The Kansas City Police Department is using artificial intelligence drones to respond to some police calls.
The Kansas City Council recently approved $500,000 to buy more of the devices for the KCPD. That money will be paired with a match from the Police Foundation of Kansas City to further establish a "drones as first responders" program.
City council approved the purchase by a unanimous vote with one abstention by Johnathan Duncan.
Council member Wes Rogers, who represents parts of the Northland, championed the ordinance. Rogers is both a former prosecutor and public defender, and he said public safety is the leading issue he hears about from residents. He compared Peregrine, the company that runs the software program for the drones, to Palantir, a nationwide software company that critics have argued produces surveillance tools.
"My constituents contact me every single day wanting us to support the police and make sure they've got the resources they need," Rogers said. "We can't be interfering in everybody's intimate personal lives. But at the same time, we've got this technology, we need to use it to stay safe."
The Kansas City Police Department already has nine drones doing this policing work, funded by $600,000 from the police foundation earlier this year. In late December of last year, the foundation gave $650,000 to the KCPD to begin the Peregrine project, which also includes software that makes it more efficient for the police to sort through information that’s been siloed in different programs.
Tye Grant, president of the foundation, said those drones will be deployed to parts of the city that will see the most visitors during the World Cup next year. The department will now begin to expand the coverage area with the purchase of more drones.
In city council meetings, officials said the KCPD will use the drones to reduce response times, send drones ahead of officers to give them information on the status of a call, and be a preventive measure from law enforcement. Rogers said the AI technology will help different jurisdictions across the metro communicate more effectively.
"In Kansas City, there's 100 different municipalities and seven different counties, and lord knows how many law enforcement agencies," Rogers said. "They don't always share data, and so the ability to talk to each other just makes things safer."
The Kansas City Police Department declined a request for an interview about the "drones as first responders" program. In a statement, spokesperson Sergeant Phil DiMartino said KCPD is "always looking for innovative ways to improve public safety."
"Drones can offer a fast response to critical situations without risking further harm to human life and they can provide real time situational awareness which enhances officer safety," DiMartino said in a statement. "Additionally, drones can be used to monitor large scale events to keep attendees safe. These are just a few ways we anticipate these drones to provide support for public safety operations."
AI technology has been rapidly growing in policing around the world. Palantir’s AI software has been used by the Israeli military in strikes in Gaza. In the United States, the Defense Department uses the software to analyze drone footage, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses it to track migrant movements. Wired and CNN have reported that the federal government is in talks with Palantir to build a master immigration database and speed up deportations.
Police departments across the country are also using similar technology to forecast crime patterns. In Johnson County, Olathe, Overland Park, Lenexa and Prairie Village are using them for a similar "drones as first responders" program.
But in Charlottesville, Virginia, the police department scrapped its plans to use the Peregrine software over fears that the data could be used for federal immigration enforcement. And the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California is suing Sonoma County, alleging that the county is using drones to spy on residents without warrants.
Grant, who was an officer in the KCPD for 26 years before becoming president of the police foundation, said the department is not sending out the drones or making recordings until there is a call for service, when officers would be sent out to a scene.
"Privacy concerns with any type of technology these days are valid concerns, and we should be ensuring that there are proper and appropriate measures in place to ensure that they're used in a manner that is reasonable and understood by everyone," Grant said. "Any videos or anything that's being seen by a drone is, for the most part, always going to be in a public place. There's no expectation of privacy in a public place."
Grant believes the "drones as first responders" program will help make the KCPD more efficient in its calls and help keep the department on top of the volume of calls it has, even as it has trouble recruiting more officers. He also said drones can keep both residents and officers safer by giving more up-to-date data for officers to give would-be offenders options so they don’t make a choice that they can’t take back."
One call that Grant said "paid for the whole system" of AI technology and drones was an instance where a couple of people were recording videos with guns on the sidewalk. The department sent a drone ahead of officers, which alerted officers that the people had guns but weren’t threatening anyone. The drone continued to watch them until they put the guns down, and then sent officers to the scene.
"It didn't create a situation where everybody had to make a split-second decision on what they were going to do: run, have a shootout, protect each other, all those types of things," Grant said. "Who knows what would have happened without a drone? But I know the situation was much safer and alleviated almost all risk to everybody, because we did have that drone."
