DJI Matrice fleet helps Kingston Police rescue resident

A traffic safety drone helped Kingston Police find and rescue a person in distress on Sunday, April 12, 2026. Officers had limited information to work with, but the drone located the individual’s vehicle within an hour of deployment, leading to a swift rescue and hospital transport, as The Whig reported.

The Kingston Police Service received a report that afternoon about an individual in distress somewhere near the intersection of John Counter Boulevard and Division Street in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Details were scarce.

Officers didn’t have a precise location, but through their investigation they were able to identify the make and model of a vehicle connected to the person who needed help.

How the drone made the difference

Kingston Police Traffic Safety drone operators were dispatched to assist patrol officers already searching the area. The drone’s aerial vantage point allowed operators to scan a wide area quickly, and within the hour they spotted the vehicle registered to the individual.

Patrol officers responded immediately and found the person inside the vehicle. The individual was transported to Kingston General Hospital for medical care. Kingston Police have not released details about the person’s condition.

The department’s press release called it a “well-coordinated search” and noted that the incident “highlights one of the many vital roles drone technology plays in modern police operations.”

The hardware behind the program

Kingston Police operate two DJI enterprise platforms: the Matrice 300 RTK and the Matrice 30. Both are serious machines built for exactly this kind of work.

The Matrice 300 RTK is DJI’s larger enterprise workhorse. It weighs about 13.9 pounds with batteries, delivers up to 55 minutes of flight time, and can carry up to 6 pounds of payload. It has six-directional obstacle sensing and an IP45 weather resistance rating, which means it can fly in light rain and dusty conditions.

Transmission range extends to 9.3 miles using DJI’s OcuSync Enterprise system, and the service ceiling reaches 22,966 feet with the right propeller configuration. The M300 RTK doesn’t carry an integrated camera. Instead, it accepts interchangeable Zenmuse payloads, including the H20 series that combines zoom, wide-angle, thermal, and laser rangefinder sensors into one gimbal.

Kingston Police acquired their M300 RTK in 2021, and its first publicized deployment was locating a missing 80-year-old man using the infrared camera.

The Matrice 30 is the smaller, more portable option. It weighs just 8.2 pounds at takeoff, folds down for quick transport, and gets up to 41 minutes of flight time. What it gives up in size it makes up for in integration.

The M30T variant packs four sensors into a single built-in payload: a 48-megapixel zoom camera with up to 200x hybrid zoom, a 12-megapixel wide-angle camera, a laser rangefinder accurate to 3,937 feet, and a 640×512 radiometric thermal camera.

It carries an IP55 weather rating, which is a step above the M300 RTK and means the M30 can handle heavy rain and high winds. It also supports three-propeller emergency landing, so if one motor fails mid-flight, the drone can still come down safely. OcuSync 3 Enterprise gives it transmission range up to 9.3 miles, matching the larger platform.

Both drones give Kingston Police the flexibility to match the tool to the mission. The M300 RTK offers longer endurance and heavier payload capacity for extended searches. The M30 offers faster deployment and an integrated thermal sensor that doesn’t require swapping gimbal hardware before launch.

Kingston’s growing drone program

Kingston Police have been flying drones operationally since at least 2021. The department’s drone operations page lists five active use cases: collision reconstruction, search and rescue, crime scene investigations, critical incidents, and large-scale events. Both the Traffic Safety Unit and the Emergency Response Unit now have trained and licensed drone pilots on staff.

The April 12 rescue is the latest in a string of successful drone-assisted operations for the department. In October 2023, a traffic drone used thermal imaging to locate a missing 28-year-old in a wooded area near Railway Street and Montreal Street.

In August 2024, drone operators used thermal cameras to track a person operating a stolen front-end loader on an industrial property, guiding patrol officers to a safe arrest after the operator left the vehicle. In November 2024, two drones were deployed simultaneously alongside a K-9 unit to search for a missing elderly man in the downtown area.

DroneXL’s Take

The part that doesn’t make the headline, this is the kind of drone deployment that rarely gets national attention but happens constantly across North America. No dramatic helicopter footage, no SWAT standoff. Just a drone pilot, a thermal camera, and a person who needed help getting found.

Kingston Police didn’t have much to go on. They had a general area and a vehicle description. A ground search in those conditions can take hours, especially if the person isn’t responding to calls. The drone collapsed that timeline to under sixty minutes. That’s the difference between a search and a rescue.

What stands out about Kingston’s program is how naturally drones have become part of regular operations there. This wasn’t a special deployment or a test case. Traffic Safety drone operators were dispatched alongside patrol officers as a standard part of the response.

That kind of integration doesn’t happen overnight. It takes training, policies, and leadership that sees drones as everyday tools rather than expensive toys that sit in a case until something dramatic happens.

The hardware choices tell you something too. Running both the Matrice 300 RTK and the Matrice 30 means Kingston can scale their response to the situation. A quick urban search where speed matters?

Grab the M30, unfold it, and you’re airborne in minutes with thermal already integrated. A longer search over a wider area with specialized payload needs? The M300 RTK gives you the endurance and flexibility. That’s smart fleet management from a department that clearly takes its drone program seriously.

Canadian departments are building some of the most mature drone programs in North America right now, and Kingston is a good example of what it looks like when a midsized agency gets it right.

Photo credit: Kingston Police Dept.