An El Paso County Sheriff’s Office drone spotted people fleeing a Colorado Springs-area home and hiding in the backyard before deputies ever arrived on scene, leading to the arrest of a 44-year-old woman wanted on two active warrants.
The Sheriff’s Office Regional Communications Center received a disturbance call around 8:00 AM on June 26, 2026, for the 600 block of Catalina Drive in the Stratmoor Hills area of unincorporated El Paso County. The department’s Intelligence Based Operations Center, known as IBOC, launched a drone as a first responder ahead of patrol units. The drone operator watched multiple people leave the residence and saw some of them duck into the backyard, information relayed to deputies before they made contact.
Deputies Detain a Wanted Woman Without Incident
Patrol deputies arrived and safely contacted several people at the scene, including 44-year-old Stephanie Sue Adams, who had two active warrants out for her arrest. She was detained without incident and booked into the El Paso County Jail on charges of unlawful possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. Adams was later released on two personal recognizance bonds, with conditions set under Colorado state guidelines, according to a statement from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Joseph Roybal credited the drone’s early view of the property for the clean outcome. “The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office Intelligence Based Operations Center demonstrates how technology can enhance public safety and support our deputies in the field,” Roybal said. “Using drone as a first responder technology allows us to quickly assess situations, improve situational awareness, and identify safety concerns before deputies arrive on scene.”
Roybal added that the drone’s real-time feed shaped how deputies approached the property. “During this incident, the IBOC drone provided critical real-time information which assisted responding deputies and ultimately led to the safe detention of a wanted individual without incident,” he said. “This technology is helping us work more efficiently, improve deputy and community safety, and get wanted criminals off the streets while continuing to serve our citizens with professionalism and accountability.”
IBOC Fits a Broader Push Toward Pre-Arrival Drone Intelligence
This arrest lands the same week El Paso County’s Sheriff’s Office announced a separate Fugitive Impact Team focused on the county’s most disruptive repeat offenders, and it follows a pattern showing up across the country as more agencies stand up Drone as a First Responder (DFR) programs. St. Paul Police logged 472 DFR flights in four weeks this June, and Durham Police used a DJI drone to locate a wanted suspect hiding in a greenspace back in May. The common thread: a drone overhead before officers are on the ground changes what deputies know walking up to a door, and in cases like this one, it can mean the difference between a tense unknown and a documented list of who’s already left the house.
DFR units differ from patrol-deployed drones in that they’re typically launched from a fixed base the moment a call comes in, reaching the scene ahead of, or simultaneous with, the first patrol car. El Paso County hasn’t published flight-time or response-time figures for this specific call, a data point IBOC could usefully add given how often departments now cite exact minutes shaved off response as the strongest argument for these programs.
El Paso County Has Built Drone Infrastructure Before
This isn’t the county’s first move to treat drones as infrastructure rather than a one-off tool. El Paso County rolled out a networked Remote ID system ahead of the FAA’s Remote ID mandate in 2023, an early example of a local agency building drone airspace-awareness systems rather than simply buying hardware. A named unit with a defined role in the response chain, like IBOC, is that same instinct applied to how a 911 call gets handled.
DroneXL’s Take
This is exactly the kind of drone story I want more of: nobody got hurt, a wanted person got taken into custody without a struggle, and the drone’s job was simply to look before deputies walked in blind. That’s the case for DFR programs in one sentence, and Sheriff Roybal made it plainly in his own statement rather than leaving it to a press office to spin.
I’ll also say the quiet part: stories like this are why the DJI drone ban is such a bad trade for American public safety. Sheriff’s offices like El Paso County’s aren’t flying enterprise platforms costing tens of thousands of dollars for every disturbance call, they’re often flying capable, affordable hardware because it’s what the budget allows. Cutting off access to that hardware doesn’t make departments safer. It makes programs like IBOC harder to fund and slower to scale, right as more agencies are proving out exactly the kind of pre-arrival intelligence that keeps both deputies and suspects safer during contact.
Watch whether El Paso County starts publishing DFR-specific metrics: response times, calls resolved without a full dispatch, arrests directly attributable to drone intelligence, the way departments in St. Paul and elsewhere increasingly do. Sheriffs asking for budget to expand these programs are going to need that data, and right now this write-up leans on a strong anecdote rather than a documented track record.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Featured image is for illustration purposes only.
Source: El Paso County Sheriff’s Office
