Drones are the “future of policing,” but the Chicago Police Department is far behind its law enforcement peers in embracing that technology, City Council members were told Monday.
By comparison, the Illinois State Police has 75 drones. New York City has 55 drones, 56 pilots and a drone dedicated to monitoring New York beaches. San Diego has 47. Los Angeles County, 22.
But the Chicago Police Department has just five drones and three pilots. Its first drones were purchased with grant money late last year and used primarily for surveillance prior to and during special events special events like the Democratic National Convention, Lollapalooza and the Pride Parade.
If the City Council can find the money to pay for it and Chicago residents and businesses support it, Chicago Police Sergeant Marcus Buenrostro said he would like to see a drone “POD or hive” installed on the rooftop of every one of the city’s 22 district police stations.
When 911 calls come in, a drone would “automatically deploy to those calls in under two minutes,” giving watch commanders the information they need to dispatch officers to the scene, when needed and arriving officers pivotal “knowledge of what they’re walking into,” Buenrostro told the Committees on Public Safety and Technology.
“Having that ability and really giving the officers that are responding that insight is a game changer for our department,” Buenrostro said Monday.
“With our workforce being lower and the struggles with recruiting officers, this is really a force multiplier. We’re able to utilize it and cover a lot more area than any patrol car can. We do it with nobody getting injured and no complaints.”
Citing national statistics, Buenrostro credited drones with contributing to a 50 percent decrease in use of force lawsuits.
“Officers going into a lot of these situations—they don’t know what they’re getting into. They’re at a heightened level of concern. Having that situational awareness where we can tell them—or they can even view from their phones a livestream of what they’re walking into” diffuses the situation at the front-end, he said.
Ed Yohnka, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said police officers in Illinois “just got an expansion” in their ability to use drones around large events and, “We ought to assess how that’s working before we expand it any further.”
“Drones have an enormous capacity to surveil people without their knowledge—to look into buildings, into cars, into apartments—and we ought to move very slowly with that kind of surveillance technology without having in place the appropriate privacy regulations to guard against peoples’ rights being violated,” Yohnka said.
Without strict controls and a public debate about the potential benefits to public safety, there is a huge risk that police could violate privacy simply because they “believe” someone is involved in criminal activity—not because “they actually are,” Yohnka said.
“You’re concerned about video that’s captured through drone technology being leaked, simply because it may be embarrassing or it may be prurient in some way and not really anything related to public safety,” he said.
The ACLU’s argument didn’t fly with most of the alderpersons in attendance at Monday’s hearings.
Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st), who has served the city as both a police officer and a firefighter, said he was “extremely excited” about drone technology.
“If we’re not riding this wave, we’re gonna be left behind,” Napolitano said.
“This could be an incredible part of [cracking down on] the open-air drug market that plagues our city as well as chop shops as well as gang territories. You name it…If I can get a drone that can help us where we’re missing police resources — especially on the Northwest Side where they’re taking [officers] and putting them in other places—I’m all in favor of any type of new technology. This is incredible.”
Economic Development Chair Gilbert Villegas added, “How can we pay for it? It would pay for itself by minimizing the lawsuits that we’re paying on a monthly basis.”
Public Safety Chair Brian Hopkins (2nd) agreed that, thanks in part to the guardrails imposed by a federal consent decree, Chicago is “far behind other cities and it’s time to change that.”
“The emphasis for years now has been on placing limitations on law enforcement. … That social experiment has been an abject failure. It’s time to start pushing back on that for the purpose of public safety,” Hopkins said.
Hopkins stressed the need to train drone operators “so they don’t accidentally stray into the realm of voyeurism.” That will also assure the public that “these are law enforcement tools. They’re not used to spy on innocent civilians on their way to the grocery store.”