Dallas Police Launch Drone First Responder Program

The Dallas Police Department announced the launch of its new Drone as First Responder Program on Wednesday.

The department posted a video about the initiative to social media in the afternoon.

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According to the post, the program launched with eight remotely piloted drones based at Dallas-Fire Rescue Stations across the city. The drones are operated out of the Fusion/Real Time Crime Center and are designed to respond to calls for service in a two-mile radius from their base stations.

The base locations were selected based on heat maps of calls for service for both police and fire, placing them where they can potentially respond to the greatest number of calls.

Pilots will be able to get to the scene quicker than in a squad car and begin to provide real-time intelligence to officers, as well as reduce the level of response or clear a call entirely if the incident has resolved.

If a pilot sees a call in a drone's response area where aerial intelligence can enhance officer safety, they can deploy a drone to provide critical updates to officers at the scene. Each drone is equipped with a thermal camera to help during nighttime operations, as well as a loudspeaker to make announcements to people on the ground.

"This collaborative partnership between police and fire departments represents a major step forward in using smart-city technology to protect both residents and first responders," the post states.

"I challenged our team to find innovative ways to continue improving our response times, and this new drone unit will not only keep officers free to respond to more calls, but provide real time updates as they are responding to calls," said Dallas Police Chief Daniel C. Comeaux.