Nearly 60 agencies use drones under divergent local policies
Public pushback over municipal police drones is growing across California, turning local policy hearings into disputes over the limits of neighborhood surveillance. Law enforcement agencies are seeking to broaden drone use beyond emergency-only response into everyday patrols, while residents have raised concerns about warrantless searches, municipalities accumulating too much drone-collected data and whether drone makers have too much power and information. The debates have been driven by landmark privacy litigation and AB 481, the 2021 law requiring explicit local board approval for police use of “military equipment,” including drones. Police departments in San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Ana and Stockton have looked to drones as potential first responders, and public hearings are required before programs can expand.
At an Oct. 14 police commission meeting, a packed room of opposing residents debated a San Francisco Police Department draft policy. The department asked commissioners to approve uses including “public safety response,” active investigations, training and “community outreach.” The draft prohibited random “general surveillance” and tracking of First Amendment-protected activity, but would retain public footage for 30 days unless it was tied to an open investigation.
Supporters argued the technology is vital for modern crime fighting. “Public safety and personal privacy shouldn’t be competing interests,” said Anna Carney, president of Stop Crime SF, who urged commissioners to give officers every responsible advantage to save lives. Privacy advocates and skeptical residents saw a risk of unchecked surveillance and drew explicit parallels to the fixed automated license-plate-reader networks built in San Francisco and Stockton and supplied by vendors such as Flock Safety. They said adding drones to those networks could create a multi-dimensional system that tracks people by car on the street and from the air above their homes.
Manny, a member of the privacy advocacy group DeFlock SF, said, “We are all here today because these drones are impacting all of our communities.” He urged commissioners to cancel the San Francisco Police Department’s contract with drone manufacturer Skydio and said the minimum acceptable change would be an amendment “to require a warrant,” referring to language in the proposed policy. Commissioners then voted to advance the policy to labor negotiations without adding a warrant mandate.
The San Francisco fight illustrates the legal and policy vacuum confronting municipalities under California’s 2021 military-equipment rules: technology is far outpacing state regulation, leaving local agencies to operate in a legal gray area. A lawsuit against Sonoma County underscored the uncertainty. County officials launched a drone program in 2019 for code enforcement, but investigators with the American Civil Liberties Union later uncovered hundreds of warrantless searches over private yards, homes and windows, all conducted without a published policy. The ACLU of Northern California sued Sonoma in 2025, and the county settled last month. Under the settlement, Sonoma pledged to narrow its drone use, obtain a warrant or consent before residential property-code inspections, restrict data retention and directly notify residents if their property was subjected to aerial surveillance.
The case brought into focus the legal matrix officials must navigate. Katie Inman, a drone policy expert and attorney at Holland & Knight who previously worked at the Federal Aviation Administration, said police drone use falls into three areas: constitutional principles, state statutes and FAA operating rules. Inman said California lacks a comprehensive statute explicitly governing law enforcement drone use, leaving municipalities to interpret Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. She said the Supreme Court has held that aircraft surveilling areas visible to the naked eye from lawful altitudes do not violate constitutional protections. “But those were manned aircraft; they are not drones,” she said. Drones can fly at much lower altitudes and use thermal imaging, tracking and extended hovering, she said, creating more surveillance potential than manned aircraft.
Across California, nearly 60 law enforcement agencies use drone programs, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Most foundational policies, including those in Chula Vista and Fremont and the policy proposed in San Francisco, prohibit random surveillance, but programs differ in their deployment triggers and public oversight. Chula Vista deploys automated “Drone as First Responder” units broadly ahead of ground officers for routine 911 calls. San Francisco’s proposed framework instead seeks tighter limits, allowing flights for active criminal investigations, vehicle pursuits or specific, incident-based emergencies.
Reporting on the disputes links the rapid growth of police drone programs to defense and surveillance-technology vendors expanding into the market. The San Francisco and Los Angeles police departments rely on hardware manufactured by San Mateo-based Skydio, while Axon, which makes body cameras, and license-plate-reader manufacturer Flock Safety have also expanded into the market. Skydio originally launched systems for extreme-sports athletes to track and film themselves doing parkour or snowboarding. After the U.S. government labeled Chinese drone maker DJI a national security risk in 2020, Skydio pivoted toward military, police and enterprise customers. At a recent customer conference, Skydio CEO Adam Bry outlined a roadmap for small drones for tactical flights inside buildings, mid-range aircraft for vehicle pursuits and high-speed models capable of traveling 100 mph up to a 30-mile radius. Bry also envisioned future AI software that could analyze 911 calls in real time and automatically recommend dispatching an autonomous drone to a scene.
Executing that vision requires major investment from taxpayers and private backers. Santa Ana recently greenlit $682,900 for its Drone as First Responder initiative with Skydio. The Stockton City Council approved a $3.15 million contract expansion with Flock Safety to integrate six drones into its existing network of 120 license-plate-reader cameras. In San Francisco last year, the police department received a $9.4 million donation from crypto billionaire and Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen to expand its drone program and surveillance systems, Mission Local reported.
At the Oct. 14 meeting, San Francisco resident Ilona criticized officials for accepting Larsen’s drone donation. She said, “The premise of the Bill of Rights is respect for liberty of the individual, and that used to mean something in this city.” Ilona continued: “But it doesn’t anymore because now we have sold out to tech billionaires…. SFPD has been sloppy and reckless with our privacy. How can we trust them with these tools?”
Venture-backed drone vendors have spent heavily to influence local officials to support their expansion, the reporting said. Flock Safety, for instance, has reportedly spent millions of dollars on local and federal lobbying, claiming its technology helped “solve” a million crimes last year alone. Yet researchers are increasingly skeptical of what vendors and law enforcement say the technology can help accomplish.
Police argue that drones help them respond to incidents more quickly, deescalate potentially dangerous situations and improve crime-clearance rates. A February 2026 study by the UC Berkeley Criminal Law and Justice Center found that while first-responder drones can improve response times, there is no evidence they reduce officer-involved shootings, lower overall use of force or improve case-resolution rates.
Jesus Gabriel Yanez, a recently retired police commissioner, spoke at the San Francisco commission meeting. He briefly read a passage from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” before expressing opposition to the drone-use policy outlined by his former peers. “SFPD should tie deployments to specific incidents that cannot be addressed without compromising officer safety — period,” Yanez said. “Those are the only times when we should allow for the deployment of a drone. No general routine patrol. No general surveillance.” Opponents like Yanez pointed to past instances in which California law-enforcement agencies illegally shared license-plate tracking data with federal immigration authorities, as well as a recent leak that exposed live police drone video feeds online because of vendor misconfigurations.
Similar resistance has surfaced outside California. The Minneapolis City Council voted to reject a police drone contract with Skydio after community protests over privacy and dual-use military technology. In New Orleans, the advocacy group Eye on Surveillance mobilized against a proposed policy that would have allowed weapons on police drones. The reporting connected the disputes to a broader backlash against AI-powered police technology.
Whether through public city council debates sparked by AB 481 or court-enforced settlements such as Sonoma County’s, California communities are seeking to make clear that adopting cutting-edge public safety technology will not come at the cost of privacy. The unresolved operational questions include which agencies may deploy drones, for what incidents, under what warrant and consent rules, how long data may be kept, how residents are notified and how police systems may connect with private vendors. The automated eye in the sky may arrive in seconds, but citizens are demanding to know exactly who is watching — and who holds the remote. CalMatters Technology Reporter Khari Johnson contributed to this report.