Why this matters
Chula Vista police were the first in the U.S. authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly drones beyond the line of visual sight to respond to 911 calls anywhere in the city. The program has been replicated across the nation.
By Trisha Ganjoo, Audience Engagement Intern
Chula Vista Police say switching to the controversial surveillance company Flock Safety to power the city’s first-responder drones would save taxpayers an estimated $1.2 million annually.
Since 2018, the city has dispatched drones to 911 calls involving crimes in progress, fires, traffic collisions and other emergencies before officers arrive. Officials have defended using them even as opponents have pushed back on the program, touting on the city website that drones have saved lives and de-escalated potentially dangerous situations.
From the Documenters
This story came in part from notes taken by Melina Jimenez, a San Diego Documenter, at a Chula Vista Privacy Protection and Technology Advisory Commission meeting last month. The Documenters program trains and pays community members to document what happens at public meetings.
Chula Vista’s contract for the drones expires at the end of the year, and staff say a new system from Flock would allow the city to deploy a drone within seconds of a 911 call and arrive on scene in under three minutes. The system would provide live aerial information to officers, allow more citywide coverage and support fully autonomous flights without a visual observer.
The financial savings would come from the city no longer needing to pay remote pilots who operate the existing drone program, staff said in a report.
Spokesperson Caitlin Clark said the proposal to move to Flock’s platform known as Aerodome would allow the department to move toward drones that are compliant with federal laws. It also would allow the city to continue using some of its existing drones during the transition rather than requiring an immediate replacement of the fleet, she said.
The new system would provide airspace-awareness and automation capabilities under a “drone-in-a-box” model that would reduce the city’s reliance on contracted remote pilots and visual observers.
But Flock, best known for providing law enforcement agencies with automatic license plate readers, has been broadly criticized for its surveillance system of more than 100,000 cameras nationwide. Residents across the U.S. have increasingly pushed back against local governments’ contracts with the company — some cities have even seen the cameras vandalized in recent weeks.
Privacy and civil liberties advocates say that widespread use of the cameras has created a national network that allows law enforcement to track people’s movements, including people who are not suspected of a crime. Some have also raised questions about how long data is stored, who can access it and how information is shared between law enforcement agencies.
As a 2022 inewsource investigation revealed, half of San Diego County’s 10 law enforcement agencies had been sharing license plate data with other agencies across the U.S. — despite state law requiring that the information stay in California. Former state Sen. Jerry Hill, a Democrat from San Mateo who sponsored the privacy law, told inewsource it was exactly what lawmakers tried to prevent.
Seth Hall, co-founder of the community group San Diego Privacy, said communities “are fundamentally changing the way we are thinking about what police do for the community, and how they do it, with this technology.”
“Their Drone as a First Responder program is just an extension of all of those problems,” he said. “It’s taking all of the problems that we have with that company, taking them off mounted poles, and launching them into the air.”
Clark said the Flock contract would not change the purpose of the city’s drones program or the policies governing how the drones can be used. The Police Department does not use drones for random surveillance or proactive patrols, she said.
Drone flights are logged daily and subject to regular supervisory review, while flight information will continue to be publicly available through its transparency tools.
Clark also said the city maintains safeguards for the department’s use of Flock’s automated license plate reader technology, including regular audits for compliance with policy and law.
The proposed five-year agreement with Flock would cost the city $400,000 in its first year, which is expected to be fully offset by terminating the contract for remote pilots. After that, the city will pay $700,000 annually.
City staff were expected to present the contract to councilmembers this month, but have since postponed. A spokesperson told inewsource on Friday that a new date has not been determined.
Flock did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Type of Content
News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.