For years, police officers have used drones to assist their responses at the scene of emergencies. But now, the Lenexa Police Department is using drones as first responders, sending them out ahead of human responders to more quickly understand the situations that police are getting called into.
The drones are equipped with cameras and thermal mapping to survey the scene of an emergency or help locate a suspect.
Lenexa Police says it's the first department in the Kansas City area to use drones in this way. A pilot program began in March, and resulted in a reduction of two minutes in response time on average for emergencies. In nonemergency situations, that time reduction was four minutes.
"In a crisis, not only does every minute matter, every second can matter," said Danny Chavez, a Lenexa Police master officer.
"And so when you can have a drone there minutes before a police officer or firefighter relaying information about additional resources, potential injuries, maybe active critical events, such as a shooter or something like that, those seconds can make a world of difference in your response and even saving lives."
The city last week approved an expansion to the program. It will invest $995,335 to add six drones to its fleet for five years.
- Officer Danny Chavez, Lenexa Police Department
