Police Trial Drones As First Responders

• Police trialling drone-in-a-box solutions to prove the concept of drones as first responders;

• Trial staged in Norfolk, using DJI Dock 2 in a mission person scenario;

• National Police Chiefs’ Council says that using drones as first responders can enhance public and officer safety. 

Cutting-edge plans for police to use drones as first responders (DFR) have been showcased in a demonstration.

The DJI Dock 2 drone in a box was deployed from a rooftop at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich. It helped search for a man playing the role of a missing person.

The demonstration comes as part of a national trial set up by the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC). It is running in phases and will test the DFR concept.

During the demonstration in Norfolk, the drone beamed back real-time imagery to an officer, who watched the footage in a police van nearby.

The operation was conducted under current visual line of sight rules.

Superintendent Taryn Evans, strategic lead for the NPCC's Drones team, said: "The Norfolk trial is an important showcase of just how effective DFR can be at supporting our response to 999 calls, arriving on scene quickly and giving invaluable eyes in the sky.

"Each trial enables us to test how DFR could work in different environments and support different operational purposes, enhancing both public and officer safety."

She said that drone in a box operations could benefit area searches, incidents on roads, town centres, public order, and night-time economy.

"We would get an advantage by getting overhead and getting live images within the first two or three minutes," she said.

Supt Evans said that she doesn't anticipate that drones as first responders will replace any standard police response. But she said that the drone can be deployed at a moment's notice to provide rapid live awareness to shape incident response.

The Norfolk trial is part of four DFR trials across the country, the first led by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary and Thames Valley Police at the Isle of Wight Festival where a simulated DFR capability was deployed alongside the force’s routine police drones resource. This will be replicated in further trials at a range of events throughout the summer.

An additional trial is also in planning with West Midlands Police later in 2024.

DFR is part of a larger NPCC Drones programme, which is establishing robust governance, standardisation and sharing of expertise across the UK’s wide network of police drone operators.

The work to date has focused on improvements to the way the 400 drones already flown by UK police officers are operated within visual line of sight (VLOS). This aims to increase confidence in police drone operations by the regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, which should in turn facilitate an easier transition to beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) and DFR operations in the future.

A similar trial to test the DFR concept has previously taken place in Sweden, whereby the Swedish Police Authority used the DJI Dock to test the concept of using drones for first responders. Find out more here. 

heliguy™ is a DJI Dock 2 partner: We offer supply/support, integration plans, site visits, Service Level Agreements, and have DJI Dock 2 accredited technicians. Our in-house training team and regulatory specialists can facilitate Dock 2 training, including OSC submissions for BVLOS operations.