The director of the Montgomery County Police Department’s drone program told a Washington, D.C., policy conference this week that the department first asked for drone money without talking to residents, and that the County Council corrected it. Tony Galladora runs the Maryland department’s Operational Intelligence Division, and he spoke at AUVSI’s Drone and AAM Policy Symposium, held Nov. 9 and 10 at Nationals Park.
His Drone as First Responder program has grown since then. Galladora said it has 12 drones at six dock sites and assists with about 750 calls for service a month.
In the spring of 2023, the same department could not get the council to fund a pilot with one.
The County Council Made Police Hold Town Halls Before It Paid for Drones
County Executive Marc Elrich’s recommended fiscal 2024 budget carried a $250,000 Drone as First Responder pilot, according to an April 20, 2023, council staff packet. The council did not fund it that spring. It approved $350,000 for two drones on Nov. 7, 2023, after a summer of outreach.
Galladora described that sequence from the police side. He said the department asked for the money without community engagement, Route Fifty reported from the symposium. “We got our hands slapped and got put on a proper path to fix that,” he said.
The council packet and local reporting from that year fill in the rest. Councilmembers asked the department to do more public engagement before they would bring the program to a vote, Bethesda Magazine reported on the day of the approval. Police held town halls over the summer of 2023 and revised their drone directive that September. Two council committees then tightened the wording of the appropriation so the drones could not be used for surveillance, including of First Amendment events unless there is an immediate safety threat. The unanimous November vote paid for drones over downtown Silver Spring and Wheaton, and the first one flew on Nov. 20, 2023.
Galladora was a lieutenant then. He was on a Maryland Association of Counties panel in August 2024 where an ACLU analyst raised concerns about police drones, and we covered it in Police Drone Use Sparks Privacy Debate in Maryland.
Montgomery’s DFR Drones Fly Only to Calls for Service
Community meetings ruled one use out. Galladora told the symposium that “proactive” flights, where a drone watches a neighborhood before anything has happened, are not widely accepted in the county, so the drones respond strictly to 911 calls. The department’s program page puts the same limit in writing.
That page says the program responds only to 911 or police-generated calls for service and will not patrol or be sent up for surveillance. It also says the camera stays pointed at the horizon until the drone is on scene, and that the aircraft has no facial recognition and records no audio.
Every flight is posted to a public dashboard with its date, duration and flight path. When DroneXL opened it on Nov. 13, it listed 345 flights since Nov. 1.
The department’s formal directive, FC 0460, took effect on Sept. 19, 2023, and covers every drone the department flies. It defines a DFR drone as one that flies to a call for service. It bans facial recognition, audio recording and using drone data to identify people at lawful First Amendment activity. The explicit no-patrol sentence is on the program page.
A 200-Officer Shortage Is Pushing the Department Toward Drones
Galladora told the symposium the department is down about 200 officers and is looking to technology to make up for it. Assistant Chief David McBain gave WJLA the same figure on Sept. 1, putting the department at or very close to 200 vacancies.
The call volume is climbing with the hardware. WJLA reported nearly 600 calls a month on Sept. 24, and Galladora’s figure this week was about 750.
The fleet began changing in July, when the department said it was replacing its DJI drones and rooftop pilots with Skydio X10 aircraft in docks, two at each of six sites. DroneXL covered that rebuild in Skydio Docks End Montgomery’s Rooftop Observers. The pilots now fly beyond visual line of sight from the county’s Joint Operations Center.
DroneXL’s Take
In July we wrote that Montgomery “bought its peace up front” on privacy. Galladora’s account this week is more useful than ours was. The department skipped the public, the council said not yet, and the town halls came after that. I’d rather hear that from a police official than another slide about best practices, because every agency on the FAA’s DFR waiver list will sit in front of a council sooner or later.
The council’s refusal is also why the limits have teeth. The surveillance and First Amendment language went into the appropriation before the first drone flew, so the rules came with the money and did not depend on a later press release. Two days ago we went through Anne Arundel County’s drone log and found flights labeled as protests and public demonstrations. Nothing like that is documented in Montgomery. A council that says “not yet” is doing a police drone program a favor, and Galladora just said so into a microphone.
Sources: Route Fifty, Montgomery County Police Department, Montgomery County Council, Bethesda Magazine, WJLA
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
