THE OAKLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT on Wednesday pitched drones to a small community audience as a way to address what it described as staffing shortages and budget constraints.<\/p>\n
During its annual Military Equipment Use town hall meeting in East Oakland, police officials presented the 2025 Military Equipment Use Report, detailing how military equipment was used over the past year, what it cost and how the department plans to use it in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The department\u2019s Military Equipment Use Report is mandated by state Assembly Bill 481, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2021. A community engagement meeting is also required by the same state law.<\/p>\n
Summarizing the report, department officials reported zero Internal Affairs Bureau and California Public Records Act complaints surrounding Oakland police\u2019s deployment of military equipment, while also noting a decrease from last year in the total number of times military equipment was deployed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the report did note an increase in the department\u2019s deployment of drones in the past year. In 2025, the department reported deploying drones on 170 occasions, after deploying such equipment 145 times in 2024.<\/p>\n
The increase in drone usage reflects the Oakland Police Department\u2019s expansion of its Unmanned Aircraft System in recent years, which has allowed the department to use drones to support department investigations and gain an aerial view on hazardous situations.<\/p>\n
\u201c[It\u2019s] an exceptional tool for us to get a tactical advantage on the individual, because we can get eyes on them first,\u201d said acting Capt. William Febel. \u201cIt\u2019s extremely important if we can place ourselves in a situation where we understand who we\u2019re dealing with, the level of threat and the circumstances surrounding the threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police officials also spoke about a desire to expand the department\u2019s drone usage to a Drone First Responder program, that would dispatch drones to emergency cars before police officers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can remove a lot of contact between the police and the community,\u201d said acting Deputy Chief Omar Daza-Quiroz, the leader of the department\u2019s drone program. \u201cThat\u2019s why we are looking at more drones and we are also looking at DFR, which is a Drone First Responder program.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oakland would not be the first city to adopt a DFR program, with department officials citing the usage of DFR programs in San Francisco as well as Chula Vista and Santa Monica in Southern California as examples of the technology\u2019s implementation elsewhere. On June 22, the city of Hayward adopted a DFR policy for its 911 calls.<\/p>\n
Daza-Quiroz and Febel also pointed to what they described as staffing shortages and budget constraints within the department as key reasons for expanding the use of drone technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police budget constraints?<\/p>\n
The department representatives were especially passionate about the police\u2019s budget, when a community member criticized the city of Oakland\u2019s funding of the police in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did defund us,\u201d said Daza-Quiroz. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at whatever donations, funds, different perspectives, different ideas of how to police and get more resources.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although Oakland police officials cited budget constraints, the city\u2019s adopted budget for fiscal years 2025-27 show the department\u2019s authorized expenditures for FY 2026-27 increased by approximately $25 million compared with the prior fiscal year.<\/p>\n
The post Oakland police discuss plans to expand drone usage at military equipment town hall<\/a> appeared first on Local News Matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE OAKLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT on Wednesday pitched drones to a small community audience as a way to address…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-376213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}