Minneapolis police officers and a K-9 unit spent three and a half hours searching for Bob Stewart, an 82 year old veteran who vanished during a walk on the city’s north side on May 14. A police drone found him in about nine minutes. Stewart was barefoot in Shingle Creek, soaked and holding onto a tree limb below a steep ravine in Webber Park. The department released the rescue footage this week, while the City Council weighs whether Minneapolis should run a drone program of its own.
A Thermal Camera Caught an Anomaly in the Trees
The drone crew found Stewart because thermal imaging picks out body heat where human eyes see only vegetation, and Officer Drew Clark noticed one warm shape in a densely wooded stretch of parkland that didn’t move like the deer his camera had flagged moments earlier. The drone worked its way across backyards and wooded ground before it swept the creek line. Clark wrote in his report that he spotted an anomaly through the trees.
That anomaly was Stewart, who had slipped in the mud along the creek and couldn’t climb out. His wife Linda described it plainly: “Once one foot went in the mud, you can’t get the other one out.” He spent about five hours down there, on and off, in the water.
The video shows what happened next. The drone held position overhead and guided officers and firefighters through the woods, and the responders waded the creek and climbed over fallen trees to reach him. Stewart went to the hospital, recovered, and weeks later met the officers who pulled him out.
Clark kept his own assessment modest. “I don’t know if we would have located him,” he said, noting a ground search of that terrain would eat up resources and hours the drone simply didn’t need.
I fly thermal cameras, and cold terrain is where they earn their keep. A warm body against chilled ground and creek water gives you contrast you can’t miss, which is exactly why Clark’s camera flagged the deer before it found the man.
The Rescue Video Lands in the Middle of a Council Fight
Minneapolis released this footage at a delicate moment, because the police department is asking the City Council to approve a 75 day Drones as First Responders trial with Skydio, and CBS Minnesota framed the video’s release exactly that way: a rescue highlighted while the city weighs the program. The proposal would station two drones at Fire Station 14 in the Fourth Precinct, marked as police vehicles with red and blue lights, streaming live video to Minneapolis 911.
The May rescue didn’t come from that program. It doesn’t exist yet. Clark flew under the department’s current drone operations, the kind Minnesota agencies already log by the thousands.
The proposal drew hours of testimony before the council’s Public Health, Safety and Equity Committee, with roughly 40 residents speaking in opposition, most of it centered on surveillance, civil liberties, and Skydio’s military contracts. In a city still rebuilding trust in its police department, that skepticism has weight. A drone that finds a drowning grandfather and a drone that watches a protest are the same aircraft with different missions.
Five Minnesota Cities Already Run the Program Minneapolis Is Debating
Minneapolis is debating a question its own suburbs answered months ago, because at least five Minnesota cities already operate or are building Drones as First Responders programs, every one of them on Skydio hardware, as DroneXL reported this month in its review of the state’s 2025 drone data.
Minnetonka launched first in August 2025. Out of roughly 600 flights, its drones reached the scene first 65 percent of the time and cleared about one call in five without sending an officer.
St. Paul’s dock based program flew 472 missions in its first four weeks, more than its entire patrol drone total for 2025. Brooklyn Park approved a $4.6 million program of its own in November. Statewide, Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension counted 9,080 warrantless police drone flights across 135 agencies last year, up 38 percent, all published in an itemized public report no other state produces.
That last part matters for the Minneapolis debate. The surveillance question deserves an answer, and Minnesota is the one state where residents can actually audit what police drones did with their flight hours.
DroneXL’s Take
The part that doesn’t make the headline, three and a half hours of professional searchers with a trained dog couldn’t do what one thermal camera did in nine minutes. That’s not a knock on the officers. It’s physics. A human search line moves at walking pace through terrain that hides an 82 year old man twenty feet below eye level. A drone at altitude reads heat through the canopy and doesn’t get tired.
I’ve covered Minnesota’s drone story all year, from Minnetonka’s launch to the state’s 9,080 flight transparency report, and the pattern holds: the programs keep producing rescues and response times that ground units can’t match, while the public debate stays stuck on surveillance fears the data hasn’t borne out in this state.
The neighbor complaining about drone privacy should picture the day someone in his own family wanders off. I won’t get tired of saying it: with drones, the good they do outweighs the harm they might do.
Whether the council approves the 75 day Skydio trial is an open question, not a prediction. Watch what Minneapolis does with the public comment period, because Bob Stewart’s nine minutes just became the strongest exhibit the proposal has.
