The Remote Arm of the Law

The use of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) in airborne law enforcement, considered such a niche and fringe field of operation just a short while ago, seems to be on the edge of a tipping point. As the list of “firsts” in mission type and environment continues to swell, creating a well-beaten regulatory path for others to follow, and with a changing perception among the media and general public of what a future in which they are part of everyday life will be like, all the pieces are in place for a period of dramatic growth in the sector. In some ways, it’s been a long road; but in others, it’s been remarkably short. Vertical spoke with some of the pioneering agencies that have led the way in sUAS operations to find out find out what challenges they face, how they are overcoming them, and what role sUAS have found within their agencies. 

In the U.S., one of the leading figures in the field of sUAS use in law enforcement is Alan Frazier, a former police helicopter pilot who now teaches aviation courses at the University of North Dakota, in addition to serving as a deputy sheriff supervising the unmanned aircraft systems unit at Grand Forks County Sheriff’s Office. Of the 18,000 local and state law enforcement agencies in the United States, he said only about 200 currently have manned aviation units — and of the 17,800 that don’t, financial limitations were the biggest reason. The cost of sUAS, he said, would provide them with an avenue to enter the world of aviation.

“An average-priced small UAS is about $30,000,” he told Vertical. “The operating costs, including insurance and maintenance set aside, are less than $20 an hour. Compare that to an [Airbus Helicopters] AS350 B3, which is over $2 million before you start putting specialized equipment on board the aircraft, [and] with operating costs around $600 an hour. Can you do 100 percent of the missions? Absolutely not. What we’ve done here [in Grand Forks] indicates to us that we can do about a third of the missions of a helicopter, but we can do that for four percent of the purchase costs and two percent of the operating costs.”

Frazier is an active member of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association (ALEA), and has spoken frequently on the topic of sUAS at regional safety seminars and the organization’s annual conference. He said when he began to do so, the most frequent objections he would hear were fears that sUAS would take helicopter pilot jobs away. However, he said there was now a greater understanding of the uses and limitations of sUAS — and how they can be used to augment, rather than replace, manned aviation. 

“There’s a place in your organization for [sUAS], but it’s for the repetitive, boring, or dangerous work,” he said. “One of the things I didn’t like having to do as a police helicopter pilot was fly to the station, pick up a lab tech, and orbit a location while they took photos of a crime scene. I would have much rather for them to have their own small UAS, and they never need to call us. We can go work surveillances, [or] we can go work patrol [instead].”

As for the dangerous work, consider the flight that required a sUAS to go through the plume above the leaking Fukushima nuclear power plant to measure radioactivity levels. “That’s not a mission any helicopter pilot would want to do, but we can do it much more safely with a UAS by flying it through there, bringing the aircraft back, and then decontaminating it after the flight,” said Frazier.

From tactical support to search-and-rescue, and disaster response to traffic and crowd control, sUAS have now completed a huge range of missions in airborne law enforcement. Ben Miller, the UAS program manager at Mesa County Sheriff in Colorado, said his team’s experience in the field has really highlighted the areas in which sUAS really shine — and where their capabilities are limited. 

“When we got into the business, we thought it would be fantastic to have a flying camera chase bad guys, and do the more ‘Hollywood’ public safety missions, but, predominantly, we’re doing crime scene reconstruction,” he told Vertical. “We’ve used it over a number of different homicide scenes and some minor, lesser crimes, as well as over traffic accidents. We’re finding the ability to take what I call near-earth photography is really the best capability.”

Using the sUAS, Miller’s team can take numerous photos from different angles, and stitch them together to create full auto-mosaic georectified images, as well as point cloud three-dimensional models that can be explored in virtual reality. According to Miller, it takes the unit’s Draganflyer X4 between 15 and 20 minutes to map a homicide scene, while a traffic accident takes a little less time.

Not only do these models allow officers to effectively freeze a crime scene in time and explore it at their leisure, it also provides a different perspective. “It creates this sense of relativity that allows you to see the whole thing in total, but also to see how something relates to something else that you wouldn’t normally see on the ground, either because you can’t see those two items together, or because you don’t know the distance between those two items,” said Miller.

Frazier also highlighted crime scene mapping as being one of the “time tested” missions in which sUAS had proved their worth — with another being post-disaster assessments. In a recent example, his unit flew over a train derailment explosion to view the full extent of environmental damage from above.

While both Mesa County and Grand Forks County have used sUAS for searches for suspects and victims, neither see this as a major role for the aircraft — at least for the time being.

“We found that flying a video camera and linking that real-time video back down to the ground, and watching a TV monitor for hours and hours inundates our minds with too much data,” said Miller. “I can’t watch TV fast enough. I think the future is using our sensors a little bit better — with a computer that’s looking for anomalies in the imagery, for example.”

Interestingly, while surveillance is probably the biggest area of concern among the general public, it’s a mission type for which sUAS are rarely, if ever, used. “That’s something that’s prohibited in our policy unless we have a search warrant,” said Frazier. In a practical and regulatory sense, sUAS are currently poorly matched for surveillance operations — their battery power restricts missions to short flights, while line-of-sight operations would make covert surveillance almost impossible. 

“Our feeling here in Grand Forks is that it just isn’t mature enough to be used in that application,” said Frazier. “The press has already made a big deal out of these things, and I think tried to convince the public that it’s some kind of onerous invasion of their privacy — the last thing that we want to do is use it in an application that would lend credibility to that suggestion.”

It’s a similar situation north of the border. Identification Sergeant Marc Sharpe, manager of unmanned air systems for Forensic Identifiation Services at the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) in Kenora, Ont., has been at the forefront of sUAS integration in Canada. His work in the area began over a decade ago as an extension of his hobby of creating and flying model aircraft, and it was for the specific intention of photographing crime scenes. Working in close consultation with Transport Canada, Sharpe was eventually able to get a special flight operations certificate (SFOC) to operate an sUAS for this purpose, and in October 2007 flew over a homicide scene — marking the first federally-approved use of sUAS by any civilian agency, post event, in North America.

He told Vertical that crime scene photography still makes up about 90 percent of his unit’s sUAS use, with the remainder being tactical support, fire investigations, and disaster response. “Where I think we need to be really pushing right now, and then where everybody seems to be looking, is the search-and-rescue role,” said Sharpe. “It’s limited right now with our line-of-sight operations, of course. Over small areas it’s certainly doable, and we are able to do it. We just haven’t had a lot of opportunity where we are right now.”

He pointed to the success of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in using an sUAS to locate an injured man following a car crash near Saskatoon, Sask., a couple of years ago — believed to be a world’s first in that application — and said that the holy grail for search-and-rescue would be the ability to go beyond the line-of-sight operations to which they are currently restricted by regulations.

“I’ve always called the technology a gap-filling technology, in that we’ve got our manned aviation units that have their role for sure, in searches and whatnot,” said Sharpe. “But typically at night we shut down. Up here we have a lot of cottage country and lakes, people go missing on the boats at night, and you’re left waiting for morning. It doesn’t have to be that way. A system running a pattern on the lake with infrared all night could help you find people before it becomes a fatality investigation. And I see that’s where we should be pushing for sure.”

Further south in the province, the close-knit nature of cooperation and mutual assistance among public use sUAS operators is well illustrated with the Halton Regional Police Service.  

“We kind of developed a working group with a lot of agencies [that use sUAS], even from overseas, and it’s basically to compare notes and make sure everybody is on the same page,” said Andy Olesen, who is the coordinator of the agency’s explosive disposal unit and search incident response team. “When we started five years ago, it was nothing like it is now. There’s a ton more systems, a lot more software, a lot more capabilities. So the advantage of having us as a group is if somebody has a new software or program that works really well, we can share it; if there’s something out there that doesn’t work well, we can share that. If we have good or bad experiences, if I make a mistake, I can tell the guys, ‘This didn’t work so well’ — and they can learn from my experiences.”

In developing its program, Halton has also worked closely with sUAS manufacturer Aeryon Labs Inc., which is headquartered less than an hour’s drive away in in Waterloo, Ont. The company was established in 2007, and law enforcement was one of the initial market segments it targeted as it developed its products, which are designed to be easily controlled via a tablet interface.

“In terms of how we achieved the effective and purpose-built solution that we have today, we got very early feedback about the requirements for durability and ruggedness of the system, and the requirements for ease of use,” said David Proulx, vice president of product and marketing at Aeryon. “When we talk about our systems being deployed in things like accident reconstruction or search-and-rescue, these aren’t dedicated UAS pilots who are going out in the field, these are general members of the police agencies or service who their day job is being a cop, and as part of that day job, one of the tools they use is a UAS.”

Proulx said the company is now noticing a distinct groundswell of interest and business coming through the door. 

“I think that’s attributable to a number of things,” he said. “The emergence of doctrine operating procedures around very relevant high value, high ROI [return on investment] tasks that, through policing circles and first responder circles, early adopters are making the late majority more aware of — and how to carry them out. Equally, unmanned aviation systems are becoming more prevalent in the public consciousness, which is a very positive factor; and then airspace regulation — it’s always been pretty progressive in Canada, but we’re seeing that attitude spread to other markets, for example, in the U.S.”

In the U.S. today, there are about 15 law enforcement agencies using sUAS — that’s up from just six agencies three years ago, according to Frazier. But with about 18,000 state and local agencies across the United States, plus an additional 50,000 fire departments (almost all of whom have no existing aviation support), there’s a large potential for enormous growth for sUAS operations.

Because of Frazier’s heavy academic and operational involvement in the field, he receives many calls from agencies that are looking to explore the possibility of developing their own unit.

“I think that most of the callers I speak with have a pretty good idea of what the capabilities and the limitations [of sUAS] are,” said Frazier. “But they don’t understand this kind of byzantine process that the FAA has set up to be able to fly them legally. So most of what I end up consulting with them on is kind of how to cross the ‘T’s and dot the ‘I’s — and the importance of establishing policies; the importance of defining the mission before they go purchase the UAS.”

Once the mission is defined, that should drive the purchasing decision, said Frazier — matching up a unit’s requirements with the capabilities of different sUAS, in terms of mission times, sensor capabilities, and its operational limitations in temperature and maximum wind velocities.

Sharpe’s advice? “Start small. You don’t need to spend a ton of money, but you do need to build that foundation of your program with your procedures and policy — so start with something simple.”

Indeed, all the agencies Vertical spoke with highlighted the importance of robust usage guidelines — with community input encouraged. Grand Forks County Sheriff’s guidelines were informed by an advisory committee, which includes members from the University of North Dakota, local government, the public safety community, and the community at large. The sUAS unit is only allowed to complete mission sets that have been approved by this committee. “If there’s a body like that the agency can engage, I think that’s very healthy,” said Frazier.

Mesa County Sheriff created a robust policy document, which has now been through a review process three times. “The really the interesting comment on the policy piece is that we wrote it heavy the first time,” said Miller. “There was a whole lot of stuff our policy committee suggested we took out because it was covered in other policies — like personal use of law enforcement equipment, code of conduct, and even the treatment of sensitive information. I always say to other agencies, don’t overdo it, make sure your bases are covered, but if you haven’t [already] dealt with how to treat sensitive photos, or the private use of public equipment, then your agency has a bigger problem.”

In terms of public engagement, all agencies seem to agree that transparency is key. “Show them exactly what you’re using, and tell them exactly what you’re doing it for,” said Sharpe. “We can’t do anything different with this technology than with any other camera system that we have as far as surveillance is concerned. If we needed to get a warrant for something, we still need a warrant; we’re not allowed to step outside the bounds of privacy legislation or criminal code requirements. We kept getting that message out, and the privacy concerns seem to have subsided.”

To publicize Grand Forks County’s sUAS work, Frazier said his unit has made a conscious effort to engage the press, almost never refusing interview requests, and allowing them to come film training sessions. As part of that, whenever the agency receives new “benchmarks” — such as an authorization to fly at night — they issue a press release on that subject. “Those are all things we’ve used pretty successfully to maybe dispel some of the misconceptions about the use of sUAS, but also to keep the public aware of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it,” said Frazier.

The final, and perhaps most major, hurdle for agencies to negotiate, is the ever-shifting regulatory picture in relation to sUAS operations.

As things stand in the U.S., to operate an sUAS in the national airspace, agencies need to obtain a certificate of authorization (COA) from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), as well as register that aircraft with the FAA. Finally, they will need to draft an operations manual that includes the authorized missions, the approval process for missions, minimum pilot qualifications and training requirements, and other operational details. 

But this process is far from straightforward, with several layers of approval required by the regulator. “The FAA has made this a byzantine, obstructionist process,” said Frazier, who was, on one occasion, asked to provide a letter from North Dakota’s Attorney General to verify that Grand Forks County’s Sheriff’s Office was, in fact, a political subdivision of the state. “We’ve got a lot of experience dealing with the FAA, as all of our pilots are commercial pilots, so we understand the code to a degree — but what about some poor guy who’s trying to establish a unit, who just wants to fly this thing over major traffic accidents in his jurisdiction? He’s not a pilot, but he’s willing to jump through hoops. A guy like that is going to be lost with this system.”

But with the FAA’s long-awaited notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on sUAS operations issued in February, this may all change — or it may not. It is, at the moment, unclear as to whether law enforcement agencies will be able to operate under the new Federal Aviation Regulations part 107 proposed in the NPRM — in which case agencies would continue to have to operate under the existing COA process.

Canada recently followed the U.S. with its own notice of proposed amendment (NPA) for sUAS operated within line-of-sight. For a number of years, Transport Canada has permitted commercial operations of UAS through the issuance of SFOCs, which are granted on a case-by-case basis. But the explosion in use of sUAS had begun to overwhelm the system — Transport Canada issued only 345 SFOCs in 2012, but 1,672 in 2014 — an increase of 485 per cent in just two years.

The NPA identifies three broad categories of sUAS operation, each associated with a different level of regulation. Law enforcement operations will likely fall under the most heavily-regulated category, and will require, among other things, a pilot permit and a registered aircraft that meets a Transport Canada-specified design standard.

“It’s going to be more work up front for departments, but in the long run it will be easier than the SFOC process,” said Sharpe. “The growth is exponential.  The industry is realizing that this stuff’s coming, so they need to figure out a way to properly manage it.”

Although the fluid nature of regulations can present a very real challenge to those looking to launch an sUAS unit within their own agency, the benefits of doing so are already significant. And as the missions these aircraft perform become better established and refined, the value they can bring to law enforcement operations will only continue to be enhanced. For sUAS operations in law enforcement, the sky really is the limit.