Colorado Law Enforcement Agencies Will Soon Send Drones Instead of Cops in Response to 911 Calls
by Douglas Ankney
In May of 2024, Shelly Bradbury reported in the Denver Post that “[a] handful of local law enforcement agencies are considering using drones as first responders, that is, send them in response to 911 calls as police departments across Colorado continue to widely embrace the use of remote-controlled flying machines.” According to Bradbury, Arapahoe County Sheriff Jeremiah Gates “envisions a world where a drone is dispatched to a call about a broken traffic light or a suspicious vehicle instead of a sheriff’s deputy, allowing actual deputies to prioritize more pressing calls for help.” Indeed, Gates himself was quoted as saying “[t]his is the future of law enforcement whether we like it or not.”
The Denver Police Department also has plans to buy drones over the next year that have the capability to function as first responders. And both the Colorado State Patrol (with 24 drones) and the Commerce City Police Department (with eight drones and 12 pilots for a population of 62,000) have plans to use drones in response to 911 calls for assistance.
While unarmed drones cannot kill unarmed people or their pets as real cops do, there are unresolved constitutional questions. For example, if a deputy operating a drone dispatched to a report of a suspicious vehicle aerially observes bricks of cocaine hidden in a home’s gutters, is that a warrantless search or was the cocaine in plain view?
Laura Moraff, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, also points out that sending drones in response to 911 calls can lead to more over-policing of communities of color and have a detrimental effect on people as a whole when they know they are being observed by police drones filling the sky.
Source: reason.com
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