I’m kind of fascinated by this.
Drones could soon take on a new role in The Woodlands, responding to 911 calls ahead of first responders.
Leaders of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office see the drone pilot program as a way to beat traffic congestion and get to calls quicker, but critics such as the American Civil Liberties Union have raised privacy concerns about similar programs in other cities.
The use of drones isn’t new to Montgomery County, said Samuel Harrison, a specialist with the sheriff’s office. The agency uses them for search and rescue operations and to assist surrounding agencies, he said.
The Drones as First Responder program would expand on this use by providing a “cost efficient way” for the agency to get support in the sky and respond to 911 calls quicker as the county continues to grow.
Lt. Scott Spencer said Montgomery County’s fast growth poses a challenge for leaders and the general public when infrastructure doesn’t keep up with population.
“I think it’s been said many times before — as cops, we drive the same roads, we’re stuck in the same traffic, we’re having to deal with the same issues,” Spencer said. “Having a program like this gets us eyes without cops having to drive fast to be able to go to a scene.”
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“This is about force multiplying,” Spencer said. “For years, the sheriff’s office has constantly implemented technological advancements that make us smarter, instead of working so hard…that’s a huge deal for us as we’re being tasked with more and more stuff. So, we’re using technology to help fill those voids.”
Privacy concerns have been raised about drone programs in law enforcement. In a 10-page letter published in 2023, American Civil Liberties Union Senior Policy Analyst Jay Stanley said these drone programs could lead to the public feeling more uneasy than “the sense of safety and well-being that people want to feel when they’re in their homes and communities.”
“The Constitution doesn’t normally permit warrantless surveillance where people have a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy,’ but abuses do occur, and when they do people naturally become paranoid,” Stanley wrote in his letter, giving examples of instances where people, in the privacy of their own homes, could be mistakenly seen as committing a crime.
Savannah Kumar, attorney for the ACLU of Texas, said the state group also has concerns about the drone program.
“We have previously raised serious privacy concerns about the Drones as First Responder program,” said Savannah Kumar, attorney for the ACLU of Texas. “These programs require careful scrutiny, as they tend to be costly gimmicks that waste resources, infringe on individual rights, and lead to concerning shifts in policing practices. Our communities deserve better than to have our tax dollars pay for unnecessary police machinery to spy on us from above. We need more transparency around this proposal, but the bottom line is that the police should not have this unchecked ability to monitor our every movement.”
When asked about privacy concerns in 2023, the Pearland Police Department told the Houston Chronicle that it based its policies for the drone program on legal precedents and would place restrictions on surveillance technology to only emergency-response situations.
As a transparency measure, the sheriff’s office keeps a log of when and where deputies operate a drone. However, the sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to questions about privacy issues or what the privacy policy would be for the new drone program.
There needs to be laws and regulations, at both the state and federal level, for drone usage by law enforcement agencies. What is and is not allowed, what records must be kept and made available to the public, best practices, and so on. Even if you trust in the best intentions of these police departments for some reason, they’re going to need the help figuring it out. That also means that the Justice Department needs to start tracking the usage of these drones and collecting data to understand what works and what doesn’t.
I can certainly see the case for deploying these things. They should be able to help determine when something is a real emergency, or conversely isn’t an urgent matter, when a situation calls for special equipment, and so on. Just as the feds should do some intense data work to help figure out how these things might best be used, the local cops using them ought to define some metrics for themselves, if only to justify the expense. Which isn’t very much right now, but you know how these things go.
And look, I think we can all see it coming that HPD and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office will be looking into these things. So, ideally, City Council and Commissioners Court and all of the local watchdogs will also pay attention to this. What might we want or not want out of this, if and when we start exploring it. Because we will – I can almost see the twinkle in Mayor Whitmire’s eye over this. Let’s not be surprised when this lands on our doorstep.