Drone pilot program helps Clearwater officers during spring break

CLEARWATER, Fla. - As tens of thousands of spring breakers descend on Clearwater Beach, police are deploying a new tool to bypass the seasonal gridlock: a high-tech drone.

The Clearwater Police Department is currently testing the Drone as a First Responder program throughout March to serve as an eye in the sky during its busiest time of year.

What they're saying:

"Any day, we could have 50,000 cars that cross the Memorial Causeway on the way to the beach, so if you take the 50,000 cars and say two people per car, there's 100,000 right there, and it's probably a lot of cars pack a lot more people," Rob Shaw, Spokesperson for the Clearwater Police Department, said. "So, you can easily say we could have 50,000 people, 100, 000 on the beach on a given day."

"Traffic is a major problem. Getting to and from the beach or anywhere on the beach, you know, it could take you several minutes to get from one just a couple blocks. There is often gridlock. People are looking for parking. Traffic doesn't move. So, if you think about it, we can have an eye on something within 45 seconds that it could take 10 minutes or 15 minutes to even get to, and it also will help us alleviate some of the public safety issues, think about cars, or a police car, or a fire truck, that's trying to get to a scene with lights and sirens on," Shaw said.

Officials say the goal is to provide real-time intelligence to officers on the ground much faster.

"If you think about the different kinds of calls we have out there, we have missing swimmers. We have lost children. We sometimes have disturbances on the beach. This drone can be overhead and give us a live, bird's eye view a lot faster than officers can get there in their cars," he said.  "If you're looking for little Johnny who's wearing blue shorts and a yellow shirt, that will help you find that person a lot quicker than an individual on the sand," Shaw said.

Dig deeper:

The technology also serves as a tool for resource management. By getting a bird's-eye view of a reported incident, supervisors can determine the severity of a situation and cancel responding units if the drone confirms there is no emergency, Shaw said.

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The department has already deployed the drone about a dozen times since the beginning of the month. In one recent instance, a caller reported a shirtless man running through backyards. While fences and gates obscured the view of officers on the street, the drone located the individual extremely fast and relayed his location to officers.

"They could also see, does he have a gun? Does he have a knife? Is he armed," Shaw said.

"Its uses are endless," he said.

According to Shaw, they’ll deploy the drone on a case-by-case basis. They have a handful of other drones within the department that map out a scene after an incident, but they’re not as fancy and high-tech with live-streaming capabilities, he said.

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The pilot program drone has a 30-minute battery window, and a two-and-a-half mile range. 

What's next:

At the end of the month, the department will evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot program to decide if the drone should become a permanent fixture. Shaw noted that the city is considering sharing the cost with the fire department to fund the technology long-term.