News, deep dives, and analysis — every Minnesota story, newest first.
The Minneapolis City Council deadlocked 6-6, killing a free 75-day Skydio Drone as First Responder trial after members cited the company’s ties to ICE and the Israeli military, despite neighboring cities expanding similar programs.
A St. Cloud police drone found 73-year-old Ronald Statz alive in a Stearns County cornfield after a dozen agencies, including a State Patrol plane and a DNR helicopter, searched for hours.
A Minneapolis police drone's thermal camera located 82-year-old veteran Bob Stewart in a creek ravine in nine minutes, after a three-and-a-half-hour ground search came up empty — footage the department released as the City Council weighs a 75-day Skydio Drones as First Responders trial.
Minnesota just published something no other state hands its residents: an itemized receipt for every police drone program inside its borders. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s 2025 Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles report counts 9,080 warrantless flights across 135 agencies, up 38% in a year, and the Rochester Police Department leads them all. Rochester flew…
Arvada Police Department in Colorado used its new Skydio X10 Drone First Responder program on June 17, 2026 to track and arrest a shoplifting suspect who fled on foot from a Target store, the agency confirmed in a statement. The drone was already airborne when the call came in. A loss prevention officer at the…
The St Paul Police Department’s new dock-based Drone as First Responder program flew 472 missions in its first four weeks, already passing the 436 patrol-drone flights the department logged in all of 2025. The three rooftop Skydio X10 drones went live on May 30 and now reach calls in under 90 seconds, a number St…
The City of Bloomington, Minnesota, will spend the next two weeks running a Drone as First Responder pilot using Skydio X10 aircraft and the Skydio Dock, the city announced on May 15. The testing period begins the week of May 18 and is intended to give city staff a working view of what DFR technology…
Rosemount, Minnesota, is the latest American community to put a drone in the hands of its police department, and the numbers surrounding its launch say more about the broader trend than any single agency announcement. The Rosemount Police Department launched its Unmanned Aerial System program under a policy adopted January 1, 2026. Nine officers have…
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