Drones on Patrol: Texas Constable’s Office Expands UAV Program

Texas constable’s office beefs up its drone program

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

In a recent incident, a suspect whose vehicle had evaded deputies from Harris County Texas Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman’s office tried to evade capture on foot by running into a wooded area. Using drones, deployed in combination with K-9 dogs, the officers were able to subdue and capture the suspect.

Texas Precinct 4 Law Enforcement Drone Program

The incident was just one of the most recent examples of the use of drones by officers in the department, which is responsible for patrolling a vast 520-square-mile area, which encompasses small towns, suburbs and rural areas just north of Houston.

Responsible for patrolling an area with an estimated population of over 1.2 million people, Precinct 4 boasts one of the largest constable jurisdictions in the Lone Star State, with more than 500 deputies.

The department, which started its drone program with a single UAV last August, recently added four Mavic 3 Enterprise drones to its fleet. They are deployed on a regular basis to help perform routine police operations such as search and rescue and criminal apprehensions, said Captain James Blackledge, who serves as the department’s air boss.

“We use the drones daily to help locate missing persons — missing elderly people — and to help us search for suspects that have fled on foot or bailed out of cars,” Blackledge said.

“We’ve found several uses for them during investigations,” he said. For example, the drones are kept aloft to provide cover for deputies doing their job of serving warrants, providing eyes in the sky that are trained on the ground to detect any movement that might signify the presence “of any suspects or bad guys,” Blackledge said.

About 30 deputies, working across all shifts and patrol districts, have earned their FAA pilot certification. The drones are housed at each of the Precinct’s five substations, with those deputies trained as UAV pilots checking them out at the beginning of their shift and carrying them in their cruisers.

Under the department’s Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA) issued by the FAA, the pilot in command is required to maintain a line of sight with the airborne drone at all times. In situations involving a child lost in a park for example, deputies would be stationed on the outskirts of the park as the drone performs search patterns overhead.

“The line of sight is kept at all times by the deputy or the pilot,” he said.

Constable’s office protects the public’s right to privacy

Blackridge said the department has taken great strides to educate the public and to get the community’s buy-in on the drone program, such as hosting a drone media day. “We share a lot of the stuff that we’ve done on Facebook and our other social media platforms as well as on our app,” he said. He characterized the public’s reaction to the program as 99% positive.

He added that the constable’s office also works to ensure that its drones are not randomly collecting data on the area’s citizens. The use of the drone’s recording function is restricted to active investigations. In cases in which the drones do record data, it is done in accordance with state and federal law, he said.

In a 1989 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that any flight within FAA airspace that flies over private property and records with unaided vision does not represent an intrusion into people’s personal property, and so therefore does not require a warrant. “So, if we want to use aided vision, like to zoom in, then we obtain a search warrant.”

Under Texas open records law, the department is required to release drone footage upon request by a citizen, providing the request meets the approval of the state Attorney General’s office. In any case in which the constable’s office is instructed to release a drone video, it will obscure the images of any person not involved in the specific case – especially in the case of juveniles – as well as any license plates on vehicles that might have been captured on the recording.

In addition, Blackridge said he personally monitors every drone flight the department makes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “So anytime they’re launched, whether it’s for training or for emergency services, at a scene for whatever reason, I log in and I watch to see what the deputies are doing, making sure that there’s no mishandling of any information or video,” he said.

Blackridge said the constable’s office plans to expand its drone fleet and has three additional vehicles on order. He said the additional unmanned vehicles would be used to help deputies run search warrants and added it would be good to have a beefed-up drone fleet, “because they’ve proven to be so reliable at helping us out.”

He said the department stands by its decision to deploy drones manufactured by DJI, despite a growing controversy over the use of such products by police departments in Texas and elsewhere.

Texas is one of several states that are considering imposing a ban on public service agencies employing Chinese-made drones, such as the Mavic 3s deployed by the Precinct 4 Constable’s office. A number of speakers, representing police, fire departments and other agencies recently spoke out at a state legislative hearing against a proposed bill to impose a country-or-origin drone ban.

Blackridge said that as an agency the constable’s office has not taken any position either for or against the proposed legislation. “We do use the DJI, the Mavic 3s, but the flight program that we run is DroneSense, which is American-owned and controlled. And we’ve removed the DJI flight program from the drones,” he said.

Read more:

• AI-Driven UTM Deployed in North Texas to Monitor Drone Traffic
• Texas considers ban on Chinese drones for state agencies
• What Do Texas Schools Think About Armed Drones for Security?

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.