The Lewisville Police Department says its drones flew 1,789 times between Jan. 1 and Nov. 3, about six flights a day. The department’s example of what that buys came on Oct. 20, when one of its drones tracked a man who fled from officers behind a motel to an apartment balcony and guided officers to him, police said.
The North Texas department flies Skydio drones from docks around Lewisville under FAA authorization for beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights, according to the department. The department has 19 drones and 15 trained operators, and the program officially launched on May 8.
The department also posts its Drone as First Responder flights on a public dashboard, and the city’s transparency page says those flights update automatically. When I went through the dashboard on Nov. 9, it listed 1,303 flights, and the last of them took off on Sept. 2.
A Lewisville Drone Reached the Motel Call in Under a Minute
The Oct. 20 call started behind a motel, where an officer found a man believed to be wanted and a second officer was sent to help. The drone the department calls DFR 2 launched and reached the scene in less than a minute, police said, the Cross Timbers Gazette reported.
When the man fled on foot, the drone followed him into a nearby apartment complex. Police said he tried to hide on a balcony and change his appearance before officers, guided by the drone, arrested him.
A drone over a foot chase is the same idea Spokane police used in July, when a Skydio X10 took over a vehicle pursuit after the patrol cars backed off.
Lewisville’s Drone Flights Peaked at 389 in July
Lewisville’s public dashboard lists 106 flights before the May 8 launch, then 188 in the rest of May, 289 in June, 389 in July and 322 in August, which works out to nearly 13 flights a day at the July peak.
That curve fits the department’s own description of flights rising through the spring and peaking in the summer. It also explains the six-a-day average: the 1,789 figure starts on Jan. 1 and takes in more than four months before the official launch, when the dashboard logs only those 106 flights.
Dashboard entries list a case number where there is one, usually a purpose such as emergency call for service, search and rescue or training, the flight’s length and whether the drone collected video or photos.
Lewisville’s Public Flight Log Stops at September 2
The 1,789 flights the department reported through Nov. 3 are 486 more than its public dashboard lists. The dashboard, linked from the city’s LPD Transparency page, showed no flight after Sept. 2 when I checked it on Nov. 9, so the Oct. 20 chase is not in it.
According to police, flight activity remained steady through October. If the 486 are simply the flights from Sept. 3 through Nov. 3, that works out to about eight flights a day, a little below the dashboard’s August rate of about 10 a day. The city’s page says DFR flights update automatically and other drone activity monthly, while the dashboard itself says flights are updated monthly. Neither page, as I read them on Nov. 9, explains why nothing after Sept. 2 appears.
The transparency page that links the dashboard is what Police Chief Brook Rollins promised residents at the launch. He told the Gazette in May that the department was launching “a public-facing transparency portal” and publishing its policies so residents could see how the drones are used. The DFR policy is posted on the transparency page.
DroneXL’s Take
Lewisville put its DFR flights on a public map with case numbers attached, which is what I want every department to do, and the Oct. 20 arrest is a good example of what these programs are for. A flight log is only useful while it is current, though, and this one now runs two months behind the department’s own press figures. A resident can read about DFR 2’s chase in the paper and still can’t find that flight in the record the chief promised. Bellingham, Washington, runs the same Skydio dashboard, and when I checked it in October it showed flights from five days earlier. Lewisville should publish on the schedule its own transparency page describes, post its September and October flights, and confirm that they account for the 486-flight difference before it releases its next set of numbers.
Sources: Cross Timbers Gazette (November 8, 2026), Cross Timbers Gazette (May 12, 2026), City of Lewisville LPD Transparency page, Lewisville Police Department DFR flight dashboard.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
