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The feed showed the defendant (whose face was blurred in footage obtained by Mission Local) locking hands with a man on Powell Street on March 6, 2025, before walking off with another man.\u00a0<\/p>\nLast year, defense attorney Will Helvestine hit \u201cplay\u201d on San Francisco police drone footage tracking one of his clients through downtown streets. The feed showed his defendant \u2014 who was charged with possessing narcotics for sale \u2014 locking hands with a man on Powell Street on March 6, 2025, before walking off with another man.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What Helvestine said he did not see, as officers had claimed, was a hand-to-hand drug transaction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, he said he saw a handshake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The next few days, said Helvestine, were spent flagging down the district attorney prosecutor in court. \u201cI told him, \u2018Take a look at the drone footage. I don\u2019t think it shows what you think it shows,\u2019\u201d Helvestine recalled.<\/p>\n
DA officials did not say whether they agreed with Helvestine\u2019s argument that the footage showed only a handshake. But the DA\u2019s office subsequently motioned to dismiss the case ahead of its preliminary hearing, records show. That motion was granted on May 8 last year by Superior Court Judge Michelle Tong.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On this much, both sides of the bench agreed: The video did not support the charge.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter further review of the video footage, we determined that we could not proceed with the prosecution,\u201d the DA\u2019s office wrote in its statement, even though a police incident report had quoted officers saying they had identified drugs on the defendant, and witnessed multiple hand-to-hand drug transactions. The DA\u2019s office did not respond to questions about why it dismissed the case despite the police report.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Helvestine\u2019s client was released after four days in jail. Court records indicate the defendant had no prior charges at the time, but has since picked up other drug charges and was booked into jail again this month.<\/p>\n
The public defender\u2019s office has highlighted the case amid broader concerns about San Francisco\u2019s growing reliance on high tech surveillance evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The feed showed the defendant (whose face was blurred in footage obtained by Mission Local) locking hands with a man on Powell Street on March 6, 2025, before walking off with another man.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not necessarily opposed to the idea that drones could be a useful tool in some cases, but there is a disconnect between the drone and the people on the ground that doesn\u2019t exist in the same way between officers on the ground and civilians,\u201d Helvestine said.<\/p>\n
Deputy Public Defender Brian Cox, the head of the office\u2019s Integrity Unit, argued police officers regularly mischaracterize normal interactions as drug transactions, and that drones amplify those risks.<\/p>\n
\u201cSFPD interprets otherwise innocent behavior as criminal because to a hammer, everything is a nail,\u201d said Cox. \u201cDrones and other surveillance technologies simply give police more power \u2014 and greater reach \u2014 to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
San Francisco prosecutors pushed back, arguing drones have served as an effective force multiplier to investigate crime and yield prosecutorial evidence. The DA\u2019s office did not respond to requests for numbers behind the prosecutorial evidence statement, but the police department last year touted making over 500 arrests<\/a> with the help of its Real Time Investigations Center<\/a>, which deploys the drones.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Public Defender\u2019s comments are overbroad and seek to undermine the value of the SFPD\u2019s drone as first responder program that has been a game changer for law enforcement over one dismissal ignoring the numerous times that drone footage has been essential to prosecutors,\u201d the DA\u2019s office wrote in its statement. \u201cIn this case, the defense requested a more careful review of the video footage, showing just how important that video footage can be.\u201d<\/p>\n Evan Sernoffsky, a spokesperson for SFPD, declined to comment on the case but said drones are only used for active criminal investigations, not to look for crime.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCracking down on drug sales and drug use in our neighborhoods has been hugely popular with people who live, work and visit those neighborhoods, and the feelings about the work we\u2019re doing \u2014 the support for police \u2014 have gone up significantly,\u201d said Sernoffsky, referring to polls such as one conducted by the billionaire-backed advocacy group GrowSF, which found<\/a> 72 percent of voters supported police using drones and live cameras to aid in active investigations.<\/p>\n The police hub that deploys San Francisco\u2019s police drones is also backed by billionaires<\/a>. The Real Time Investigations Center \u2014 which helps the police department find suspects on the streets and aids arrests using drones and Flock Safety automatic license plate reading cameras \u2014 has bulked up through benefactors including Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen<\/a>, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, former Y Combinator partner Michael Seibel, and Michael Moritz\u2019s family foundation Crankstart.<\/p>\n Much of the surveillance hub\u2019s upgrades came the year after voters approved Proposition E<\/a>, a ballot measure championed by then-Mayor London Breed, which expanded police authority<\/a> to use drones and facial recognition cameras without approval from the police commission or Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n