ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A new class of pilots hopes to elevate the St. Petersburg Police Department’s drone program.
This week, the department hosted another round of training aimed at expanding its team of operators. This is after the department recently installed a drone hive to its fleet.
On Wednesday, Officer Sydney Stine got a bird’s-eye view of St. Petersburg.
At her fingertips, she honed in ready to capture a possible suspect.
“He’s passing the dumpster, approaching that white SUV,” Stine relayed to the team during the exercise.
This scenario was all part of hands-on training course with the St. Petersburg Police Department.
St. Petersburg Police Department hosts another round of drone training for officers. (Spectrum News/Justina Rhines)
Sgt. Robert Long, supervisor for the Real-Time Intelligence Center, helps lead the pack.
“Right now we’re in the middle of our patrol drone course, and I am the role player of the bad guy. So very soon here, we’re going to have a fake call where the drone teams have to respond to this neighborhood and locate me,” he said. “I will have committed a burglary on this school here, and they have to locate me and then coordinate with ground units to come find me.”
Officers were able to learn in the field and in the classroom.
Officers train for the drone program at the St. Petersburg Police Department. (Spectrum News/Justina Rhines)
Long explained that interest continues to soar.
“We had almost three times as many people apply as we could take. So, we had almost 60 applications for 21 spots,” he said.
“The drone unit really piqued my interest because I just wanted to broaden my skill set as an officer, especially a new officer, to have that kind of asset for my squad, because we don’t have a lot of drones on evening shift,” Stine said.
Stine admitted that flying the drone is harder than she thought. “It’s a lot of multitasking,” she said.
Long welcomes every curious mind to build a bigger team.
“We’re trying to grow our drone unit as a whole. We have 11 drones throughout the department that we use. Three of those are from a dock at the station and then there are eight single deployment drones,” he said.
He said the department has been using drones since 2019 for its SWAT team.
Since then, Long has seen drones improve efficiency and safety.
“On the safety side, the drones are often getting to the calls prior to the officers. So it gives the officers a real-time update from another officer of what situation they’re walking into where someone may have gone, what threat level there might be, and they’re able to follow more covertly in a situation where a bad guy might flee,” he added.
That’s why the department continues to invest in its drone program, recently installing a drone hive at the St. Petersburg Police Department.
The hive was installed in February and started to operate in early March.
“We’re one of the first agencies in the county to have permanently fixed docked drones,” said Long. “Instead of being out here on the street with a handheld remote, they’re from the computer and that has an improved mapping software. We’re also able to assist the patrol drone pilots by helping out with their flights if we need.”
Long explained that the goal is to eventually have a drone respond anywhere in the city in two minutes or fewer.
“The idea is going to be to have, in the neighborhood of 20 hours a day, coverage from the drones from the hive, and then 24/7 from the patrol drones,” said Long.
Officers like Stine are trying to make that mission possible.
“There’s one other guy on evening shift that has a drone, so it would be cool to work together and do some ops with him if we can, and just try to catch the bad guys, you know?” she said.
The next round of drone training is scheduled for July. This will increase the department’s roster from 40 to 60 drone pilots.
In the next three years, the department plans to add four more drone hives across the city for equal coverage.
As the program grows, Long sent this reminder: Privacy protections are still in place.
“What we remind everybody is that we follow the same Fourth Amendment that we do every other time on every other call. Just the same. There is a law specific to drones. So we don’t look in anywhere that is private. We can’t go looking in backyards without an exception or a warrant,” he said.
Spectrum News Staff
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