Skydio, BRINC and a Robot Dog Join Louisiana Patrols

A district attorney in Louisiana is doing something most prosecutors never touch. He’s buying the drones. Tony Clayton wants 911 response on the west bank of the Mississippi to fall from minutes to seconds, and he’s funding a three-year program that hands BRINC and Skydio aircraft, plus a four-legged robot, to two parish sheriffs.

The money comes from a sales tax voters already approved. Here’s how it breaks down.

Who is getting what

The program splits the hardware between two offices. The West Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office is adding four Skydio X10 drones and a four-legged Boston Dynamics robot the office calls Spot.

Across the parish line, the Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Office is adding three BRINC drones, one of them a dedicated drone as first responder that will live in a hangar near Plaquemine and launch straight to active scenes.

Clayton is targeting Port Allen, New Roads, and Plaquemine, the seats of the three parishes his office covers. The pitch is speed. The drones sit in fixed locations and can fly to any address inside a two-mile radius (3.2 km) the moment a 911 call lands, putting eyes on a scene before deputies arrive.

The Iberville first-responder drone is built to do more than watch. It streams live video back to headquarters, lets dispatchers talk to people on the ground through the aircraft, and can carry supplies like Narcan or a life jacket to a scene before a unit gets there.

How a prosecutor ends up buying drones

As The Advocate reported, the hardware isn’t coming out of either sheriff’s budget. It’s funded by a quarter-cent sales tax that voters in all three parishes approved, in effect since July 2024, which throws off an estimated $5 million to $7 million a year for Clayton’s office.

That money underwrites a three-year joint venture between the DA and the two sheriffs. Iberville Sheriff Brett Stassi said the program is worth its $60,000 price tag, a small number against what the tax generates. A district attorney bankrolling and steering a multi-agency drone fleet isn’t something I see every day, and it’s worth watching.

The hardware doing the work

Start with the Skydio side. The X10 is the company’s flagship, and it’s a serious autonomy machine. It flies up to about 40 minutes, hits roughly 45 mph (72 km/h) in stable air, and weighs under 4.7 lbs (2.1 kg), with 360-degree obstacle avoidance running off six navigation cameras.

The standout is sensing. It carries an integrated Teledyne FLIR Boson+ thermal sensor at 640×512 resolution and a NightSense mode that lets it navigate and dodge obstacles in zero light. It runs from minus 4°F to 113°F (minus 20° to 45°C) and can mount a spotlight, microphone, or parachute within a 12 oz (340 g) payload.

The BRINC side is the Lemur 2, built for getting inside a structure rather than racing to a scene. It flies 20-plus minutes on a LiDAR-driven autonomy engine that maps a room in 3D and holds a hover with no GPS and no light, it self-rights if it flips, and it can break tempered or residential glass to make entry. Its sensor stack pairs a 4K camera and a smoke-piercing FLIR thermal imager with a loudspeaker and microphone for two-way de-escalation, and it can release a payload up to 1 lb (0.45 kg), which covers a Narcan kit like Iberville described.

Then there’s Spot. Boston Dynamics’ robot dog isn’t a drone, so I’ll keep it short, but it walks, climbs stairs, and carries sensors into places a wheeled robot can’t reach. For a sheriff, that means a barricaded building or a hazmat call without sending a deputy through the door first.

Why it’s all American hardware

Notice what’s missing from this deal. There’s no DJI in it, even though DJI still builds the best drone hardware at the price. Both agencies went straight to Skydio and BRINC, two American makers, and that’s the post-ban procurement reality for U.S. public safety more than a verdict on the gear.

Skydio’s strengths are real. The autonomy software is excellent and the supply chain is American, which matters for an agency chasing federal grant eligibility and no political headaches.

BRINC has carved out the DFR niche fast since Blake Resnick founded it in 2019, raising around $82 million from backers including Peter Thiel and Sam Altman, per Forbes. The hardware question gets settled by politics here, not by spec sheets.

DroneXL’s Take

Here’s what nobody is saying out loud. The story isn’t the drones, it’s who holds the checkbook. When a district attorney uses a dedicated sales tax to buy and direct surveillance hardware for two sheriff’s offices, you’ve blended the office that prosecutes cases with the office that gathers the evidence, and that deserves more scrutiny than a robot dog’s nickname.

The capability is strong, and I won’t pretend otherwise. A drone that reaches any address within two miles in seconds, carries thermal, and can drop a Narcan kit before an ambulance arrives will save lives on the west bank. That’s the real upside, and rural parishes with thin patrol coverage are where it pays off most.

But minutes to seconds is a slogan until the policy catches up. Who watches the footage, how long it lives, and whether a prosecutor-funded fleet ever points at the same people that office will charge are the questions that matter now. The hardware is ready. Louisiana has three years to prove the oversight is too.

Photo credit: Tony Clayton, Boston Dynamic, Brinc, Skydio.