HAYWARD IS JOINING a growing number of jurisdictions in the Bay Area that utilize drones as first responders. 

The City Council on June 16 approved the purchase of eight new drones for the Hayward Police Department to expand its use of the devices — which are formally called Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or UASs — to directly respond to calls for service. 

The vote to approve the program at an annual cost of $589,000 came after Hayward Police Chief Bryan Matthews’ presentation on the Police Department’s annual use of military-grade equipment during the recent City Council meeting. 

Drones fall into the military-grade category, as defined by the state law that also requires an annual report of law enforcement agencies’ use of such equipment. They will not be weaponized under the new policy.  

The rest of Matthews’ report outlined a list of largely unused equipment and weapons and detailed over $26,000 in ammunition costs for training on such weapons, according to the presentation.  

The Police Department’s previous drone policy, developed in 2022, restricted drone use to a range of limited, but mostly defined situations already in progress. An authorized superior could request that a drone be deployed if reasonable suspicion for a justified use existed. 

“Justified uses” include over a dozen examples of suspected crimes or disturbances, including broadly defined requests for “mass gatherings or special events where security concerns exist or criminal activity is occurring,” according to the policy. 

How the first responder program will work

The new policy will position drones at locations throughout the city to respond to calls for service and relay information back to police dispatchers. That information could help inform officers responding to the call or allow the dispatcher to clear the call without sending an officer, if the crime is no longer in progress. 

The old policy saw officers respond to an emergency, and, if there was an approved use, such as a hostage situation, the officer could request a drone to be deployed. Now, drones will autonomously guide themselves from established bases and often beat officers to the scene of an emergency, as happened in more than half the calls for service during a monthlong trial of the expanded use, according to Matthews’ presentation. 

Dispatchers will request a drone launch from a civilian employee who will activate it from a pre-positioned site with coordinates programmed into the drone that will allow it to fly autonomously to the scene of a call. 

The practice is known in law enforcement as having a Drone as a First Responder, or DFR. Other jurisdictions in the Bay Area that have adopted such uses of drones include the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, and police departments in San Francisco, Fremont, Livermore, San Mateo, Elk Grove, and Concord, according to Matthews’ presentation. 

The drone system involves outfitting a drone, which is called an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or UAV, with a camera system that collects evidence and transmits it back to a database, making it an Unmanned Aircraft System. 

The Police Department used a UAS with drones made by Skydio, which has a facility in Hayward, and a camera system from Axon, which also makes body worn cameras and tasers. 

The vendor for the new program has not been selected and will be chosen after a request for proposals is developed, according to Matthews. 

Privacy concerns emerge

The city’s drones will not have facial recognition technology and will not be used for proactive surveillance, according to Matthews. That means they are intended only to be deployed in response to a call for service, not to proactively look for crimes in progress. 

The onboard camera is positioned toward the horizon to both help autonomously navigate the drone and avoid picking up any images as general surveillance. Matthews said the Department’s policy would restrict an operator from moving the camera in flight and said flight logs would record any unauthorized use. 

But Matthews, who said the Department’s policy would only be “reactive” not “proactive” in using drones to look for crime, seemed to hedge on whether the policy would prevent roaming surveillance, referencing instead the limits of the technology rather than the policy when asked by Councilmember Francisco Zermeno if drones could be used to catch someone habitually doing “donuts” or committing vandalism at a predictable time and location. 

Matthews said that technically, even an ongoing or recurring situation could qualify as a call for service and that a drone could be used to monitor for such a person. But he said the devices’ short battery life of about 40 minutes made that impractical. 

“This equipment is for when big stuff happens,” he said. 

Backers emphasize public safety

Zermeno and Mayor Mark Salinas said they enthusiastically supported the program, as did multiple public commenters and a representative from the Hayward Chamber of Commerce. 

Mayor Pro Tempore George Syrop said he was concerned the technology could threaten privacy and constitutional rights that protect against preemptive search and seizure, as well as concerns data stored could be accessed by outside law enforcement agencies, as has happened with automated license plate readers from the company Flock. 

Syrop was the sole “no” vote, saying the protection against use on protests and other gatherings left too much room for proactive monitoring. He also said it was unclear where continued funding for the program would come from after Matthews clarified that the $589,000 was an ongoing annual subscription cost, not a one-time cost for purchasing the drones. 

Syrop did support the idea of potentially using the program to better understand how similar uses could be expanded to other departments, such as the Fire Department. 

Councilmember Angela Andrews said she agreed with some of the concerns but said proponents of police reform can’t “have it both ways,” arguing that the technology could be used to reduce police shootings and protect all parties by giving officers more information about situations they were about to encounter. 

“I am tired and frustrated of seeing officer-involved shooting videos, and if we can find a way to not have that, if there is a technology out there that can help reduce that, I’m interested in trying it,” Andrews said. 

Dylan Rogers, a member of the grassroots group Hayward Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, said during the public comment period that the organization was opposed the move and was concerned about using the drones to surveil local advocacy groups. 

“I am tired and frustrated of seeing officer-involved shooting videos, and if we can find a way to not have that, if there is a technology out there that can help reduce that, I’m interested in trying it.”

Councilmember Angela Andrews

He also said the policy left too much open to interpretation about whether a protest could be monitored.  

“What could be deemed as unlawful many times potentially peaceful gatherings can be deemed unlawful by law enforcement, so there is concerns we have around these surveilling protests and what deems a situation to be unlawful and that that could be potentially arbitrary,” Rogers said. 

The company has contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to Skydio. 

Drones were some of the only equipment in the current arsenal of military equipment that was used by the Police Department in the previous year, from April to March. 

UAVs were deployed 62 times at 61 incidents. The only other equipment used with mandated reporting requirements under the law was the department’s armored personnel carrier, which was used 14 times. 

Not used at all last year were a robot, carbine rifles, a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, Ruger .308 caliber precision rifle, 40mm round launcher, and other types of equipment, weapons, and ammunition. 

Salinas and Zermeno said the items should not be referred to as “military equipment” because they were intended to improve public safety.