Memphis Police Fly Skydio, Parrot, and DJI Together

A Memphis police drone tracked a suspect into a black Audi and logged the license plate before officers ever reached the scene. That arrest is the headline. The detail that caught my eye sits in the background of the footage.

The department isn’t flying one drone brand. It’s flying three. A Skydio X10, a DJI Matrice 30, a Parrot thermal ship, and a pocket-sized DJI Mini 5 Pro all share the same unit.

What the Drone Saw

The call came in as a domestic disturbance on May 30, and the department’s dock-based drone was airborne before patrol units arrived. It found 22-year-old Isaiah Butler near a broken window and held its position as he moved.

Butler walked to a black Audi and climbed in. The drone captured images of his face and recorded the license plate before the car pulled away, handing responding officers a vehicle description and a plate number instead of a cold trail.

He was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident and drug offenses.

Deputy Chief Andrew Brown, who runs technology for the Memphis Police Department, didn’t hedge on the value. “We may not have had the information on the car,” he said, calling the real-time vehicle data “paramount” to how officers closed the case.

Three Brands in One Fleet

Here’s the part the news clips skip past. Watch the footage of the unit and you’ll count drones from three different manufacturers in the same operation, which is something I can’t remember seeing before.

The headliner is the Skydio X10, the American-made quadcopter that launches from the fixed dock. It carries up to 40 minutes of flight time, a 45 mph (72 km/h) top speed, and a Teledyne FLIR Boson+ thermal core at 640×512 resolution. Skydio says the Dock for X10 can put it in the air in as little as 20 seconds, though Memphis quotes under two minutes from a live call.

Next to it sits a DJI Matrice 30, almost certainly the thermal 30T variant given how the department uses it. That ship brings 41 minutes of flight time, a 48-megapixel zoom camera with 5x to 16x optical reach, a 640×512 radiometric thermal sensor, and a 1,200-meter laser rangefinder, all in an IP55 weather-sealed body. It’s a workhorse, and plenty of departments still fly it for exactly that reason.

There’s also a Parrot thermal drone in the mix, which points to the ANAFI USA. Parrot builds it in the United States through NEOTech, and it’s NDAA and TAA compliant and Blue sUAS approved, which is why it shows up in so many American public-safety kits. It pairs a FLIR Boson thermal sensor with dual 32x zoom cameras and runs about 32 minutes per battery.

And then the one that made me smile. A DJI Mini 5 Pro, the sub-250-gram consumer drone you can buy off a shelf. It’s the same model I keep in my office, right next to my Lito X1 and Neo 2, and here it is sitting in a professional police loadout next to hardware that costs ten times as much.

It’s the lightest tool in the bag and the fastest to throw in the air for a quick look.

Why a Department Flies All Three

A four-drone, three-brand fleet isn’t an accident. It’s a department picking the right tool for each job and ignoring the politics that usually drive these purchases.

As Action News 5 reported, Skydio gives Memphis American-made autonomy and a dock that flies itself, which is the clean answer when a city council asks about supply chains. Parrot covers the American thermal requirement with a platform built on a U.S. Army reconnaissance design. Both check the procurement boxes that have made DJI a political target.

Then there’s the DJI hardware Memphis flies anyway. The Matrice 30 and the Mini 5 Pro are there because DJI still makes the best drones at their price points, and a working department knows it. The ban was always political, not technical, and the gear in this fleet says the quiet part out loud.

That’s the real story here. On paper, U.S. agencies are supposed to be moving away from DJI. On the ground in Memphis, officers are flying Skydio, Parrot, and DJI side by side because each one does something the others don’t.

The Numbers Behind the Program

Memphis launched its current Drone as First Responder program on May 1, though the department has flown drones since 2017. The dock-based system is the new piece.

In its first month, the program logged more than 100 flights and cleared close to two dozen calls, with the department estimating roughly 45 minutes saved per deployment. Later reporting pushed the flight count past 180. Ten officers run the dock directly, and the department says it has 20 certified operators across its ranks.

Brown was specific about the limits too. The drones launch only during calls for service or large events, and they do not record audio, which is how a program like this survives its first privacy fight.

DroneXL’s Take

Here’s what stands out to me. I’ve watched a lot of police drone footage, and I can’t recall a single department openly flying Skydio, Parrot, and DJI in the same department. Three rival brands, one goal, zero apology about it.

That mix tells you more about where the industry actually is than any policy statement. The political pressure says pick an American airframe. The job says pick the drone that gets the shot, charges in a dock, fits in a vest pocket, or reads a heat signature through a tree line. Memphis decided it didn’t have to choose a side, and I think that’s the smart read.

I’ll still push on the easy number. The 45-minutes-saved figure is the department’s own estimate, not an audited one, and a domestic call that ends in drug charges is not the same as a drone stopping a violent crime.

But the fleet itself? Seeing Skydio, Parrot, and DJI working the same calls is the clearest snapshot of this industry I’ve seen all year. The flags on the box matter less than the work in the air.

Photo credit: Memphis Police Department, Rafael Suarez.