Lieutenant William Hutchinson, Palm Springs Police Department, Real Time Intelligence Center (RTIC) & Drone as First Responder (DFR) Program Director spoke with Global Airspace Radar about the programme.
This represents the largest DFR programme in the United States, covering 37 square miles (or roughly 60 square kilometres).
The path to a solution
There was a desire to do something that would decrease response time and increase apprehension rates in the region. As part of their research into a solution, the team travelled to Beverly Hills, California to see a DFR programme in action. Their virtual police unit was initiated in 2021 and is often a showcase for other communities considering the implementation of a similar programme. Seeing was believing and a project began. The project was funded by a $4.4million state grant through the Organized Retail Theft (ORT) Grant Program. Once all the necessary funding, approvals and procurement processes were in place the deployment began. The deployment process took around one year and has been fully operational for almost one year.
The network
Matthew Kling, Vice President & General Manager, AI Systems also joined our conversation representing MatrixSpace. He explained that the drones are managed in a networked fashion. There are 12 mini ‘towers’ deployed in rooftop locations that house the electronics and antennae to provide the communications for the drones. MatrixSpace is providing the technology to make this possible.
Palm Springs is the home to a class D airport and the region’s largest trauma centre with a high rate of medical transport flights. Add to that a nearby military installation and tourism flights of private planes and helicopters and you’ve got a very complex airspace. The DFR flights are flown BVLOS by police officer pilots. The differentiator provided by the MatrixSpace solution is the use of radar to track what is happening in this airspace, not only considering ADS-B and remoteID transmissions. Not all drones are being flown with these capabilities and military helicopters are often not transponding with ADS-B depending on their mission.
The radar capabilities are a network of sensors. Lower airspace is difficult to monitor as there are not only the flights mentioned above to consider; birds and ground clutter must also be taken into consideration. These sensors help to determine ‘what is flying’ using artificial intelligence (AI) in the backend. There is an AI classifier at the edge of the network that will attempt to make this classification. Every tower location has a small edge computer in a hardened enclosure and a 5G connection to the cloud. Public safety communications receive priority on the network from the local telecommunications provider. When information reaches the operations centre, a human makes the final decision what action to take and doesn’t solely rely on the AI interpretation. MatrixSpace currently quotes the AI accuracy between 80-90%.
When looking at the difference between an ADS-B only solution and one with radar, there is one pretty impressive differentiator to highlight that has been experienced in Palm Springs. The time it took to identify flying aircraft reduced by 7 seconds. This may not sound like a big number, but in this situation it is.
The real-life situation
Drones can still be a scary prospect for community members – is the drone watching me, are they keeping this information on file, is this ‘big brother’ intruding on my life? Education is an important step in community awareness. The Palm Springs Police Department regularly participates in town halls and other community meetings to explain and demonstrate the DFR programme.
Regarding privacy, they do not currently practice active policing with the drones. This means they are not flying around watching, but only responding to a 911 emergency call. The video that is recorded during these emergency flights is only saved for 30 days unless it is tied to an active police investigation. They also post their flights on their website for the community to understand how the drones were used. If needed the capabilities exist to conduct a privacy audit.
The results to date have shown an increase in apprehension rates, a decrease in response time from 5-7 minutes to 30 seconds, an increase in situational awareness for the officers and a tool to achieve de-escalation in some scenarios. The de-escalation topic made me curious, and Lt. Hutchinson explained that with the higher level of insight as to what is happening at the location of the incident they can more accurately determine how to respond. In other words, don’t send an army to something that only needs a discussion, as the first option will only escalate the situation. 100% of the team working in the DFR programme says that the addition of radar into the solution provides more awareness and makes them feel safer.
In summary, Lt. Hutchinson’s analysis of the programme results was that it ‘enables them to fight crime like they’ve never been able to fight crime before.’ I would say this is an excellent outcome!
