Enfield Approves Police Drone With One Condition: Policy First

A small New Hampshire town just voted to buy its first police drone. The board that approved it also made sure nobody could fly it until the rules are written down. That is the right order of operations, as VNEWS reported.

The Enfield Selectboard voted 4 to 1 Monday night to accept a $15,000 donation from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation to purchase a drone for the Enfield Police Department. The aircraft does not fly a single mission until the board formally adopts a drone use policy. Not one inch off the ground.

Eight Incidents, Two Calls That Went Unanswered

The number that made this decision straightforward was eight. In the past six months alone, Enfield Police Chief Roy Holland counted eight incidents where a drone would have changed the outcome. Missing older adults. A juvenile who disappeared. A person with mental health challenges who wandered into the woods. A volatile domestic situation where officers did not know if a hostage was involved.

Holland reached out to the Lebanon Police Department four times in December for drone support. In two of those cases, the missing person was found before the drone launched. In the other two, Lebanon’s certified operators were unavailable.

That gap between needing a drone and having one is exactly what this program addresses. Enfield responds to 6 to 12 missing person calls every year, the majority involving older adults who have wandered off. In dense woodland terrain, a drone covers in minutes what a ground search team takes hours to clear.

The $15,000 from the Byrne Foundation covers the aircraft, spare parts, and FAA Part 107 certification training for two officers. Nearby departments offer a reliable preview of how this plays out in practice. The Hartford Police Department has operated drones for about three years and now runs three units, deployed primarily for missing persons and accident scene documentation. The Lebanon Police Department has used drones for six years for the same purposes. Neither department uses them for surveillance. Holland said the same would apply in Enfield.

“We won’t be using it to watch peaceful protests,” Holland said during the hearing. “We won’t be using it to patrol through Main Street.”

A Town That Asked Hard Questions

The vote was not unanimous, and it should not have been. Nearly an hour of public comment preceded the decision, and the concerns raised were legitimate.

Resident Elizabeth Rizzo asked that policy specifically prohibit drone use to monitor peaceful protests. Selectboard member Kate Plumley Stewart acknowledged that some residents found the idea of aerial surveillance “kind of creepy.” Selectboard member Alice Kennedy, who cast the lone no vote, framed her concern around the current political climate.

“Probably our faith in or trust in the ability of laws to protect us at this time is probably like at an all-time low,” Kennedy said. “Sometimes they’re seeming kind of bendy, particularly at the federal level. It just might be a matter of timing.”

That is not an irrational position. New Hampshire currently has no state-level restrictions specifically governing law enforcement drone use beyond federal FAA rules. The community’s push for a written policy before the aircraft enters service is not bureaucratic overcaution. It is exactly how responsible drone adoption in law enforcement should look.

As part of the approval, the board directed Town Manager Ed Morris to work with town officials to develop a small unmanned aircraft policy and bring it back for formal adoption. No policy, no flights.

What Comes Next

The Enfield Police Department is now building a request for proposals to send to law enforcement drone vendors. After reviewing submissions, staff will present their recommendation to the Selectboard for a final purchase decision. Holland expects the drone to be acquired within the next couple of months.

At a $15,000 budget, Enfield is likely looking at a compact public safety platform built for search and rescue rather than tactical operations. At that price point, as we previously cover on DroneXL, proven options include the DJI Mavic 3 Thermal, which carries both a 4K visual camera and a 640×512 thermal sensor, weighs under 2.2 pounds, and is specifically designed for public safety search and rescue missions. A $15,000 budget could cover two units, giving the department redundancy if one goes down in the field.

Two officers will begin FAA Part 107 training in the meantime, so the department is certified and ready to fly the moment the policy is signed.

DroneXL’s Take

Here’s what I actually think: Enfield got this right, and the way they got it right is worth paying attention to.

The approval came with a hard condition. No policy, no flights. That condition was not a compromise forced on a reluctant police department. Holland supported it. The board insisted on it. The community demanded it. Everyone agreed that accountability structures needed to exist before the technology went operational.

Let’s be straight: that is not how drone adoption always plays out. Plenty of departments buy the aircraft first and write the policy when someone complains. Enfield inverted that sequence, and a small-town Selectboard in New Hampshire deserves credit for it.

The privacy concerns raised during the hearing are real and recurring. Every community that considers a police drone program eventually has this conversation. The departments that survive it politically are the ones that wrote clear rules, published them publicly, and stuck to them. The ones that didn’t are the cautionary tales.

Enfield has a chance to build this cleanly from the start. The hard work now is making sure the policy that comes back to the board has real teeth, not just reassuring language.

Fly smart. Write the rules first.

Photo credit: Valley News / Alex Driehaus, Enfield Police Departement