The detective was sitting in his SUV on a July afternoon, watching 911 calls scroll across his laptop, when a yellow alert flashed.<\/p>\n
Missing child. An 11-year-old boy had disappeared from a neighborhood on the southern edge of St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n
Sounds like a case for \u2026 a drone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m mobile and will be there at that missing kid in a few minutes,\u201d Detective Jimmy DeMaria called into his radio.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019d be great if he saw the drone and waved at us or something.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeMaria drove toward Lake Maggiore. Two patrol cars were outside the house where the boy had last been seen.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s wearing a striped polo shirt and khaki pants, the woman at the door told them, and he\u2019s about 4-foot-10. He was mad because she had punished him by taking his phone and video games. He had been playing basketball in the backyard, but when she went inside to use the bathroom, he ran.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll fly around the area and see if we can find him,\u201d DeMaria told the woman, who he learned was the boy\u2019s foster mom. \u201cI\u2019ll keep the thermal camera on in case it picks up heat on something I miss.\u201d<\/p>\n
From his SUV, the detective pulled out a black box, the size of a carry-on suitcase. He set it on the ground and pulled out an Xbox controller. Then he carried a drone to the edge of the curb and unfurled its four spidery arms.<\/p>\n
Seconds later, blue and red lights flashed from the blades as the drone whirred straight up, toward the sun.<\/p>\n
\u2018It feels like cheating\u2019<\/p>\n
Law enforcement officers on both sides of Tampa Bay have been using drones since 2019.<\/p>\n
But what started as \u201ceye in the sky\u201d support for large crowds and traffic control is quickly becoming an invaluable part of policing. Officers on the scene increasingly request virtual backup.<\/p>\n
Drones are sent on search and rescues, crime scene investigations, into hostage situations. They can show officers whether a suspect has a gun, tail someone down a dark alley, track getaway cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re little tanks with wings. And the cameras are great,\u201d DeMaria said. \u201cYou can zoom in 126 times \u2014 and read a license plate from a mile away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tampa officers fly six drones over the city.<\/p>\n
St. Petersburg has 14 \u2014 and recently opened a Real Time Intelligence Center at its downtown station. Three \u201chives\u201d sit on the roof, each constantly charging a drone. From a room next to the 911 call center, officers can launch them, dispatching drones up to three miles away.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s way easier to send out a drone than a helicopter or a car,\u201d DeMaria said. A drone can get somewhere close in two minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like cheating,\u201d said his supervisor, Sgt. Robert Long. \u201cI love a good foot pursuit. But you\u2019re not going to outrun a drone.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far, 60 St. Petersburg police officers have gotten certified to fly drones. Some carry them in their cars. Others check them out for specific cases. Through July 21 of this year, officers had flown 2,575 flights. That\u2019s more than twice as many as last year. A couple have crashed, one hit a power line, another a tree.<\/p>\n
A drone helped capture a man at the Pier who police said had punched a Jehovah\u2019s Witness in the face. Another tracked someone suspected of pistol-whipping a gas station worker. One flying over the St. Anthony\u2019s Triathlon spotted a swimmer clinging to a buoy, having a heart attack. Drones hovered over the Pride parade, No Kings protests, the Grand Prix. After the hurricanes in 2024, they showed police damaged areas that were difficult to reach.<\/p>\n
Each drone is the size of a large pizza, weighs 5 pounds and can travel up to 45 mph. It has spotlights to illuminate dark places, parachutes in case of a crash, speakers so an officer can shout through it. Pilots have to steer clear of airports, military bases and power lines and fly the craft between 200 and 400 feet high. The drones can travel for a half hour before they need to be recharged.<\/p>\n
A drone dispatched from downtown can reach as far south as the Skyway Bridge, west to 49th Street. Within two years, the department plans to add hives at five fire departments so drones can cover the whole city remotely.<\/p>\n
Across the United States, at least 910 law enforcement agencies fly drones<\/a>, according to the University of Florida\u2019s Institute for County Government. In Florida, 14 police departments, 10 sheriff\u2019s offices and 10 fire departments use drones.<\/p>\n While officers laud them for making policing safer and helping to catch criminals, drones raise privacy concerns. As Flock cameras and AI-powered surveillance spread, people are increasingly wary<\/a> of these all-seeing eyes. Can police hover drones above your home, peer into your windows or yard?<\/p>\n Super Mario helped<\/p>\n The boy couldn\u2019t have climbed that tall fence, DeMaria decided after flying the drone over the St. Pete backyard.<\/p>\n Twenty minutes after the child left home, the detective turned his drone around and started flying in a tight grid. Across the street, around the corner, back and forth above laurel oaks and palm trees, over sheds and swimming pools. The metallic whir sounded like a swarm of mosquitoes.<\/p>\n \u201cHe could be anywhere. Heading to a friend\u2019s house, down by the water, in an alley,\u201d DeMaria said. \u201cOr he could have gone to the library or a store, somewhere inside where we can\u2019t see him.\u201d<\/p>\n The detective said he doesn\u2019t get nervous. But he feels the weight of responsibility.<\/p>\n DeMaria, 33, started flying drones for the police department in October, after earning his pilot\u2019s certification from the Federal Aviation Administration. He\u2019s been training for this job, he said, since he was 6.<\/p>\n Playing Super Mario gave him command of the controller. Now, he\u2019s more into Battlefield, Crusader Kings and Duck Hunt.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a certain type of nerd that\u2019s attracted to this,\u201d he said. Most of the police drone pilots are gamers. Many bought their own drones for off-duty flying. When DeMaria took a vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains, he packed his personal drone. \u201cThe more you fly it,\u201d he said, \u201cthe better you get.\u201d<\/p>\n It took the detective about 10 minutes to map the missing boy\u2019s neighborhood from the air. Then he guided the drone over the area again and kept stopping to zoom in. Over an empty house with a \u201cFor Sale\u201d sign. Above a sprawling sycamore. Out to the lake, where he hovered over an alligator.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope he didn\u2019t go near there,\u201d DeMaria said.<\/p>\n After a half hour, he flew the drone back, reached into his SUV and got another battery. Then he sent the craft back into the air.<\/p>\n Privacy vs. surveillance<\/p>\n Laws about drones have been evolving for the past decade but haven\u2019t kept up with the technology, according to a University of South Florida professor.<\/p>\n In 2015, Florida passed the Freedom from Unwanted Surveillance Act, prohibiting flying drones over people\u2019s homes, guaranteeing \u201ca reasonable expectation of privacy.\u201d The law makes exemptions for police work.<\/p>\n Legislators didn\u2019t anticipate the advances AI would make.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are too many open questions still about privacy vs. surveillance,\u201d said Kaushal Kafle, who teaches cybersecurity and artificial intelligence at USF. \u201cIn your backyard, you should have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But not if police say there might be a fugitive hiding there.\u201d<\/p>\n To send a drone into someone\u2019s yard, state law says officers have to get a search warrant, except during certain emergencies \u2014 basically, the same rules that apply to police searching your home.<\/p>\n \u201cThe law is flexible enough to allow officers to classify any situation as an imminent threat,\u201d the professor said. \u201cAs long as there\u2019s a crime they can point to later on, the lines of privacy blur very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n Tampa and St. Petersburg police have adopted their own drone policies. Officers won\u2019t fly random patrols or run surveillance flights over residential areas. They are supposed to focus only on the incident at hand. After 30 days, they delete the video, unless it contains evidence.<\/p>\n \u201cHow do they ensure that they only capture the data they need?\u201d asked the professor. If the drones are reading license plates from afar, are they also recording people\u2019s faces in crowds?<\/p>\n St. Petersburg police said they aren\u2019t using facial recognition with their drone footage. \u201cBut it\u2019s kind of unchartered waters,\u201d DeMaria said. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of precedent to how these can be used.\u201d The detective said he\u2019s often talking to the state attorney\u2019s office, trying to figure out what officers are allowed to do with drones.<\/p>\n Stetson law professor Paul Boudreaux, and a Pinellas County court clerk, both said they aren\u2019t aware of local cases challenging the use of drones. The ACLU has sued law enforcement agencies in Maryland, Michigan and New York in recent years, arguing that their drone programs violate people\u2019s privacy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe law may need to change as the world evolves and our expectations change,\u201d Boudreaux said.<\/p>\n St. Petersburg police use Skydio X10 drones, which cost about $30,000, DeMaria said. Each docking station is $100,000. A police spokesperson said grants funded some of the equipment.<\/p>\n This fiscal year, St. Petersburg budgeted $3.3 million for Axon \u2014 the policing giant formerly known by the name of its signature product, Taser. Axon supplies drone equipment, body cameras and video systems to law enforcement nationwide.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to understand where the police see this technology going forward,\u201d said USF\u2019s Kafle. \u201cDo they want to weaponize it? Could drones shoot at suspects?<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we\u2019re just now starting to reckon with the AI side of all this.\u201d<\/p>\n Bring him home<\/p>\n The detective\u2019s drone soared over a playground, where all the swings were empty, past a picnic table where no one was sitting, through a vacant park.<\/p>\n His eyes darted from the sky to his controller, mapping the path.<\/p>\n Down the road. Up a sidewalk. Between houses. Behind garages.<\/p>\n \u201cIs there somewhere you want the drone to check specifically?\u201d DeMaria called to dispatch. \u201cI\u2019m not finding anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Sweat soaked his shirt. He\u2019d been standing in the summer sun for almost an hour. The drone was about to die. He was getting ready to land it and replace the battery again when his radio crackled.<\/p>\n The clerk at a nearby Marathon gas station had called police. A boy had walked in alone, trying to buy a drink. An officer was on his way to bring him back to his guardian.<\/p>\n DeMaria was relieved. He packed his drone, set its battery in the charger and climbed back into his SUV. Before cranking the A\/C, he checked his computer screen, searching for the next call that might need a drone.<\/p>\n ________<\/p>\n \u00a92026 Tampa Bay Times.<\/p>\n Visit\u00a0tampabay.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n