HPD Equips New Tactical Unit With DJI Matrice 4 Drones

Houston’s police department has created a new tactical unit designed specifically to bridge the gap between street patrol and SWAT — and it’s flying DJI Matrice 4 Series drone as its primary aerial tools, as reported by Click 2 Houston.

The Patrol Support Team is the first unit of its kind in HPD’s history, and it’s already running calls.

What the Patrol Support Team Is Built to Do

The Houston Police Department covers more than 600 square miles, runs a budget exceeding $1 billion a year, and keeps 16 aircraft in its Air Support Division. Even with those resources, patrol officers regularly end up at scenes that need more than a single unit but don’t justify a full SWAT deployment. That’s the operational gap HPD designed this unit to fill.

“When patrol officers are overwhelmed with any scene, these officers are there to help them,” said Capt. Jason Rosemon, who leads the unit. Officers assigned to the Patrol Support Team train on a bi-weekly basis and are equipped to handle complicated, high-risk, or resource-heavy situations as a tactical intermediary.

“With patrol support being there, being that intermediary between patrol and SWAT or specialized unit, we’re able to bridge that gap before we make that call,” Rosemon said.

You’ll recognize them on scene by their army-green tactical uniforms. Their vehicles don’t carry suspects — they carry equipment: drones, breaching tools capable of breaking glass or cutting wires, and less-lethal weapons.

DJI Matrice 4T and 4E: Two Different Tools

The Patrol Support Team is flying both the DJI Matrice 4T and the Matrice 4E — and the choice of both models says something about how HPD is thinking about this unit’s role.

The two aircraft share the same airframe. Both weigh 2.7 lbs ready to fly, hit a top speed of 46.9 mph, max out at 49 minutes of flight time, and transmit live video up to 15.5 miles on the FCC band. They fold to roughly 10 by 4.5 by 5.5 inches and carry an omnidirectional obstacle avoidance system with binocular vision sensors in every direction. The built-in RTK module delivers centimeter-level positioning accuracy in both.

Where they diverge is the payload. The Matrice 4T is the public safety model. It carries four imaging systems: a 48-megapixel wide camera at f/1.7, a 48MP medium telephoto, a 48MP telephoto with 112x hybrid zoom, and a 640×512 uncooled thermal sensor.

An NIR auxiliary light illuminates targets out to 328 feet in low-light conditions, and a laser rangefinder measures distances accurately out to nearly 5,900 feet. Night Scene Mode pushes ISO up to 819,200 on the telephoto lens. For tracking a suspect on foot in a dark Houston neighborhood, this is exactly the sensor stack you want overhead.

The Matrice 4E carries a different payload built around a larger 4/3-inch CMOS sensor at 20 megapixels on the wide lens, with a mechanical shutter for distortion-free imaging — but no thermal camera. It’s DJI’s geospatial and mapping platform, built for surveying, construction documentation, and accident reconstruction.

Its presence in the Patrol Support Team’s kit alongside the 4T suggests HPD intends to use this unit for more than pursuit and suspect tracking. Scene documentation, collision reconstruction, and perimeter mapping are likely part of the operational picture.

Drones as a First-Line Resource

KPRC 2 observed the team in action in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, where officers launched a drone while searching for a catalytic converter theft suspect. In northeast Houston, Patrol Support officers established a perimeter while a K-9 unit tracked a man wanted for assaulting his girlfriend. These are exactly the kind of mid-tier calls the unit was built for — scenes that need aerial intelligence quickly but don’t require calling in SWAT on overtime.

The drone capability also fills a specific gap in HPD’s existing aerial coverage. Getting airborne in seconds from a vehicle-mounted kit means aerial eyes on a scene before any other air asset is even spinning up.

University of Houston Downtown Assistant Professor Dr. Elizabeth Gilmore called the unit concept sound and flagged the value of having a specialized resource already in the field. “It makes a lot of sense to have a specialized unit that’s already out there, so you don’t have to call in people from overtime and have a delay,” she said. “Sometimes in policing, even five minutes can make tremendous differences.”

Texas, DJI, and the Procurement Picture

HPD’s choice of DJI hardware is worth noting explicitly. Texas has no state-level procurement ban on foreign-manufactured drones — unlike Florida, which has barred government agencies from purchasing DJI and Autel equipment entirely. Houston PD can buy what performs best at a given price point, and the Matrice 4T, which starts at $7,299, and the Matrice 4E, starting at $4,799, represent serious enterprise capability at prices that hold up against any domestic alternative.

Florida agencies flying comparable Skydio X10 systems are paying $16,000 to $25,000 per unit for a platform that, in thermal performance and imaging flexibility, doesn’t surpass what DJI ships in the M4T at less than half the price. HPD’s Patrol Support Team is getting two genuinely capable aerial tools per vehicle, without the procurement constraints that have cost Florida departments an estimated $200 million in forced hardware swaps.

DroneXL’s Take

Here’s the honest part: the DJI Matrice 4T belongs in a patrol support vehicle. There isn’t a more capable thermal surveillance drone at anywhere near its price point, and the operational results nationwide have been hard to argue with. HPD buying the M4T for a unit like this isn’t surprising — it’s the correct call.

The M4E is the more interesting purchase. A geospatial mapping drone in a tactical patrol support kit points to a department that’s thinking about this unit doing more than chasing suspects. Collision reconstruction, crime scene mapping, and structural assessment after a barricaded suspect incident are all missions the 4E is built for. I would like to clarify to my readers that HPD never disclosed the drone models and that these ones came from pure observation.

If HPD’s Patrol Support Team is being set up to handle the full spectrum from pursuit to documentation, that’s a more sophisticated operational vision than most departments have when they first roll out a drone unit. The 24/7 expansion will tell us how serious they are about it.

Photo credit: Click 2 Houston