Based on its own rhetoric, the department wants to employ the devices as surveillance tools.
It’s no secret that under Mayor Eric Adams, the NYPD has rushed to embrace new technologies, from AI-enabled weapons scanners to patrol robots. And time and again, the NYPD has deployed these tools with few guardrails in place to protect against inaccuracy, incursions upon privacy, and other risks. Some of the tools may be valuable, some may not — but no one in City government is doing the hard work to tell the difference, and to make sure the valuable ones are used properly.
Unfortunately, the NYPD’s new Drone as First Responder, or “DFR,” program, falls squarely within this pattern.
Here’s how the Mayor’s Office described the new program when it was announced in November: Remotely operated drones will fly to the location of public safety calls and stream high-definition audio and video in real-time to officers. Drones can be dispatched for calls including “searches for missing people, alerts from the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system, incidents of robberies and grand larcenies, and other crimes in progress as needed.” An additional goal, officials say, is to place drones on constant patrol in the city to look for suspicious or criminal activity. The City’s press release said the program is “now operational in five commands in three boroughs.”
Law enforcement’s enthusiasm for this program is in many ways understandable. When used properly, drones can help reduce response times — which are rising in New York City — and conserve agency resources. Data dashboards created by agencies in California and Maryland show that drones often reach the scene of an incident in under two minutes and clear a significant number of calls without the need to dispatch a human officer. And when it turns out officers do need to respond in person, drones can boost situational awareness in advance of their arrival. For example, drones have helped officers determine that a reported gun actually turned out to be a lighter or a cell phone. This is all great.
Yet use of drones by police carries real risks as well, especially if implemented as the NYPD seems to envision. The typical definition of a first responder is someone who is first on the scene to an incident. The NYPD’s actual policy here is to use drones as a general surveillance tool: The agency’s stated ambition includes conducting aerial patrols of neighborhoods, looking for “anomalies” and serving as “an extra layer of eyes up there.” One must wonder: exactly what sorts of “anomalous” activities might subject people to aerial surveillance by the NYPD? And where will those surveillance drones go — over back yards? Into bedroom windows? What will be deemed off-limits and how?
Right now, there are glaringly few laws in place to protect against the significant risks to individual privacy posed by drone programs. Existing constitutional law permits police to conduct aerial surveillance, and this has been used as justification for police use of drones. But those judicial precedents involve traditional aircraft and not drones. Drones fly much lower and more precisely, and thus can offer clearer views into private homes. They are also quieter, so people may not realize that they are there. On a legislative level, New York City’s drone law places the NYPD in charge of licensing and permitting the private use of drones in the five boroughs, but it does not address the department’s own use of the technology. And proposals to create state-level privacy protections for police use of drones have gone nowhere. Without these safeguards in place, there is nothing to stop a limited rollout of drones “as first responders” from morphing into persistent and invasive aerial surveillance.
Where will surveillance drones go — over back yards? Into bedroom windows? What will be deemed off-limits and how?
But it is worse than that. The NYPD has an internal policy governing the use of aerial drones, yet the department has wholly failed to update its policy to account for its own drone program, as required by the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, passed by the City Council in 2020. In fact, the existing policy prohibits the use of drones “for routine foot patrol by officers.” Although the language is somewhat ambiguous, that strongly suggests that the NYPD’s plans to use drones for patrol purposes is contrary to its own policy.
None of this is to say drones, when properly deployed, can’t enhance policing and enhance public safety. Indeed, they can be a valuable tool. But for drones to be deployed soundly, there must be strong rules governing their use. Chief among them, drones advertised as first response tools should not be used as a backdoor to establish a broader aerial surveillance program.
Until the City Council or others build better guardrails, the NYPD's new drone program should be grounded.