said<\/a> the drone locations were selected using heat maps showing areas with high volumes of police and fire calls to maximize coverage and improve response times.<\/p>\nThe program is designed to enable drone pilots to virtually arrive at scenes faster than officers traveling in patrol vehicles, providing live aerial intelligence to responding crews. Officials said the technology could also help reduce unnecessary responses or clear calls if incidents are resolved before officers arrive.<\/p>\n
If pilots identify situations where aerial surveillance could improve officer safety, they can deploy drones to provide updates to personnel on the ground.<\/p>\n
Each drone is equipped with a thermal camera for nighttime operations and a loudspeaker for communicating with people at scenes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI challenged our team to find innovative ways to continue improving our response times, and this new drone unit will not only keep officers free to respond to more calls, but provide real-time updates as they are responding to calls,\u201d said Daniel Comeaux in a news release.<\/p>\n
Comeaux said early training exercises demonstrated the program\u2019s potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven during our training, our pilots were able to clear three holding calls in an hour with one drone,\u201d he said. \u201cThat alone proved their value to us, and I\u2019m looking forward to seeing the benefits in both officer safety and response times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dallas Fire-Rescue officials said firefighters will also use the drones during emergency incidents, including structure fires.<\/p>\n
Under the new system, a drone can be dispatched ahead of fire apparatus to provide commanders with an aerial view of a fire\u2019s size and intensity before crews arrive.<\/p>\n
\u201cDallas Fire-Rescue is proud to collaborate with DPD on any initiative that will make our city safer,\u201d said Justin Ball. \u201cBy strategically docking the drones at our fire stations in high-demand areas, we are optimizing our response times and ensuring our tactics are more precise, while adding an extra layer of protection for the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials described the partnership between police and fire departments as part of a broader effort to expand smart-city technology to improve public safety and protect first responders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Police Department has officially launched its new Drone as First Responder program, deploying eight remotely operated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,9379,104,103,4081,110901,110900],"class_list":["post-306096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-fire-rescue","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-dallas-police-department","tag-drone-as-first-responder-program","tag-fusion-real-time-crime-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}