Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. I
Speaker 2: hope you've been enjoying the holiday season. I know I have,
Speaker 2: or at least I've been trying to. It's difficult because
Speaker 2: I keep getting distracted by this funny feeling like there's
Speaker 2: something watching over me, up in the sky, something buzzing around,
Speaker 2: And at first I thought this might just be Santa's sleigh,
Speaker 2: but then I realized, no, no, no, no no, this
Speaker 2: is actually a drone. And oh boy, am I not
Speaker 2: the only one. Drone fever is just sweeping the nation
Speaker 2: right now with the new Jersey drone panic, somehow making
Speaker 2: headlines based on unconfirmed and very disputable reports. The new
Speaker 2: Jersey drone thing isn't real. This is mass hysteria. Almost
Speaker 2: all of these incidents of UFOs, UAPs or mysterious drones
Speaker 2: are actually just like regular airplanes going to the airport,
Speaker 2: airplanes that you can track online via flight radar. These
Speaker 2: aren't nuclear scanning drones. These aren't secret government military projects.
Speaker 2: These are either like legal, registered hobbyist drones in some cases,
Speaker 2: but really just mostly airplanes. A few weeks ago, there
Speaker 2: was a really cloudy day over the New Jersey coast,
Speaker 2: and that day all of the drone sightings stopped because
Speaker 2: you couldn't see up in the sky. You couldn't see
Speaker 2: the airplanes. But yeah, the New Jersey drone panic isn't real.
Speaker 2: The reason why there's blinking lights flying over LaGuardia is
Speaker 2: that those are airplanes taking off and landing at an airport.
Speaker 2: This whole panic was boosted by unconfirmed social media reports
Speaker 2: and local news sites trying to gain clicks, and somehow
Speaker 2: this just broke through into the national mainstream discourse. But
Speaker 2: fears over invasive drones isn't necessarily unfounded though. The ones
Speaker 2: that you should be worried about aren't UFOs or nuclear
Speaker 2: scanning drones, but are actually police drones, which are becoming
Speaker 2: all the more commonplace. More and more cities this year
Speaker 2: have adopted police drone programs. So for this episode, I'm
Speaker 2: going to rerun my episode from early in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four about police drones. Now, in the past year, there's
Speaker 2: also been a great increase in the reporting on police drones,
Speaker 2: including a fantastic Wired investigation titled the Age of the
Speaker 2: Drone Police is Here. They analyzed nearly ten thousand individual
Speaker 2: flight records from July twenty twenty one September of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, containing more than twenty two point three million coordinates.
Speaker 2: The investigation showed that poorer communities, especially working class and
Speaker 2: immigrant communities, were disproportionately surveilled, with police drones in Chula
Speaker 2: Vista flying over neighborhood blocks on the west side more
Speaker 2: than ten times longer than blocks on the suburban east side.
Speaker 2: And considering Trump's second term, fears over widespread police surveillance
Speaker 2: are only more relevant, especially in immigrant communities and even
Speaker 2: in instances where drones like this fly over places like
Speaker 2: abortion clinics, and these fears are not unfounded. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: the San Diego Union Tribune discovered that the Cheulavista Police
Speaker 2: Department was sharing its license plate reader data directly with ICE.
Speaker 2: Now it's still unclear how many drones Cheulavista PD currently has,
Speaker 2: but as of twenty twenty two, they had thirty two
Speaker 2: of these high definition camera mounted drones drones which have
Speaker 2: now done over twenty thousand flights since twenty eighteen. All
Speaker 2: of this will get discussed more in depth in the episode,
Speaker 2: but for an update later, I discuss a court case
Speaker 2: to secure the public's right to access drone footage, and
Speaker 2: this case is still ongoing. Last spring, the city tried
Speaker 2: to appeal to the Califor Furnia Supreme Court, who ultimately
Speaker 2: declined to take up the case, basically reaffirming the lower
Speaker 2: court's ruling against the police to withhold drone footage. This
Speaker 2: case is once again back to trial court to finalize
Speaker 2: details of how certain footage should be released. So, without
Speaker 2: further ado, here's my episode from the twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: Consumer Electronics Showcase Police Drones and you welcome to it
Speaker 2: could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Now, last week I
Speaker 2: spent a few days in Las Vegas for the Consumer
Speaker 2: Electronics Showcase. Most of the time of the convention, I
Speaker 2: was just walking around the show floor looking at various
Speaker 2: new types of surveillance equipment, AI products, and various other
Speaker 2: bullshit that was being peddled to the many, many industry
Speaker 2: attendees of CEES. But I was also able to go
Speaker 2: to a few panels. Now, panels are really interesting because
Speaker 2: you get to hear people who are working inside industries
Speaker 2: talk about stuff that they don't usually really publicly talk
Speaker 2: about very much. And on the first day of the convention,
Speaker 2: I went to a panel about drone technology. Half of
Speaker 2: the panel was about how Walmart is launching new delivery
Speaker 2: drones in Dallas, Texas. The other half was about police drones.
Speaker 2: And that's what we're going to be talking about here today,
Speaker 2: how the police are using drones, why they're using drones,
Speaker 2: and how you can probably expect to be seeing a
Speaker 2: lot more drones up in the sky piloted by either
Speaker 2: an AI or a police officer. So let's get started.
Speaker 2: Cheula Vista is the southernmost kind of medium sized city
Speaker 2: in California, with the population of two hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: eight thousand people. Chula Vista has a police force of
Speaker 2: two hundred and eighty nine sworn officers as well as
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty civilian employees. On top of their
Speaker 2: nearly three hundred officers, they operate a drone fleet ten
Speaker 2: hours a day, seven days a week, launching high depf
Speaker 2: camera mounted drones from four locations throughout their small city.
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from an article from the MIT
Speaker 2: Technology Review, which did a deep dive onto Cheulavista's police
Speaker 2: drones back in February of twenty twenty three quote. Cheulavista
Speaker 2: uses these drones to extend the power of its workforce
Speaker 2: in a number of ways. For example, if only one
Speaker 2: officer is available, when two calls come in, one foreign
Speaker 2: armed suspect and another for shoplifting, an officer will respond
Speaker 2: to the first one. But now cvpd's Public Information Officer,
Speaker 2: Sergeant Anthony Molina, says that dispatchers can send drone to
Speaker 2: surreptitiously trail the suspected shoplifter unquote. And this really gets
Speaker 2: at the heart of how these drones are going to
Speaker 2: get used. They exist to funnel more people into the
Speaker 2: criminal justice system. Instead of having to choose between two calls,
Speaker 2: one of which actually could relate to saving someone's life,
Speaker 2: the other just a petty crime, now the police can
Speaker 2: easily follow someone doing a petty crime while responding to
Speaker 2: other calls and eventually catch up. It's a way to
Speaker 2: just expand the amount of people that can be arrested
Speaker 2: and thrown into jail. Nowadays, drones are pretty common tools
Speaker 2: for police. Over one thy five hundred departments currently use drones,
Speaker 2: usually for special occasions though, like search and rescue, crime
Speaker 2: scene documentation, protest surveillance and sometimes tracking suspects, But at
Speaker 2: the moment, only about a dozen police departments regularly dispatch
Speaker 2: drones in response to nine to one one calls, the
Speaker 2: first of which was Chew La Vista PD, who launched
Speaker 2: their quote drone as first responder program back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: Would the goal of having an unmanned aerial system or
Speaker 2: drone be proactively deployed before an officer is on scene.
Speaker 2: Now we'll hear from Chief Roxanna Kennedy of the Cheu
Speaker 2: La Vista Police Department talking on the drone at Technology
Speaker 2: panel at CES.
Speaker 3: We are seven miles from.
Speaker 4: The Mexico border and we are the second largest city
Speaker 4: in San Diego Counties.
Speaker 3: We have about two hundred.
Speaker 4: And ninety officers and we serve a community of about
Speaker 4: three hundred thousand. Because of the close proximity to the door,
Speaker 4: we have a lot of people that have traveled back
Speaker 4: and forth. We have a drone program that I'm awfully
Speaker 4: proud of. We are responding proactively to calls for service
Speaker 4: in our community and so we have drone station from
Speaker 4: four diferent locations throughout our city. We have pilots in
Speaker 4: command that are on the rooftop, and then we have
Speaker 4: a operation center where we have sworn officers that are
Speaker 4: part one of seven pilots that fly the drones. So
Speaker 4: we are responding now to calls for service on average,
Speaker 4: an officer on scene, a drone penant on scene that's
Speaker 4: sharing information with our officers lights, streaming that information on
Speaker 4: our cell phones or in our computers that we're siving
Speaker 4: information about the call.
Speaker 3: Within ninety seconds on a average.
Speaker 4: And so what it's doing for us in sual Vista
Speaker 4: and for our community is we are providing information rapidly,
Speaker 4: real time information to officers so that they can make
Speaker 4: better decisions so that everyone goes home safely. We say
Speaker 4: that community safer, the officers are safer, and the subjects
Speaker 4: that we encounter are safer.
Speaker 3: So we're only proud of what we're doing.
Speaker 2: The way police are able to deploy drones used to
Speaker 2: be a lot more limited. The use of drones is
Speaker 2: regulated by the FFA, the Federal Aviation Administration. In most cases,
Speaker 2: the FFA requires that both hobbyists and police departments only
Speaker 2: fly drones within the operator's own line of sight, but
Speaker 2: starting back in twenty nineteen, agencies and vendors can start
Speaker 2: applying for a beyond visual line of sight or BEV
Speaker 2: loss waiver from the FFA to fly drones remotely, allowing
Speaker 2: for much longer flights in restricted airspace. Chula Vistaped was
Speaker 2: the first department to get a BEV lost waiver. The
Speaker 2: MIT Tech Review estimated last year that roughly two hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty five more departments now have one as well.
Speaker 3: Another thing that.
Speaker 4: I always talk about because I think it's critical is
Speaker 4: the concept of why they're using drones, what the benefit
Speaker 4: is to the community with the use of our drones.
Speaker 4: And I truly believe that when my officers can pick
Speaker 4: up their cell phone before they even respond to the
Speaker 4: call and they can look and see the scene.
Speaker 3: What's happening where the individual is.
Speaker 4: If the person's pacing in the middle of the park,
Speaker 4: there are no children around, and there are.
Speaker 3: No body, there's nobody that's within.
Speaker 4: The reach of this individual harming, you might not have
Speaker 4: to rush into that scene so quickly officers can de escalate,
Speaker 4: make better decisions. And I mean, this is just a
Speaker 4: game changer for law enforcement.
Speaker 3: And right now, you.
Speaker 4: Know, we were the first into agency to be involved
Speaker 4: in the Integrated Pilot program with the FAA.
Speaker 3: We're very proud of that that they.
Speaker 4: Trusted us enough for us to be the organization that
Speaker 4: brought forward all these ideas that are now being utilized
Speaker 4: in law enforcements. Now.
Speaker 2: I've watched a lot of videos of police talking about
Speaker 2: why they're using drones, of drone training companies talking about
Speaker 2: why police drones are so important. In one video on
Speaker 2: their website, this guy from Skyfire Consulting was talking about
Speaker 2: how police may not have had to kill Tame or
Speaker 2: Rice if they simply had a drone watching beforehand so
Speaker 2: they could see that it was a toy gun, which
Speaker 2: is a ridiculous thing to say, because in the nine
Speaker 2: one one call that jump started this entire police interaction,
Speaker 2: it was expressed that the caller thought the gun was
Speaker 2: probably a toy. And this notion that is simply if
Speaker 2: police have more ability to surveil, they'll be able to
Speaker 2: respond safer and apply less deadly force, I think is
Speaker 2: a pretty suspect premise. Yes, now, the effectiveness of drone
Speaker 2: technology and law enforcement is challenging to verify and quantify.
Speaker 2: The MIT Tech Review cannot find any third party studies
Speaker 2: showing that drones reduce crime, even after interviewing CVPD officers
Speaker 2: as well as drone vendors and researchers quote, nor could
Speaker 2: anyone provide statistics on how many additional arrests or convictions
Speaker 2: came from using drone technology. I was able to find
Speaker 2: some data on cvpd's website talking about how many drone
Speaker 2: initiated interactions resulted in arrests, but quantifying additional arrests seems
Speaker 2: to be a little challenging. Now, if you look at
Speaker 2: Chula Vista PD's own drone responses stats, the vast majority
Speaker 2: of deployments I estimate around seventy percent are for what
Speaker 2: the director of investigations for the privacy rights group the
Speaker 2: Electronic Frontier Foundation refers to as quote crimes of poverty unquote,
Speaker 2: which he believes will be the target of most drone
Speaker 2: policing as opposed to violent crime. Nearly thirty percent of
Speaker 2: Tuela Vista's drone deployments are for what's categorized as disturbances.
Speaker 2: Almost fifteen percent are for psychological evaluations, ten percent are
Speaker 2: for quote, check the area and information, over seven percent
Speaker 2: are for welfare checks, six point five percent is for
Speaker 2: quote unknown problem, and over six percent is for suspicious
Speaker 2: person and another six percent for traffic accidents. Now, some
Speaker 2: drone of deployments do result in patrol units not having
Speaker 2: to be dispatched, but CVPD also says that drones have
Speaker 2: assisted in thousands of arrests. And I'm really not sure
Speaker 2: if having a drone following someone around is the best
Speaker 2: thing for a fifty one to fifty psych evaluation. The
Speaker 2: presence of a police officer doesn't always make the situations
Speaker 2: better either, but I don't see having a drone be
Speaker 2: a really calming presence if you think someone needs mental help.
Speaker 2: Funding a whole fleet of heavy duty surveillance drones and
Speaker 2: paying dedicated operators costs money. Now it's unclear to me
Speaker 2: how many drones to Levista PD currently has, and on
Speaker 2: their website they list ten different drone models currently being
Speaker 2: in their fleet, most of them really expensive DGI drones
Speaker 2: like the DGI Matrix, the DGI Inspire, the DGA Phantom,
Speaker 2: the dj Maverick, as well as drones from a few
Speaker 2: other random companies. But nevertheless, Chief Kennedy is very grateful
Speaker 2: for their local Police Foundation for heading up the funding
Speaker 2: for their DFR drone first Responder program. Let's hear from
Speaker 2: her I don't.
Speaker 4: Know if anyone here is in law enforcement that many
Speaker 4: agencies use drones and they're all different types of drones
Speaker 4: that are available. I call them reactive drums or ones
Speaker 4: that are like the tactical drunes that you can use
Speaker 4: to go in on a hostage situation or a missing
Speaker 4: person to check in the canyon areas, or you know,
Speaker 4: interior drones.
Speaker 3: We have drones of grow underneath beds, go inside addicts,
Speaker 3: all types.
Speaker 4: Of different drones, and many organizations have drones like that,
Speaker 4: but a da of our drone is very unique and different.
Speaker 4: Because these drones are flying as you can imagine, eighteen
Speaker 4: thousand missions. It puts a lot of wear and tear
Speaker 4: on them. But that is one of the biggest challenges
Speaker 4: beyond the fact of funding. So we don't have huge
Speaker 4: budgets that are allotted for drune programs, and so we've
Speaker 4: had to be very, very creative in our police department,
Speaker 4: and we were very blessed to have a police Foundation
Speaker 4: that has taken on the responsibility to help us really
Speaker 4: start our drone program and continue going forward. So funding
Speaker 4: is always going to be a challenge and dependent upon the.
Speaker 3: Drone that you use. There are some drones that.
Speaker 4: You can't get any as you can't use for assets
Speaker 4: seizure funding, nor can you get grants for because sometimes
Speaker 4: when it comes to foreign drones there are many challenges
Speaker 4: as well. So you have to think of that and
Speaker 4: then we deal with legislation. Right now, that's the new
Speaker 4: challenge that we all have. We kind of bite some valves.
Speaker 4: Like I said, I'm agnostic. I want to use what's
Speaker 4: the best drone out there and protect the information and
Speaker 4: we do that with encrypted software programs that are on
Speaker 4: private servers. But you'll see that there's a lot of
Speaker 4: discussion about drones and what drones we should.
Speaker 3: Be using right now.
Speaker 2: We'll get back to the chief's offhanded mention of legal
Speaker 2: battles in a bit here, but Tulavista's budgetary situation may
Speaker 2: not be as dire as the chief makes it out
Speaker 2: to be on top of their current fifty five million
Speaker 2: dollar operating budget. Back in twenty twenty, a Prenza newspaper
Speaker 2: revealed that departments in San Diego County had secretly been
Speaker 2: getting hundreds of millions of dollars in high tech police equipment,
Speaker 2: including armored vehicles, facial recognition and phone braking software, license
Speaker 2: plate readers, drones, riagear, among other miscellaneous technology as a
Speaker 2: part of a DHS grant program due to their close
Speaker 2: proximity to the US Mexico border. Chula Vista was one
Speaker 2: such department, and as of twenty twenty, so four years ago,
Speaker 2: they had already received over one million dollars in grant
Speaker 2: funds from this DHS program, titled the quote Urban Area
Speaker 2: Security Initiative. Considering Chief Kennedy's budgetary concerns, drones actually have
Speaker 2: a lot of upsides financially, as they are often a
Speaker 2: lot cheaper than alternative surveillance methods, as well as being
Speaker 2: relatively easy to deploy remotely, either with a joystick or
Speaker 2: just by clicking a point on a map from a
Speaker 2: comfy office building. Issues around this ease of use was
Speaker 2: pointed out by Dave Moss, the director of investigations for
Speaker 2: the privacy rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who was
Speaker 2: quoted in the MIT article saying, quote, up until the
Speaker 2: last like five to ten years, there was this unspoken
Speaker 2: check and balance on law enforcement power money. You cannot
Speaker 2: have a police officer standing on every corner of every street.
Speaker 2: You can't have a helicopter flying twenty four seven because
Speaker 2: of fuel and insurance is really expensive. But with all
Speaker 2: these new technologies, we don't have that check and balance anymore.
Speaker 2: That's just going to result in more people being pulled
Speaker 2: through the criminal justice system unquote.
Speaker 4: My officers constantly are on the air now is UAS
Speaker 4: one available?
Speaker 3: Is UAS one available?
Speaker 4: Because it's getting them more information. Think about the fact
Speaker 4: that you can look at your cell phone. I could
Speaker 4: be anywhere in the world and I can.
Speaker 3: Look at kit lets me know whenever there's.
Speaker 4: A drune fly and I can walk, I can have
Speaker 4: visual awareness, aial overlay of what's happening in my community,
Speaker 4: no matter where I am.
Speaker 2: Advancements in technology are leading to further normalization of police surveillance.
Speaker 2: Ten years ago, would people react to news of a
Speaker 2: twenty four hour police drone program the same way they
Speaker 2: would now? What was once the threat of big Brother
Speaker 2: has since become a very sought after, unfetishized nanny state.
Speaker 2: In the v for Veneta graphic novel, anarchist writer Alan
Speaker 2: Moore imagined a fascist Britain characterized by surveillance cameras around
Speaker 2: every corner, and now cities around the country are setting
Speaker 2: up their own street mounted cameras linked to private security
Speaker 2: cameras and ring doorbell cameras to create a network of
Speaker 2: life coverage around a whole city which is instantly accessible
Speaker 2: to police. The more widespread consumer adoption of new technologies
Speaker 2: like small camera mounted drones and doorbell cameras, the more
Speaker 2: acceptable it seems for police to add such technology to
Speaker 2: their arsenal of surveillance tools. It almost becomes expected. Two
Speaker 2: of US TPD has routinely declined to answer why their
Speaker 2: drones are always recording, both to and from the scene,
Speaker 2: and the department has put in a lot of effort
Speaker 2: into managing the backlash against their expanding drone program.
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you one thing.
Speaker 4: Even some of the activists, they were very concerned about
Speaker 4: drones in the sense of privacy.
Speaker 3: What are you doing with these drones?
Speaker 4: As you're responding, you're trying to gather data and information
Speaker 4: to spy on us, right, And we have had to
Speaker 4: go to a lot of detail and explaining that as
Speaker 4: our drone LIFs off, it is immediately it is recording,
Speaker 4: because that's the information gatherer for us. As that drone responds,
Speaker 4: the camera is already going almost three miles down the
Speaker 4: road to where the scene is and giving us vital
Speaker 4: information as the officers are responding. But one of the
Speaker 4: criticism was going on the way back, is your drone
Speaker 4: just going in my backyard? What if we're spoking marijuana backyard?
Speaker 4: And I said, you're in California, doesn't really matter. But
Speaker 4: way right that, we said, okay, we gave you your concern.
Speaker 4: And so what we did was we worked with the
Speaker 4: software company that we were with and they created an
Speaker 4: automatic so that as a drone returns, it automatically tilts to.
Speaker 3: The horizon, so we're not recording anything.
Speaker 4: If another call came out, we can immediately we'll go
Speaker 4: back in it or like map it for us and
Speaker 4: share that information later on. But the goal is to
Speaker 4: listen to your community as well.
Speaker 2: Chief Kennedy's claim here is difficult to back up because
Speaker 2: CVPD have refused to show the public any of the
Speaker 2: drone footage they routinely collect. But if we take the
Speaker 2: chief at her word here anyway, she admits that the
Speaker 2: drone goes back to recording at street level as soon
Speaker 2: as there's another nine one one call, as they record
Speaker 2: everything on the way to a scene and the way
Speaker 2: she phrases this whole tilt feature is quite misleading because
Speaker 2: the camera never actually stops recording. She just claims that
Speaker 2: it tilts slightly upwards in between nine one one calls,
Speaker 2: but it's still capturing footage up to three miles away
Speaker 2: the entire time it's in the air. Police in Cheulavista
Speaker 2: have flown over eighteen thousand missions with their drowns. That's
Speaker 2: a lot of footage. When talking about the privacy concerns
Speaker 2: had by some residents of Cheulavista, Chief Kennedy really emphasized
Speaker 2: how much her and the department really care about listening
Speaker 2: to community feedback and how data transparency is so important
Speaker 2: to CVPD.
Speaker 4: Community engagement is essential, especially in law enforcement, because there
Speaker 4: are so many challenges when it comes to misinformation that's
Speaker 4: out there, and whenever you're a part of what's deemed
Speaker 4: as a government, everyone thinks that you have some ulterior
Speaker 4: motive when you're involved with.
Speaker 3: Any type of technology, and so we have worked.
Speaker 4: Really hard to build very strong relationships with every aspect
Speaker 4: of our community. So it was about in twenty fifteen
Speaker 4: when we started talking about the concept and the possibility
Speaker 4: of drones, and I laughed the chance and said, George Jensen,
Speaker 4: because that's my story that I used to and I
Speaker 4: love it because I made fun of my guys. When
Speaker 4: they said that we want to fly drunes, I said, oh,
Speaker 4: come on, now, what are we going to be? George
Speaker 4: jetson flying around the cars?
Speaker 3: And then I saw today they talked about a blind car.
Speaker 3: So it happens. It happens, all right.
Speaker 4: And so with the community, we started having these conversations.
Speaker 4: We created a working group, we started doing community forums.
Speaker 3: We started asking the.
Speaker 4: Community about what would you think if we were able
Speaker 4: to do something like this. We even went to some
Speaker 4: of the organizations that may not always.
Speaker 3: Be so supportive of these types of groups.
Speaker 4: We worked with the ASL you and asked for their
Speaker 4: input on our policy. So before we ever flew the drone,
Speaker 4: we call it the Krawl Walk Run Base.
Speaker 3: We're still own at the.
Speaker 2: Very end of brawl.
Speaker 4: We're not into lock yet and we've been doing it
Speaker 4: again also for five years. So you have to make
Speaker 4: certain that you're transparent, and we provided all types of
Speaker 4: information that are available. If you go to children, all
Speaker 4: you put in is jos face drones and it'll come
Speaker 4: up with us and you can look at all the
Speaker 4: things that we do, all the information that we share,
Speaker 4: the flight maps that we share. I mean, it's just
Speaker 4: super important to have those community forums.
Speaker 3: Every year.
Speaker 4: We do a community forum twice a year where we
Speaker 4: ask for input from our community.
Speaker 2: Later on in the panel, Chief Kennedy said that CVPD
Speaker 2: is quote unquote extremely transparent about their flight data and
Speaker 2: quote unquote have nothing to hide relating to their use
Speaker 2: of surveillance drones, which is a curious claim considering the
Speaker 2: fact that CVPD has historically kept all drone footage hidden
Speaker 2: from the public and has fought in court to do so.
Speaker 2: Despite the chief's emphasis on the police's commitment to transparency
Speaker 2: and the importance of listening to community feedback, even going
Speaker 2: as far as to consult the ACLU when developing their
Speaker 2: drone program, for years now, the Cheulvista Police Department has
Speaker 2: denied all FOYA and public records requests for any drone footage.
Speaker 2: In response aar turnro Castnares, a Cheulvista resident and owner
Speaker 2: of the local bilingual newspaper Loprenza, filed a lawsuit against
Speaker 2: the city. CVPD argued that all drone footage should be
Speaker 2: categorically exempt from the public records requests on the basis
Speaker 2: that the footage could be used for a future investigation.
Speaker 2: Just last December, only a few weeks before CEES, the
Speaker 2: California Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled that this blanket
Speaker 2: exemption is invalid and that not all drone first responder
Speaker 2: footage could be classified as part of appending or ongoing
Speaker 2: criminal investigation, pointing to examples such as nine one one
Speaker 2: calls about a roaming mountain lion or a stranded motorist.
Speaker 2: And police were not happy about this ruling. I'll talk
Speaker 2: about their reaction at the end of the episode, but
Speaker 2: controlling the narrative about the drone first Responder program has
Speaker 2: been of the utmost importance to Truellavista Police, as the
Speaker 2: chief herself expressed at the panel, and we're real.
Speaker 3: Good about telling our story.
Speaker 4: If you don't tell your own story in law enforcement,
Speaker 4: other people will tell it for it and it might
Speaker 4: not be the right story. So we've gotten really good
Speaker 4: at sharing on our social media and through YouTube channels
Speaker 4: and everything success stories of what we're doing.
Speaker 2: That is quite the claim there. To paraphrase, the Electronic
Speaker 2: Frontier Foundation, without public access to their drone footage. It
Speaker 2: makes it very difficult to assess how much privacy you
Speaker 2: have Vista and whether police are even following their own
Speaker 2: rules about when and whether they record sensitive places like
Speaker 2: people's homes, backyards, or public protests. And that's why this
Speaker 2: recent ruling and the legal precedent it sets is a
Speaker 2: huge win for actual transparency and marks the first step
Speaker 2: towards the public finally getting a look at how these
Speaker 2: drones are being used in Scheula Vista, with drone first
Speaker 2: Responder programs is spreading to police departments across the country
Speaker 2: modeled after the one in Cheula Vista. Combined with the
Speaker 2: increasing presence of stationary street level cameras, the ability for
Speaker 2: police to be watching everywhere without the need for on
Speaker 2: the ground officers creates what the EFF refers to as
Speaker 2: quote a fundamental change in strategy with police respecting to
Speaker 2: a much much larger number of situations with drones, resulting
Speaker 2: in pervasive, if not persistent, surveillance of communities unquote. Speaking
Speaker 2: of persistent surveillance, near the end of the panel, the
Speaker 2: chief announced that two of us tapd is planning to
Speaker 2: expand their ten hour a day drone first responder program
Speaker 2: to a constant, twenty four hour a day drone surveillance program.
Speaker 2: More than doubling the department's capacity to have eyes in
Speaker 2: the sky would mean a lot more work hours for
Speaker 2: drone operators, as well as a large increase in the
Speaker 2: amount of video files being stored indefinitely, but Chief Kennedy
Speaker 2: claimed that they're looking into offsetting costs by replacing some
Speaker 2: of the drone piloting team with AI assisted piloting and
Speaker 2: autonomous devices.
Speaker 3: You've clearly been a leader with thrones's first responder and technology.
Speaker 3: Looking forward, what is the future hole for the department?
Speaker 1: I asume you're spending a lot of time telling others
Speaker 1: about the program edition using runs, but beyond that, what's.
Speaker 4: It a Well, my hope is that we'll be moving
Speaker 4: towards twenty four hour operations.
Speaker 3: Right now, we're from sunrise to sunset.
Speaker 4: We go till close to ten o'clock at night, which
Speaker 4: goes a little bit beyond that. And then one of
Speaker 4: the challenges, and I know you're only getting like a
Speaker 4: little piece of the information about exactly how we're doing this,
Speaker 4: but from the four different locations that we fly on
Speaker 4: each of the rooftops we have what's called the piloting command,
Speaker 4: and that piloting command is contracted through a company and
Speaker 4: we and they just have visual awareness of the sky
Speaker 4: and they work in coordination with our drone pilot that's
Speaker 4: inside our operations center. But that's a huge expense for
Speaker 4: us to pay lead for each site.
Speaker 3: Right now, with the operations that we have.
Speaker 4: We're paying about one hundred thousand dollars per year, So
Speaker 4: that's four hundred thousand dollars for four locations beyond all
Speaker 4: the other proces associate and so I can get expensive.
Speaker 4: My hope is that and we keep hearing about if
Speaker 4: you've seen some of the testing and we've been testing
Speaker 4: it as well in our area, or what's called drawn
Speaker 4: in the box, or there's some of the systems that
Speaker 4: are out there right now that organizations are using that
Speaker 4: our autonomous and so we're getting there, but we're not
Speaker 4: quite there because it's very different when you're dealing with
Speaker 4: flying over people and you're flying into areas where the
Speaker 4: drone was to drop out of the sky and harm
Speaker 4: people in our community. That could create tremendous challenges. So
Speaker 4: we're very as I mentioned.
Speaker 2: The crawl phase, so to explain how these AI autonomous
Speaker 2: drones would work. It's essentially this box about the size
Speaker 2: of a truck bed that can either be mounted in
Speaker 2: like a police pickup truck or be stored on various
Speaker 2: rooftops around the city, and someone just needs to point
Speaker 2: at a place on a map and the drone will
Speaker 2: fly and pilot itself around obstacles and basically circle around
Speaker 2: an area to do surveillance, and you can call it
Speaker 2: back when done. This would require a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: drones to just be launching and being piloted by themselves.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't have to train random police officers to become
Speaker 2: FAA licensed pilots, and you could just have the whole
Speaker 2: thing in the box, like it's called drone in the box.
Speaker 2: And these are only going to become more common and cheaper.
Speaker 2: Imagine having ten of these throughout a city, launching from
Speaker 2: like ten different rooftops, being able to fly around by themselves,
Speaker 2: constantly going around communities, constantly going to GPS coordinates linked
Speaker 2: to the nine one one calls, creating a whole wealth
Speaker 2: of footage instantly available to police, live streamed from the air.
Speaker 2: Matt Sloane, the founder of Skyfire Consulting, a company here
Speaker 2: in Atlanta that trains law enforcement agencies on the use
Speaker 2: of drones and DFR programs, thinks that we'll start seeing
Speaker 2: autonomous deployment of police drones within the next year or two,
Speaker 2: as police budgets increase and become allocated for unmanned aerial systems.
Speaker 2: He referred to the state of drone use by police
Speaker 2: as quote rapidly escalating. Chula Vista likes to market itself
Speaker 2: as a pioneer of the smart city movement, which consequently
Speaker 2: makes them able to receive a whole bunch of grant funding. Now,
Speaker 2: the idea of the smart city is built around having
Speaker 2: a massive amount of data to automate certain city services.
Speaker 2: So for this idea to work, there needs to be
Speaker 2: a way to collect that data, and these drones are
Speaker 2: a major part of that. The website for the City
Speaker 2: of Chula Vista also lists projects like electronic transportation, adaptive
Speaker 2: traffic signals in app for non emergency city services, as
Speaker 2: well as quote crime mapping and police dispatch modernization unquote
Speaker 2: as also being smart city initiatives.
Speaker 4: We have what's called five ninety one one one, and
Speaker 4: that allows my officers to hear incoming nine more one
Speaker 4: calls before dispatch even.
Speaker 3: Puts it into the system.
Speaker 4: They can hear what's going on there, and that is
Speaker 4: tremendousent and valuable to them. We have so many different
Speaker 4: layers of technology that have really showcase.
Speaker 2: The value Live nine one one is a new piece
Speaker 2: of software that allows patrol officers to listen to live
Speaker 2: stream to nine one one calls directly and pinpoints the
Speaker 2: location of the caller via GPS. Now, I don't even
Speaker 2: have time to get into the many reasons that this
Speaker 2: could be a bad idea, but simply put, police do
Speaker 2: not need to respond to every call that goes into
Speaker 2: nine one one, let alone be giving random cops this
Speaker 2: ability to self dispatch on their own. It just seems
Speaker 2: like that could have many, many consequences. But anyway, back
Speaker 2: to drones. According to a twenty twenty article in the
Speaker 2: newspaper Loprenza, cities in San Diego County like Chula Vista,
Speaker 2: have received equipment such as tethered drones used for stationary surveillance,
Speaker 2: poll cameras, license plate readers, and cell phone cracking technology
Speaker 2: used to circumvent passwords from the Urban Area Security Initiative
Speaker 2: DHS grant program. A lot of these technologies have use
Speaker 2: in the Smart City Idyllic plan for data collection to
Speaker 2: automate city services. After the drone panel was over and
Speaker 2: I was walking around the show floor at CEES, I
Speaker 2: couldn't help but notice all of the smart cameras and
Speaker 2: AI image recognition systems being advertised for law enforcement applications.
Speaker 2: Software that can almost instantaneously scan through a wealth of
Speaker 2: footage and track people's movements, run facial recognition, and identify
Speaker 2: every article of clothing. Versions of this type of software
Speaker 2: are already in use by many police departments, and they
Speaker 2: will only get better, cheaper, and more common. In effect,
Speaker 2: what this does is remove a lot of the detective legwork.
Speaker 2: Instead of having to manually map someone's movements and track
Speaker 2: down what niche etsy shirt someone's wearing, these aisystems can
Speaker 2: now do this all automatically. To quote the MIT Tech
Speaker 2: Review article on cvpd's DFR drone program quote. As the
Speaker 2: technology continues to spread, privacy and civil liberty groups are
Speaker 2: raising the question of what happens when drones are combined
Speaker 2: with license plate readers, networks of fixed cameras, and new
Speaker 2: real time command centers that digest and sort through video evidence.
Speaker 2: This digital dragnet could dramatically expand surveillance capabilities and lead
Speaker 2: to even more police interactions with demographics that have historically
Speaker 2: suffered from over policing. Unquote. Pedro Rios, a human rights
Speaker 2: advocate with the American Friends Service Committee and a member
Speaker 2: of Chula Vista's Community Tech Council, was quoted in the
Speaker 2: MIT article saying, quote people in the community have no
Speaker 2: awareness of what images are captured, how the footage is retained,
Speaker 2: and who has access. It's a big red flag for
Speaker 2: a city that says it's at the forefront of the
Speaker 2: smart city movement.
Speaker 3: These dramas they're revolutionizing the world.
Speaker 4: I mean people who are not taking drone seriously right now,
Speaker 4: who will be left behind. We have flown eighteen one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty missions. You can go on our web page.
Speaker 4: You can see the flight data. We're extremely transparent. We
Speaker 4: share all that with our community. We have no need
Speaker 4: to hide. We are in the business of saving wise
Speaker 4: and I believe drones are one of the best estories.
Speaker 2: She told us them if they truly have nothing to
Speaker 2: hide and are extremely transparent about the use of their
Speaker 2: camera mounted drones, I wonder why they've spent years in
Speaker 2: court fighting to keep every second of drone footage from
Speaker 2: being seen by the public. Luckily, after Chief Kennedy talked
Speaker 2: for like thirty minutes about how much they care about
Speaker 2: community engagement and how transparent they are with their flight data,
Speaker 2: I was able to ask the Chief how their commitment
Speaker 2: to transparency relates to the recent lawsuit she just lost
Speaker 2: over hiding drone footage. And I also threw in a
Speaker 2: question about owns at protests. Let's take a listen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a question for the chief.
Speaker 1: So, I know you talked about the importance of like
Speaker 1: listening to the community and community engagement, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure this is the case for your department, but other
Speaker 1: departments who've kind of followed suit for for your example,
Speaker 1: have been using drones to like surveil First Amendment activity stuff.
Speaker 1: And I know you recently lost a court case regarding
Speaker 1: the availability of drone footage, So I'm curious about the
Speaker 1: kind of what the rationale for that footage is and
Speaker 1: how that plays into this idea of trying to be
Speaker 1: transparent with the community for how these drones are being used.
Speaker 4: That's kind of going to be a little bit difficult
Speaker 4: for me to answer because the court case is still
Speaker 4: moving forward.
Speaker 3: It's an active case. If you read it, we didn't
Speaker 3: lose the case.
Speaker 4: It was recommended to go to a lower court to
Speaker 4: go back for some clarification under three categories.
Speaker 2: Now this is either a straight upply or a huge
Speaker 2: cope and a most mischaracterization. But more on that in
Speaker 2: a sec I think.
Speaker 3: It's really important.
Speaker 4: As I mentioned, there are ethics involved in the ethical
Speaker 4: responsibility that you have as a law enforcement.
Speaker 3: Agency is super important.
Speaker 4: So how you utilize your drones and how you do
Speaker 4: outreach with your community is fundamentally important, and so we
Speaker 4: don't use our drones for if there was a protest,
Speaker 4: We would not use our drones if there was if
Speaker 4: it turned into a riot. So if people were out
Speaker 4: there and they have the ability to to speak freely,
Speaker 4: to share their concerns, and if it's in opposition, our
Speaker 4: goal is to make sure that we keep it safe
Speaker 4: for all parties involved on either side.
Speaker 3: So my hope is that other people look at it.
Speaker 4: The same way that we do, and hopefully I've been
Speaker 4: able to answer it as much as I leave.
Speaker 3: I'm dying to give you more than I can't. Okay,
Speaker 3: thank you for those questions. Folks were out of time.
Speaker 3: Maybe there could be questions after the session.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there were no more questions after mine. I
Speaker 2: kind of shut down that possibility anyway. Okay. So first
Speaker 2: of all, the line between a protest and a riot
Speaker 2: is meaningless. Police can declare a riot for any reason
Speaker 2: they see fit, including people being in a road marching.
Speaker 2: I've seen this happen dozens of times, nearly hundreds of
Speaker 2: times actually, So moving on from that immediately, let's go
Speaker 2: back to the court case. The City of true Livista
Speaker 2: did lose the argument that they were trying to make.
Speaker 2: They did lose the case. The Fourth District Court of
Speaker 2: Appeals ruled that claiming exemption from the Public Records Act
Speaker 2: was unlawful and sent in the case back to trial
Speaker 2: court to hammer out the details of how much footage
Speaker 2: is subject to public disclosure and figure out a process
Speaker 2: for standardizing the release of the footage.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The same day I attended this panel in Las Vegas,
Speaker 2: January ninth, the city of Chula Vista requested an appeal
Speaker 2: to the California Supreme Court to prevent the release of
Speaker 2: their aerial video footage. There is a sixty day waiting
Speaker 2: period where the High Court will decide whether or not
Speaker 2: to take the case, and if they decline finally, it
Speaker 2: will go back to trial court to decide on the
Speaker 2: process of how selected drone footage shall be made publicly available.
Speaker 2: The police are now currently claiming that making DFR footage
Speaker 2: adhere to the Public Records Act would violate the privacy
Speaker 2: of Chula Vista residents captured in the videos, which perhaps
Speaker 2: demonstrates that the aerial videos should have never been captured
Speaker 2: in the first place. I'm going to read a press
Speaker 2: release from the city's communication manager. Quote the city declined
Speaker 2: to provide the copies because doing so might have violated
Speaker 2: individual privacy rights. The city would have to manually review
Speaker 2: and redact every video record to protect information considered personal,
Speaker 2: such as the images of faces, license plates, backyards, and more. Unquote,
Speaker 2: So the city is both trying to argue that having
Speaker 2: to manually review each requested file to determine if the
Speaker 2: video in question is related to appending investigation, as well
Speaker 2: as redacting personal information captured on camera, would be way
Speaker 2: too costly and time consuming. City officials claim that reviewing
Speaker 2: and redacting videos from one month to obscure faces, license plates,
Speaker 2: and backyards would take a full time employee around two
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty days. I'm going to read a little
Speaker 2: bit more from the city's recent statement. Quote. While the
Speaker 2: city takes very seriously it's obligation to provide the public
Speaker 2: access to public records, the city is concerned that the
Speaker 2: Court of Appeal's opinion may compromise significant privacy concerns of
Speaker 2: members of the public in this case or in future requests. Unquote.
Speaker 2: Somehow the city has missed the point that this is
Speaker 2: the very reason the drone footage is being requested to
Speaker 2: learn the actual nature of this highly influential drone first
Speaker 2: responder program that's being adopted across the country. If the
Speaker 2: existence of this footage is such a massive privacy violation,
Speaker 2: that implies that the recording of said footage itself implicitly
Speaker 2: violates people's privacy, and the harder police fight to hide
Speaker 2: their sweeping collection of aerial footage, all the more suspicious
Speaker 2: this entire program seems.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: That is what I have to say about Chula Vista's
Speaker 2: drone first responder program. In about a month and a half,
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court of California will make their decision on
Speaker 2: whether or not they're going to hear this case. If
Speaker 2: they decline, then the president will be set statewide against
Speaker 2: this exemption of the Public Records Act by hiding drone footage,
Speaker 2: So that will be really cool, And then hopefully within
Speaker 2: the next year, we'll finally be able to see what
Speaker 2: some of this footage actually looks like, how good their
Speaker 2: cameras are, how much they can zoom in, all of
Speaker 2: the details of how much of the city they're capturing,
Speaker 2: all this kind of stuff, how often the drones are
Speaker 2: in the air, all of those types of things that
Speaker 2: it will be easier to highlight once we can actually
Speaker 2: take a look at the footage. And I assume that
Speaker 2: going through and releasing requested files for one month will
Speaker 2: probably end up not taking two one hundred and thirty days.
Speaker 2: But I do know how the police love to love
Speaker 2: to stretch out these public records requests for as long
Speaker 2: as they can. As the request that this lawsuit stems from,
Speaker 2: it's all the way back to April of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: so hopefully, hopefully more than three years later, we'll finally
Speaker 2: get a look. Special thanks to Loprenza for starting this
Speaker 2: lawsuit and doing all of the hard work to actually
Speaker 2: force the police to be transparent. And if you want
Speaker 2: to read more, I'd recommend checking out the website to
Speaker 2: Loprenza dot org as well as the MIT tech review piece,
Speaker 2: which provided some really releaseful information to fill in the
Speaker 2: gaps between my own research. So yeah, thank you for listening.
Speaker 2: Could happen here. It certainly could happen here in terms
Speaker 2: of seeing more of these little fuckers flying around in
Speaker 2: the air, It could happen here as a production of
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 2: visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.