
- motorcycle,
- and it's not just the fact that the motorcycle was recovered,
- it's what a lot...
- DFR allowed officers to do without losing awareness of the
- suspect. So can you talk us through this video,
- please?
- Yeah. So, um, right now, um, what we're seeing is that the,
- uh, motorcycle there in view is the, uh, the, uh,
- the stolen vehicle. Um, our pilot responded and immediately got
- eyeballs, and we're actually able to share this
- video
- through, uh, not only our ready link, but we also have a API
- connection with, uh, Fusion. So we're directing patrol officers.
- We have cops at the ready. We're directing them over, and you're
- gonna see what the subject does when the officer attempts to apprehend
- him.
- Scoots over.
- Now the subject begins to drive against traffic.
- Um, those vehicles that are stopping there
- are actually our vice narcotics
- detectives attempting to stop him.
- At this time,
- um, we directed officers to do not engage in a
- pursuit.
- Reference Eagle has eyes on the target.
- So now we're providing this information, this play-by-play for the patrol
- officers, and they're actually paralleling the
- subject, not having to worry
- about chasing him.
- So now you're-
- So-
- ... seeing, going down an alleyway. We still have eyeballs on him.
- And then
- my pilot's like, "Whoa, wait a minute.
- Where is he?"
- Voila.
- And now we see-
- Okay
- ... the subject going, and immediately our officer started
- saying, "Hey, he just
- ditched his shirt. He took off his hat."
- He's casually walking over. The first officer he dodged was directed
- over.
- A brief foot chase occurs.
- And happy ending.
- And a ba- and a bad guy goes to jail.
- A bad guy [laughs] goes to jail. So, um, once they went over the air that Eagle has
- eyes, that's the point they felt confident
- enough to call off that pursuit?
- Yes. Um, they know that we're not going to lose him.
- And at, when the drone was following it, how were the ground units redeploying
- themselves?
- Immediately they started, uh... Once, once we're giving out locations,
- the officers
- know they don't have to be directly behind the vehicle.
- They can be in the general area, and immediately started just staying a
- block away,
- traveling the same general direction. So they were...
- That subject was driving up, uh, Meridian Avenue, and they were only a
- block away on Jefferson paralleling without having to utilize lights
- and siren.
- So the subject didn't even know he was still being pursued.
- He thought he got away scot-free.
- That's great. Without the UFO, what would your options have been?
- Honestly, that call would've came out probably 30
- minutes later,
- abandoned motor scooter, and when the tag got ran,
- it would've been like, "Oh,
- darn. It's the, uh,
- the stolen vehicle that we, uh, that fled from us, uh,
- earlier in the shift."
- Well, it's good. You didn't have to choose between, uh,
- you know, disengaging on a,
- on a, a pursuit of a,
- of, of an individual and, uh, and losing the subject,
- because you had the DFR
- going. So that's good. Um, we're gonna get into another video now
- about a
- fleeing felon. Uh, it shows us a different layer of value.
- Um, you're not just locating the person. You, you're seeing the weapon.
- Uh, you're, you're changing the threat picture
- and preserving the evidence
- location. Uh, what did the officers know about the
- subject going into the incident?
- Actually, they didn't know much. Uh, so the subject, uh,
- fled from our officers on
- Ocean Drive. Um, we're able to locate the vehicle,
- and then you see the
- subject bail out, and you saw he just dumped, um, some
- suspicious evidence.
- Um, we're directing the officers over, and if you notice, the subject
- incredibly calm. Calm as a cucumber.
- And to the point where the officer's like, "Is this our guy?" I'm like, "Yeah, we
- saw him. We're following."
- And, um, and you'll see the officers are a little confused.
- The o- the subject not, not, uh, not breaking
- cover whatsoever. He's casually walking, casually walking, and
- then our officers go, apprehend successfully,
- safely. Then we're able to fly back and
- direct officers over to the, uh, suspicious piece of evidence
- that he ditched, which ended up being a loaded .45 caliber
- handgun.
- So how does seeing him disregard that firearm change the information going
- to the
- officers?
- Oh, uh, imagine, um, if we weren't up in the air, right?
- Imagine if just a, a, uh, a,
- uh, a concerned citizen said, "Suspicious person running," and we
- would've never recovered that firearm unless it
- was found by someone.
- And the one thing that, um, you didn't see on the video
- was as the officers located the weapon and they were directed
- over, a small group, a, a small family with two children
- walked by that weapon. So imagine if we didn't, uh, recover it.
- That would've been a loose weapon out in the community that some poor child could
- have picked up and thought it was a toy.
- So this situation, it's unique. You have two locations you have to manage
- now.
- You have your location where they tossed the firearm, and you also have the
- location you have to follow the subject.
- How did the Real Time Intelligence Center manage that?
- Um, it, actually in this case, I was actually working the room.
- So I had my, um, my pilot focus on
- flying. I'm working the radio, and I'm immediately calling out what I
- see and then directing officers over.
- I know
- cops love to rush over and catch a bad guy,
- but I immediately directed,
- "I need an officer to respond to that location and secure whatever he
- dropped ASAP in order to maintain chain of custody."
- And also, now you know what you have when you have the subject in custody.
- So how, how precise were you able to guide those officers back
- to
- the location that he tossed the weapon?
- No, they picked it up within a matter of less
- than a minute.
- And recovering that evidence, what would it have looked like without
- having that
- aerial view?
- Well, if we didn't even see him ditch it, it would've been a call for
- service later on in the day where a concerned
- citizen said, "I think I found a gun in a bush."
- Wow. Which is important, because it, it didn't just help find the subject
- or the
- weapon. It, it changed what the officers knew, uh,
- you know, responding to the
- scene. They knew there was a weapon involved
- and obviously a dangerous subject,
- and, uh, with a safe resolution. So we have another question, uh,
- dealing with your
- RTIC, um, while we're still i- in that, that field.
- So do your dispatchers have the ability to launch the DFR?
- If for some reason the Real Time Crime Center is busy or not monitoring the
- radio,
- can your dispatchers send DFR out to respond to the field?
- If so, are your dispatchers Part 107?
- So no, um, presently our, our 911 center, uh, though in, in the same
- building, uh, and down the hall, uh, they are not DFR
- pilots. Um, they have their job function, they specialize.
- We're too busy of a 911 center, uh, servicing, uh, the city of Miami
- Beach. Um, and being that we have a real-time intelligence
- center, um, though we work hand-in-hand a- and there's a lot of
- overlap in, in communication,
- um, in making sure that, um, the information that they provide to
- us is, you know, uh, passed on to the officer a-
- and, and vetted, you know, if the drone is up. Um, but no.
- The short answer is we are not, we are not leveraging our communications
- personnel for, uh, flight operations at this time.
- And on that, so does your department operate with
- patrol DFR and dock-based
- DFR? If so, is the patrol officers with drones,
- or do you have a dedicated drone unit who waits to be requested or assist?
- So our patrol, um, our patrol, uh, officers, we have
- 22, um, Skydio X10s that are deployed on every shift,
- um, seven days a week. So there's always a drone available in the
- city.
- Uh, we refer to those as tact- our tactical pilots that
- are flying out of the trunk
- of their police car. Uh, then we also have our DFR solution as
- well.
- Awesome. And for somebody who doesn't have a
- real-time crime center, um,
- how would you recommend implementing a DFR program like this? Is it possible?
- Would you need to have a dedicated drone team, or would you have them with patrol
- officers on duty at all times?
- I think there's a sweet, um, a sweet place for both.
- Um, I think that every organization has a
- specific need.
- Um, a- and I, I... When we first started this, uh,
- in talking with other organizations, e-
- everybody was trying to check a box.
- We want this and we want that, but one size doesn't fit all.
- Um, the first thing I would say, and, and my lieutenant would, would agree,
- is if
- you're interested in starting a program, um, don't do it from your,
- your, the seat o- of your desk. Get out and go to these agencies
- that have a DFR
- program, that have real-time intelligence centers.
- Come and visit us.
- We'll give you all kind of Miami Beach swag.
- Um, but y- you really need to get out and see how it's done,
- and start talking to
- the people that are doing it. Um, bosses talking to bosses
- is great and for the, at the, at the boss level,
- th- there's value in that. But get down, you know, peel back the
- layers and talk to the people that have built the program,
- the people that have
- put the blood, sweat, and tears into it.
- Um,
- the wins, the losses, those are the things that you really need to
- find out so that
- way you can be successful.
- Right. Thank you very much. So spring break in Miami Beach, uh,
- proved the model.
- Um, FIFA tested it. During the World Cup, these are some staggering statistics
- here. It was over 40 days long. Flew over 280 DFR flights.
- 226 calls for service were DFR, uh, that was supported by DFR.
- And you were actually able to clear 12% of the calls, um, without having to
- send patrol.
- What changed when you moved from daily DFR operations into more than 40 days of
- sustained event operations like FIFA?
- Essentially what changed was just having to pace ourselves. Right?
- Is, um, looking at what's going on in the city,
- what are the
- hotspots, and, um, constantly, um,
- ensuring that, you know, we had resources available.
- Also, we're not fatiguing our personnel.
- Uh, we do have a limited group of, of dr- drone first responder
- pilots, and I wanted to make sure that we're rotating the
- responsibility, um, because that could be taxing mentally,
- right? Um, flying in, constantly monitoring your airspace.
- Um, especially when we had huge amounts of
- groups,
- uh, coming to visit the city. So you're constantly having to not only
- monitor
- your, your aircraft, but we also had a large amount of media
- flying
- around. So ensuring, um, we're having guys w- monitoring the
- ADSB, monitoring, um, for other drones in the area.
- And, uh, it definitely, we always wanted to rotate and make sure
- that guys were getting time away from the keyboard.
- So how did you, or did you find it difficult to support
- that event
- without pulling capacity away from other parts of the city?
- Um, actually we're very fortunate.
- Um, Tony did a phenomenal job building out our
- drone
- program in general. So, uh, whenever we did have a
- pre-planned event, right, we would dedicate a
- tactical, uh, patrol drone to that event, and had that
- officer exclusively married to that event, and that's their primary focus
- of effort. L- freeing up the drone first responder to
- provide
- that support for calls for service.
- So during the Argentina event, you had over 10,000 people in a roughly
- two block
- radius. Um, what did that look like from the real-time
- intelligence center?
- A whole lot of people. Um, and it's incredibly challenging
- because you're not only trying to monitor the crowd, right?
- And knock on wood, crowd incredibly peaceful, very
- fun people, and they're out there celebrating.
- But you may see...
- Uh, what you're trying to ensure is their safety.
- And not only their safety, but the safety of the residents living in
- the buildings,
- um, ensuring traffic's flowing. And, uh, we, at
- one point, we had, um, over th... Uh, we had three, um,
- Skydio X10s working that event alone.
- And managing one off... Uh, one pilot was handling just
- traffic inquiries, another was monitoring the crowd movements, and
- another was handling the exterior, um, the
- exterior areas and looking for trouble, uh, trouble spots.
- So this is where FIFA becomes more than a drone story.
- The real-time crime center was coordinating dock-based DFR,
- more than 20
- drones, patrol event command, and multiple partner agencies.
- You had over 20 plus patrol, uh, patrol deployed drones, um, and it was
- multi-jurisdictional. Like I said, Miami-Dade was there, Coral Gables,
- um, Emergency Management and Fire.
- How did you structure the operation so all these resources worked as one system?
- Well, I can tell you that, um, Skydio makes it easy.
- Um, when it came to utilizing, um, sharing the video
- using the, uh,
- the FR command and the Ready Link, being able to share that with our partner
- agencies.
- And for them to have a access to it just at the click of,
- of a, of a link on their cell phones allowed us
- to be able to
- share our views and provide that situational awareness regardless
- of the patch on your shirt.
- So you didn't have, during this event you didn't have a dock
- in the North District.
- How did patrol deployed drones fill that gap?
- So, um, again, like the lieutenant mentioned, we had...
- These were all ple- pre-planned events.
- We made sure that we had pilots, um, assigned
- to that detail that were strictly there for the purposes
- of relaying that real-time view, that live view,
- um, to the commanders on scene. Um, one person assigned
- to traffic details, making sure that traffic was flowing.
- We're a seven-square-mile island, uh, water on every side,
- uh, and only three entrances and exits.
- So traffic is a real issue in our city.
- Separate from all the crime-related stuff and, and, and that takes to the majority
- of the conversation, but
- traffic plagues our city. Three ways in and three ways out.
- There, there was a huge,
- um, understanding that we needed to provide, um,
- that information back to our
- transportation department, thinking of traffic lights, moving, um,
- uh,
- pedestrians in order that way traffic can flow through our
- streets.
- That was a huge piece of it. Um, a lot of those things are an afterthought.
- We're always thinking about the safety of, of the, the residents and the
- participants in these events, but that was a huge piece.
- Being able to identify, um, medical, uh, related
- calls within a crowd of 10 or 15,000 people and being able to
- route our fire department to those calls was another, uh, huge
- win for us.
- Now were those, uh, drones, were they piloted locally by the officers?
- Or sometimes was the pilot control transferred back,
- uh, remotely?
- No. They- they're, they're piloted locally, um,
- using the handheld controller.
- Okay. And you, during this event you generated a new
- Ready Link every
- day. Why was that important?
- Well, being able to have... 'Cause it wasn't always the same pilot,
- number one.
- Um, we wanted to make sure with the
- functionality that exists in the Ready Link is
- that the right people had it. Um, the Ready Links were, were preset, which
- is a awesome feature that, that we take advantage of.
- Um, again, these were pre-planned events.
- We can go in, establish the date and time of the Ready Link, share those
- to the people who need to be in the know of what's going on,
- um, a- and, and have those there and waiting.
- So when the officers who are assigned to this detail,
- whether it's one, three, or
- the entire organization, that Ready Link is available.
- It's hands-off at that point.
- And how were the other agencies using that view?
- In the exact same way the lieutenant had managed. Um, we, uh, or had mentioned.
- Excuse me. When you have that live view, you don't
- need the radio as much. No more talking on the
- radio. Why ask questions when you can see it firsthand?
- Our radio traffic has died down significantly during these events
- because we're not asking the question of, "What's going on over there?" Because you
- can see it live.
- Awesome. All right. We're gonna show a quick video.
- Um, this video here about a wanted subject.
- It made its way onto Only In- Only in Dade.
- Um, it begins with an APL hit on a wanted
- subject.
- And, uh, basically the drone got to the front of
- the vehicle and gave the officers
- a clear view of something that they would not have been able to see,
- uh, from the,
- from their angle. Can you tell us about this video?
- So, um, this is actually something that, um, our pilots are loving,
- right? And, um, this is something that... Think about it.
- Prior to, um, UAS technology
- being as prevalent as it, as it is today, um, the front of a
- vehicle's always gonna be that unknown, right?
- You can't mount an officer up in front because you're gonna have cross-fire
- issues.
- So as you see, um, we track this vehicle coming into our
- city.
- We're able to verify that, um, the warrant hit was good and
- that, you know, directing over officers.
- So, um, some of these officers are actually watching our video
- live,
- um, waiting for additional backup to come.
- And right when they have enough officers they're gonna be conducting the
- felony traffic stop. So right now you're actually, uh,
- northbound on Ocean Drive right now.
- So now our pilot is focusing in. So the supervisor
- who's in the back of the stack is watching this all on his phone
- and, uh, he's co- he's right now coordinating with our, uh,
- our UAS
- pilot. It's like, "Hey, when you're safe to do so, drop in
- and get me a
- bird's-eye view into that, uh, into that vehicle." And you see
- there's that second subject, completely unknown.
- And traditionally this is where...
- This is one of the most dangerous aspects of any felony traffic stop.
- So you don't know what's going on. You can't position an officer up in front.
- And voila, we're able to give that, that view to the officers on
- scene.
- So did that change the timing and direction of the approach knowing
- that, that
- there was another subject in the vehicle?
- Oh, of course. You're gonna slow things down.
- Um, uh, the reality is, is that that's, that second
- person is an unknown, right? You don't know what, what's in there,
- what's being
- hidden. And to have the, the drone first responder be able
- to clear the fog of war, um, for lack of a better term,
- it, it just makes the officer's job that much safer.
- And how do you decide how close you needed that drone to be to that vehicle without
- distracting the officers?
- Um, we're fortunate, right? Because Skydio has such a good camera
- on the X10 that we don't need to get up super
- close. Um, and we utilize the, the camera on the
- device, and it does a phenomenal job
- So this clip made a much bigger audience.
- Like I said before, it made its way into Only- Only in Dade.
- Uh, what happens when people see a clip like
- that without knowing the context
- behind it?
- Well, um, we're very fortunate. Um, and I always like to read the
- comments, uh, when it's on Only in Dade, right?
- And
- the something I'm always gonna be proud of is when over 60% of the
- comments are positive. Um, it, it goes to show you that the, the public
- appreciates it, right? And, um, and I always give
- credit to Sergeant Lopafido because he's a good steward of the program, and
- he trains our officers well to ensure that we don't lose
- that public confidence and that public trust in this technology.
- Awesome. So we're gonna go through another video g-
- that, that highlights, uh, the
- thermal imaging on the camera. So what do the officers...
- They have a fleeing felon, and what do the officers know about his,
- uh, last
- location before they started looking for him?
- So this subject was actually wanted for, um, felony
- lewd and lascivious activities in front of children.
- Um, so the subject, all he's wearing is swim trunks,
- and our officers are fully kitted out on the beach.
- Um, our ATV officers were unable to respond because they're
- dealing with a
- situation, and they're over 30 blocks away.
- So the subject actively fleeing,
- and he's a good block, uh, a block ahead of the patrol officers, and
- then you're gonna see
- he dive right into the bushes.
- If we were to have the regular, um,
- image set, you would not be able to see the subject.
- He's incredibly well-hidden.
- You can't even see him in the bushes.
- But because we're running thermal, um, co-, uh, co-witnessed
- with the camera, our p- our pilot was able to maintain eyes on the
- subject and never lose contact with him.
- Um, later when the patrol officers respond,
- you'll see there the officer
- right at the lower right corner, um, my pilot's directing him
- over. He goes, "Oh, he's in the bushes." And the officer goes,
- "Are you absolutely
- sure?" He goes, "Yeah, he's in the bushes." As you see,
- the officers are trying
- to coordinate. They still don't see him.
- [laughs]
- Now they're walking in.
- And still they're having a hard time. They don't know where he's at.
- We're, we're like, "All right. He's to the left." It's like they're
- playing a
- really slow game of Marco Polo.
- And there, boom, apprehension.
- What made that terrain so tough? It looks like the person's right there.
- Can you describe, uh, what that terrain is like?
- Oh, no, it's super thick foliage. Uh, you have a lot of thick, mature
- bushes there,
- and
- it, it, you couldn't see him through the shrubs.
- Plus all he's wearing is a T- ... Uh, he doesn't have a T-shirt on,
- and when you're lying low in the bushes, you can easily hide
- in the foliage.
- So what would that search have looked like without the thermal imaging on that
- camera?
- Well, I can tell you, um, without the thermal imager, um,
- it would've been harder
- to direct officers 'cause, um... And then the, the drone pilot
- would've been forced to fly higher just to ensure that the subject didn't crawl
- out.
- Thermal gave us the confidence to say, "Hey, we saw him deep dive, and he's still
- in those bushes."
- Well, I'm, I'm glad a successful outcome to that.
- So let's talk a little bit about Overwatch.
- Uh, we deal with that with college football.
- This is where DFR expands beyond dispatching an aircraft to an individual
- call using the same capability as an infrastructure for a much larger
- event footprint. It's maintaining awareness over time.
- I want to talk about measuring the impact of your program.
- Um, you don't just deploy this. You have to prove your DFR program to
- everyone. Uh, sustaining the program, showing the value of your drone
- program to leadership, city councils, and the community.
- Um, you talk about tracking key metrics like
- first on scene response, successful
- drone-assisted resolutions.
- What type of metrics are you capturing after each mission?
- Well, it's, it's important that we track the, the type of calls
- that we're
- responding to. Um,
- we're very excited about, um, a new feature that's coming out.
- Uh, response times are super important
- to, um, our executive staff.
- Um, they're also super important as a
- commitment as an organization to
- our community that when they do call the police,
- whether it's a uniform
- officer that's showing up first or, or in a lot of cases our
- DFR, uh, piloted drones, is that we're
- there quickly and on, uh, as quickly in handling that call.
- Um, with the new feature that's coming out
- that we're very, um, fortunate to have
- been selected as an early adopter, um, with the operations
- platform, uh, we're gonna be able to now track
- our response times. Uh, we're looking...
- W- that's gonna be a huge win for us, being able to show, um,
- both internally and externally that there is tremendous value.
- Um, getting to the calls, how long it's taking us. Um, how,
- how much...
- What's the delta between the drone's arrival and the officer's arrival?
- So we're super excited about that.
- In fact, that's a feature that we just started, uh, piloting today.
- Um, but the other types of calls for service,
- um, or, or, or
- benchmarks that we're looking for, um, is how many times are we able to
- clear our calls without having to pull a
- resource from our operations division.
- How m- how often can we keep a patrol officer in
- service
- patrolling a neighborhood or a business district
- or entertainment district and
- clear the call with, um, with a drone?
- And right now we're averaging a little bit over, uh, 53%,
- which in my opinion is a win.
- That's great.
- What metrics matter most to you internally, and what metrics
- do you think matter most to city, city council and, and,
- and, and, and leadership in the department?
- Well, [sighs] I, I think, I think the
- opportunity for
- the drone to get out ahead of the officer and, and beat them to the
- call and give them, uh, not the emotional,
- um, caller information, the person who called 911.
- But give them that real information from a, a law enforcement professional to
- a law enforcement professional that just that information of
- what's really going on. Taking the emotion out of it and
- just the, the true facts of it. I think that's the biggest win for them.
- Um, and again, the officers who are patrolling a specific area
- on our busy evenings and our, and our weekends,
- if they can stay in their
- zone or their, their, um, their area of responsibility and not get
- pulled away for a call that can be cleared, um,
- by the drone, I think there's tremendous value in that.
- All right. I like it. I'm gonna circle back. I, uh,
- I folded a slide.
- I wanna circle back to, uh, event overwatch 'cause that's something
- that you deal
- with on a regular basis. Um, which again as I said i-
- is the ability to maintaining awareness over a, a lengthier period of time.
- Couple questions. How is persistent event overwatch different
- from responding to a
- single call for service, as you see it?
- [smacks lips] Greater resources obviously.
- Um, in this image here, uh, this is a, a image
- of the college foot- college football playoff championship
- concert, which was held, uh, in our city a few months back.
- 25,000, uh, attendees, um, for this
- event, and obviously, you can tell there's a lot to police here.
- Uh, the vantage point, uh, from the drone is, is something that
- c- you cannot compete with. Um,
- so when we're doing persistent overwatch for a five or six-hour
- event, we're talking about having the resources,
- not just the personnel resources,
- but enough drones, enough, enough batteries, the ability to
- recharge and get the aircraft back in the air.
- Um, hours and hours of flight time during this
- one event.
- And this is a normal special event weekend for us.
- We s- we have 48 special event weekends a year.
- So seeing this is just another event in Miami
- Beach
- for us.
- S- so during one of these overwatch events,
- what's the Arctic monitoring?
- Is it, is it the crowd? The size of the crowd? Is it the egress?
- Is it traffic?
- Or is it all the above?
- It's all of the above. [laughs]
- It's absolutely all the above. It's all things. All the things.
- And how do you sustain this type of overwatch without consuming all the
- capacity
- you have to respond to calls elsewhere?
- Well, that's in the secret sauce. We can't tell you that. No.
- [laughs]
- It's real- it's, it's, it's really a, um...
- it's a phenomenal, uh, mix of, of, of the capabilities of our
- real-time intelligence center, um, under, uh, you know, Lieutenant
- Diaz's command and his personnel are phenomenal.
- Um, the number of pilots that we have, the resources, uh, uh,
- and, and the graciousness of our chief, um, to allow us to, to
- build out our program, um, as, uh, as, as great as we
- have, you know. A- and being able to have pilots that are
- motivated who wanna do this job, who enjoy what they're doing.
- Um, i- it really takes an army in order to
- compete with,
- with stuff like college football and 25,000 people within three
- blocks on the sand where it's very difficult to get
- resources to.
- That's incredible. So we'll talk a little bit about, uh,
- Miami Beach's
- operating... uh, operational results.
- And
- they're really the result of the operating model that we've been talking about all
- day today. DFR combining it with the RTIC.
- Um, some pretty good statistics. You're flying about 330 flights
- per month. Um, 53% of the time, the drone was the
- first... uh, wa- was on the scene first before the
- responding officers.
- Again, 13% of calls cleared without patrol
- response.
- Um, which of these numbers matter most in
- proving your program's value?
- If you ask me, it's, it's the clearing without patrol
- response. Um, there are, there are a number of calls for
- service that we can go out a- and make sure that
- either, number one, the res- issue has resolved itself,
- it's an unfounded,
- uh, call for service. Uh, we, we're big...
- very big as an, as an organization in community policing.
- Keeping our officers out within the community,
- within their, uh, area of responsibility, talking to our business
- owners, interacting with our visitors. Uh, that...
- there's greater value, there's huge value in that.
- Um, having the drone augment our
- staffing and go out ahead of them, keep the cop
- in service, let's go and see if this is something we need to respond to.
- And if so, we'll redirect the resources but if not,
- if we can clear it,
- um, that's a win for both sides.
- What proved the DFR... What proved the value of DFR the fastest
- fo- for
- you and your department?
- Well, Tony, I think in my opinion,
- um, DFR proved itself literally day one.
- Um, and I think it was very important, uh, for us to have that very early
- win because the officers saw the value in
- it. And I love this story because, um, our first
- two DFR pilots literally just completed training.
- A call goes out, aggravated battery in progress,
- and our patrol officers are stuck in traffic, and they're weaving
- through. They still... They get there within a minute
- and seven seconds of the
- call, but drone first responder's there, and we
- immediately start canvassing for the subject as they're...
- as the officers are making contact with the victim.
- And within a matter of three minutes, we located the
- subject three blocks north of, uh, the incident
- location attempting to get into an Uber. All right?
- And-
- ... are so we vector over officers. They make the apprehension.
- And, uh, I'll never forget it because I tapped into
- the body camera to see
- the live streaming, and then the subjects, the first thing she goes, "How did you
- guys find me?" And then the officer goes, points in the air, "That's
- why." And, uh, and immediately my, my phone
- was blowing up, Tony's phone is blowing up with major kudos from the
- officers saying, "This is awesome. This is great.
- Thank you so much." And, uh, it was at that moment that it hit
- me that I'm like, I think this is... Uh, no, not that I think.
- I know this is gonna be a game changer.
- Well,
- thank you very much. Um, before we move on to the
- audience, I just wanna let everyone know
- that on September 23rd, we'd
- like to invite everyone, uh, to extend...
- Attend Skydio Ascend 2026. Um, you can just
- scan the QR code. This is our annual conference
- that we're having this year
- in Las Vegas, and, uh, we'd like to have, have everyone attend.
- If they scan the QR code, they'll receive all the details,
- and we hope to see them
- there.
- So today
- we've covered how leadership set the vision, how real-time crime
- centers made DFR operational, what the department learned from the
- spring break in
- FIFA, and how Miami Beach measures the program's
- impact.
- I wanna thank the chief and, and you lieutenant and sergeant, um, for,
- for
- spending the time with us today to discuss how you've made this program such a
- success in Miami Beach. Um, I do have a few questions for you from the
- audience,
- uh, before we go in, in the final few minutes here.
- Um, how many K9 teams do you have? And are any of them
- cross-trained in DFR?
- 16, um, 16 partner K9 units.
- Um, they are not cross-trained in DFR.
- Um, they have a very specific mission, as do our
- pilots. So no. Um, now I'll... I will tell
- you this. There's a great partnership between our K9
- team and our drone pilots. Um, whenever they're conducting a search
- of a perimeter, they're overhead making sure that,
- that their back is
- covered.
- Are all your DFR pilots 107 certified, or are some of them, uh,
- department certified?
- By policy everybody is Part 107.
- Okay. And with the successes of your program,
- do you envision expanding
- your program to support city agencies, um, fire, buildings
- department, things like that, like you've seen other departments take an
- approach
- with?
- So, so yes, presently, um, we already support our fire department.
- Uh, they are X10 customers as well.
- Um, they respond to their calls for service,
- uh, and deploy their
- assets, um, as, as they, as they deem necessary.
- But as calls for service come in from our 911 center that are
- fire-related, water emergencies, fires, um,
- any, any, uh, myriad of calls, uh, on the fire side, our
- DFR units will respond from our real-time intelligence center.
- And I just wanna piggyback off of that.
- So during the college football playoff, uh, championship,
- we were operating a real-time intelligence center as a unified command.
- So I had bosses from the police department,
- bosses from the fire department,
- and we actually had a structure fire.
- And immediately we launched the drone first responder, and I actually had a
- battalion chief in the real-time intelligence center.
- And, uh, we were actually utilizing the thermal
- imaging from the
- Skydio X10, and he was actually redirecting his,
- uh, his, uh, his firefighters to shift water
- over to a hotspot, um, that they weren't hitting. So it w...
- And, and that was one of the first instances
- where the fire departments
- really got to see the value of drone first responder.
- Do you have manned aviation assets? And, and has that been affected by all...
- by, uh, either remote flying drones or by DFR?
- So our city does not own any, um,
- aviation units, right? Um, we have, uh, two, uh, two of our sister
- agencies, the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office
- and the City of Miami Police
- Department, they have, uh, aviation units.
- Um, I can tell you since we went live on drone
- first
- responder, we haven't had to, uh, reach out
- to our partner agencies because we've been able to triage a lot
- of our perimeter work and a lot of our attempting to locate
- persons via, um, with missing persons out on the
- beach utilizing, um, both our tactical launch drones
- and our drone first responders.
- So this next question comes up from a lot of agencies.
- Um, are your pilots all sworn? Are they all civilian, or
- are they a combo of
- both?
- We... When it comes to drone first responder,
- majority
- of our pilots are actually professional staff.
- Um, right now within the drone first, uh, within the real-time intelligence center,
- I currently have five professional staff members and only one
- sworn officer, and majority of the flying is done by
- professional staff. Um, in addition to them, I
- myself am Part 107, and then Sergeant Lopez-Boffido being
- the air boss, um, oversees
- everything.
- Wow. Lieutenant Diaz, Sergeant Lopez-Boffido, thank you so
- much for giving us an inside look at the m- how Miami Beach Police Department runs
- their DFR program. Um, thank you for your very experienced
- responses,
- and thank you very much for your time today.
- And thank everyone who came out to, uh, to watch our webinar today.
- I hope you, uh... everyone remains safe, and, uh, thanks again for your time.
- Devin, thank you, sir. It's always been a pleasure.
- You got
- it. Lieutenant, Sarge, thank you.
- Take care.
- Thanks.
Watch Time
1 Hr 18 Sec
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