Police, fire, and search-and-rescue teams putting drones to work when minutes matter.
Santa Maria’s police department is getting its drone-as-first-responder program off the ground with money raised at a charity gala, not a line in the city budget. The Santa Maria Police Council, a nonprofit booster group, pulled in about $95,000 at its annual fundraiser and is handing the department a $97,869 donation to buy the aircraft.…
Two California cities moved to put police drones in the air the same week, and both ran straight into residents who don’t want them there. West Hollywood launches a sheriff-run drone program by the end of July. Berkeley opens bidding on a public safety package that bundles drones with license plate readers and cameras. DroneXL…
DJI will announce a new enterprise drone on July 8, 2026, at 8 AM EDT. The teaser, published by DJI Enterprise on July 2 under the tagline “For the Priceless Below,” shows a darkened silhouette of a quadcopter with extended landing gear, a gimbal payload slung under the body, and what appears to be a…
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,…
On Monday, Nassau County Police announced a $1 million first-responder drone program that turns emergency response on its head. Instead of waiting for a drone to launch from a headquarters, Nassau is installing eight fully automated pods across the county that can get airborne in under 30 seconds. This is what happens when you stop…
An NYPD drone fell out of the sky and caught fire in DUMBO on Tuesday night, June 23, coming down at 1 Water Street near the entrance to the FIFA World Cup Fan Zone in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The lithium-ion battery ignited on impact. Firefighters put it out. Nobody was hurt. But the aircraft dropped…
DJI has started publicly promoting a firmware change that lets its Matrice 4D Series fly compliant European beyond-visual-line-of-sight missions from a handheld controller instead of a fixed docking station. The company’s Enterprise arm laid out the details in a June 12 blog post and pushed it to a wider audience through an X thread on…
Secret Service counter-drone teams join the National Mall’s first-ever July 4 NSSE, backed by the same federal buildout funding World Cup security.
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