By MES Dispatch Staff
The Briefing
- Flagstaff, Arizona, police, fire and emergency management leaders held three community meetings last week on a potential drones as first responder (DFR) program.
- No DFR program has been formally proposed to or voted on by the city council; officials are still developing policy and have not selected pilots or acquired the technology.
- The proposal calls for three Skydio X10 drones docked at locations around the city, flown by human pilots and monitored through the unified police-fire-EMS dispatch center.
- Officials said the drones would lack facial recognition and would not function as license-plate readers, and stressed all flights would be auditable; some residents raised surveillance and data-sharing concerns, drawing comparisons to the city’s earlier cancellation of a Flock Safety contract.
- No date has been set for a formal proposal to the city council.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Leaders from the Flagstaff Police Department, Flagstaff Fire Department and other city agencies held a series of community meetings last week to gather public input on a possible drones as first responder program, though no formal proposal has been made to the city council.
“Right now, we haven’t dedicated pilots to this yet. We don’t have the technology yet,” Deputy Police Chief Collin Seay said at the first of three meetings. “We haven’t created the policy yet. We want to do that together with the community.”
Under the proposal, three Skydio X10 drones — quadcopters equipped with visual and thermal cameras — would be stationed at locations around the city, including the police and sheriff’s building on Sawmill Avenue. The drones would be flown by human pilots working with the Consolidated City of Flagstaff/Coconino County Emergency Communications Call Center, the area’s unified dispatch center for police, sheriff, fire and EMS. Police Chief Sean Connolly said the drones would respond to Part I violent and property crimes as classified by the FBI, while fire officials said the devices could help verify smoke reports, crash alerts and medical emergencies. Emergency management officials said drones could also assist in assessing flooding.
Officials said the drones would not carry facial recognition technology and would not be used as license-plate readers, though they acknowledged the manufacturer, Skydio, markets the X10 as capable of reading plates and identifying vehicles from a distance. Connolly said all drone flights would be human-piloted, geofenced away from restricted airspace such as Flagstaff Pulliam Airport and Flagstaff Medical Center, and subject to auditing, with a goal of eventually publishing flight data on a public dashboard.
The proposal follows the city’s 2025 cancellation of a Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader contract after public backlash over its unannounced installation, which led to the creation of Flagstaff’s Technology Privacy Task Force. That group recommended the department pursue community engagement ahead of any DFR proposal, and officials said they will continue consulting with it as they prepare a formal plan for city council consideration later this year.
At the meetings, some residents questioned whether the program amounted to a new form of surveillance, citing the city’s prior experience with Flock and Skydio’s ties to military and federal immigration contracts; in July, the Minneapolis City Council rejected a similar Skydio-based DFR proposal over the company’s contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Israeli military. Connolly said he would not share drone footage with ICE absent a court order and noted other law enforcement equipment suppliers also maintain military contracts. Others raised concerns about potential collisions with medical transport helicopters that operate near Flagstaff Medical Center without an air traffic controller; department officials said they are coordinating with helicopter operators to mitigate that risk.
Connolly said the estimated annual cost of the drones and associated software would be about $12,000 as part of the city’s existing five-year, $3.5 million contract with Axon Enterprise, which also supplies the department’s body cameras and other technology. No date has been set for a formal presentation to the Flagstaff City Council, and officials said additional community meetings may be held before then.