Colorado Springs Drones First on Scene 61% of Calls

The Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD) is telling the full story of what seven drones stationed across the city are actually doing, and the numbers are hard to argue with. In an interview with KKTV published April 6, 2026, CSPD Sgt. Jeff Edmonds said the drones, part of the department’s Real Time Crime Center Unit, arrive first on scene 61% of the time. “We’re catching people all the time,” Edmonds said. That’s a patrol sergeant talking about daily operations.

A Stolen Gun, a Creek, and Two Juveniles Who Ran the Wrong Way

The arrest Edmonds described for KKTV will sound familiar to DroneXL readers. We covered the incident in March: a resident near Airport Road spotted two juveniles checking car door handles late at night, reported seeing what appeared to be a gun with a green laser light, and called police. When the suspects bolted toward Sand Creek, Edmonds deployed a drone instead of sending officers into the dark on foot.

The drone found them running. One suspect tossed a backpack into the brush before crossing the creek. Officers recovered it: a stolen handgun with a green laser light attached. “The suspects would have never been found if we hadn’t had the drone up that day,” Edmonds said. Both juveniles now face felony-level charges.

As we confirmed in March, Colorado Springs PD operates the Skydio X10, a 3.1-pound aircraft carrying a thermal sensor and multi-camera payload that makes darkness irrelevant to the search.

The thermal feed goes straight to the Real Time Crime Center, where analysts track suspect movement and relay positions to ground units holding containment. Officers don’t enter the creek bed. They wait at the perimeter and move in when the drone has eyes on the target.

CSPD Drones Are on Scene Before Officers in Six Out of Ten Calls

The 61% first-on-scene rate is the real headline here. CSPD measures this as drone arrival before any ground unit reaches the dispatch location. Officers arrive at active situations with real-time aerial video already running, not walking in blind on a dispatch description that’s already four minutes old.

“A lot of these rapidly evolving incidents that police officers are going to, you’re going based on what you know,” Edmonds said. “So there’s so much more we can give them now with what we’re seeing.”

That situational awareness also cuts resource waste. Edmonds gave a straight example: a report of a 20 or 30-person fight in progress. Ground units roll heavy. Drone arrives first and the crowd has dispersed. “We don’t need 30 cops to go handle this massive fight. We can send a couple to check the area.” That kind of real-time triage saves overtime, wear on equipment, and fuel — every shift, every day.

CSPD Plans to Grow the Fleet From Seven to Eleven Drones

The department currently runs seven drones across the city. According to Edmonds, the plan is to add four more to the Real Time Crime Center. No timeline was given for the expansion, but the direction is clear: this program is growing, not leveling off.

That pattern mirrors what’s happening nationally. Washington County launched its own DFR program in February and was already making arrests within weeks. Miami PD used a drone to track and apprehend a suspect on camera in December 2025. Skydio’s DFR Command platform crossed 10 million calls for service in February 2026. The technology isn’t being piloted anymore. It’s being scaled.

New Orleans was still requesting $740,000 in funding for a DFR program in January 2026, while cities like Colorado Springs are already talking about fleet expansion.

DroneXL’s Take

I’ve watched this specific story build over several months, and what Colorado Springs is demonstrating isn’t a flashy pilot program anymore. It’s operational doctrine. Seven drones, one Real Time Crime Center, 61% first-on-scene rate. That’s infrastructure, not experimentation.

The stolen gun in the backpack detail gets me every time. In a traditional foot pursuit at midnight in a wooded creek bed, that backpack disappears forever. The suspect tosses it into brush, officers lose visual in the dark, and a stolen firearm with a laser stays on the street. The drone captured the exact moment of the toss, from altitude, in the dark. Without it, that gun ends up at the next crime scene.

I’ve flown at night myself, and even with a good thermal sensor, you learn fast how humbling low-light ground search can be from behind the sticks. What Colorado Springs has built removes the pilot’s physical limits from the equation entirely. The X10 sees heat. Sand Creek doesn’t matter. The brush doesn’t matter. That’s the entire point.

The Beaverton hit-and-run case we covered just two days ago shows the same playbook working in Oregon. This isn’t a Colorado thing or a Skydio thing. DFR programs that are properly funded and integrated into dispatch are producing consistent, repeatable results across the country. Skydio’s 10 million calls covered roughly 1,000 agencies. There are about 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. The gap between those two numbers is closing fast. By Q4 2026, I’d expect at least 150 U.S. agencies to have active DFR programs — and city councils in departments that don’t will start demanding answers.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Rafael Suarez.

Photo credit: KKTV