(TNS) — San Francisco police officers launched drones nearly 1,400 times over the past year, most frequently in pursuit of car theft, robbery or burglary suspects, according to a Chronicle analysis of recently released data.
Since acquiring police drones in May 2024, the department flew them 1,371 times through Aug. 31 of this year, according to the data, which provided the most comprehensive look to date at why and where police are deploying drones across the city.
The neighborhoods that saw the drones in the sky most often were the South of Market area, the Tenderloin and the Mission District. Most drones were in the air for between 10 and 20 minutes.
In recent months, the department flew drones more often, with a peak of 169 flights this May compared to eight missions last May.
The department used drones for various reasons: to help carry out plain-clothes operations, serve search warrants and investigate crimes such as shootings, fireworks, illegal vending and sideshows. The longest mission involved a suicidal person on Harrison Street near 23rd Street in the Mission District last June, when the drone aided officers for more than 6 hours.
Drones were at times used for reasons that weren’t clear from the police data. Drones were flown over the Dolores Hill Bomb skateboarding event in for more than five hours in July 2024, at Pride for more than five hours in June 2024 and the Outside Lands festival three times, each time more than an hour, in August 2024. The department said in a statement that officers flew the drones to “provide aerial support and situational awareness to responding officers during law enforcement and criminal investigation operations.”
Police leaders praise drones as a valuable tool that results in faster response times and increases officers’ situational awareness, among other benefits. Even as drones remain unpopular with privacy advocates, who worry that the drones could result in unsanctioned surveillance and other misuse, the department continues to expand its use of the technology. The department’s fleet includes 63 drones, up from six drones when the program started.
“Drones have been an incredible tool for our officers,” department spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky said Thursday. “The results have been stunning and have shown what the future of policing looks like in our city.”
Sernoffsky said auto thefts, burglaries and robberies — the top reasons for the flight missions — are serious crimes that occur more often than other types, such as homicide or rapes.
Police pair the drones with other technology, including license-plate readers and business-owned surveillance cameras to locate suspects. Sernoffsky pointed to a case in March, when a man on a scooter snatched a woman’s cellphone in the area of Seventh and Mission streets in the SoMa area. Police used private cameras to track down the robbery suspect, then flew a drone overhead.
Cameras attached to the drone recorded as the suspect sold the cellphone to a fence. Officers then moved in and arrested the pair. Within an hour, they returned the cellphone to its owner, Sernoffsky said.
The department turned to drones after 54% of San Francisco voters approved former Mayor London Breed’s Prop. E, which gave the police force the green light to expand its technology. Two months later, the department purchased six drones for about $35,000 in total.
Initially, trained officers kept the drones in their police cars, showed up to crime scenes and launched on-site.
The set-up then shifted focus. Last October, the department announced plans to launch drones from fixed sites in order to deploy them faster
In June, the department received a $9.4 million donation to grow its drone program, including the number of launch sites. The donation came from Ripple Labs, a San Francisco -based crypto company and the San Francisco Police Community Foundation, which funnels donations to the department. Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen also founded the police foundation.
The expansion comes as San Francisco sees historic drops in most crime categories. Both violent crimes and property crimes are down, with overall crime down 26% so far this year compared to the same period last year, according to the department’s latest figures.
Sernoffsky said the department’s use of drones was directly contributing to the drop in crime.
He added: “This is the future of policing. It’s here.”
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