JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office announced the launch of its Drone AS First Response Program on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
In addition to the program, the state of Florida has granted Jacksonville $610,000 for 36 new Eagle Eye drones.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the only drone program in the entire state of Florida in this year\u2019s budget that survived the governor\u2019s veto review,\u201d said State Representative Wyman Duggan. \u201cBecause when a sheriff like TK Waters has a track record like the one that he has, and he tells you he needs a tool, you get him that too.\u201d<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n Sheriff T.K. Waters says the drones provide faster response times and real-time intelligence before officers arrive on scene, as well as assist Jacksonville Fire and Rescue with recovering evidence.<\/p>\n Vic Micolucci with JSO says they now have two new DFR docks with 25 interior drones, 10 exterior drones and one fixed-wing mapping drone.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to educate the community about this technology and how it\u2019s going to help solve cases and ultimately save some lives here,\u201d Micolucci said.<\/p>\n JSO\u2019s presentation showed several real-life DFR success stories. One involved officers quickly locating a missing teen with autism before he got to a nearby body of water, where JSO said he appeared to be headed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all know individuals with autism; they can be drawn to water,\u201d said JSO Chief of Technology Chris King. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen cases across our city where individuals with autism get to that body of water, and we\u2019ve, unfortunately, recovered that body from the water, and we have to report the bad news to the parents. We hate to do that kind of stuff, so this was a fantastic outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n Another scenario showed officers pursuing a shooting suspect after they pre-planned a roadblock. Once the suspect fled his car, a drone was able to follow the suspect and capture footage of him throwing his gun into the water, saving Jacksonville\u2019s Dive Team ample time in recovering evidence.<\/p>\n Since the program launched last month, JSO says they\u2019ve used drones for 211 calls, resulting in 29 suspects being taken into custody. They also say they were able to clear the scene of eight of those calls prior to officers responding. In fact, in 61% of those calls, the drones were over the scene before officers had arrived.<\/p>\n JSO says the drones can be at a scene in as little as 40 seconds. They would not reveal the location of all of the drones, but say they are in the back of some patrol cars, which are located all over the city.<\/p>\n For anyone worried about video surveillance, Waters\u2019 message is clear.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless you\u2019re a criminal, you don\u2019t have an issue,\u201d Waters said. \u201cAnd the people that are involved in criminal activity, they do have a lot to worry about because this is going to make it more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Waters says the advantages to the program vastly outweigh concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s difficult going into a house where that\u2019s a burglary or potentially an armed burglary, and you have to go in there and not know what you\u2019re looking at, not know what\u2019s going to be there when you arrive,\u201d Waters said. \u201cI believe that a lot of those folks may be concerned because they don\u2019t really understand it, and hopefully this helps people understand.\u201d<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office announced the launch of its Drone AS First Response Program on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,55102,88568,142891,24440,142890,41931,28,969,142889,116,118,117,34520,1872,634,2631,12854,66614],"class_list":["post-349224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-casey","tag-casey_stone","tag-dfr","tag-eagle","tag-eagle_eye","tag-eye","tag-florida","tag-jack","tag-jackson_casey_stone","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jones","tag-jso","tag-local","tag-sheriff","tag-tk_waters","tag-waters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}