Red Deer RCMP testing expanded use of drones

The suspected vehicle thief never stood a chance.

He hit the ground running after abandoning the stolen SUV near Capstone. An RCMP dog team was soon on the scene.

The poor odds of eluding police were cut to almost nothing when a drone equipped with high-magnification and thermal cameras arrived and hovered 80 metres over the scene.

In the test scenario run on Thursday from Red Deer RCMP’s downtown detachment, it took only minutes to find the suspect, determine he was not holding any weapons by zooming the camera in, and vector in an RCMP dog team to his hiding place in stacks of construction materials.

That success and the potential to nab suspected criminals with less risk to officers, bystanders and the crooks themselves are why the RCMP is doing trial runs of drone first responder technology in Lac La Biche, Red Deer and Stoney Nakoda First Nation, west of Calgary.

The 12-day trial, two days of training and 10 days of running scenarios, was about half done on Thursday in Red Deer where the technology was showcased to the media and Red Deer Emergency Services.

RCMP Chief Supt. Kevin Kunetzki has been overseeing the trials and assessing the potential of having drones arrive first on crime or emergency scenes to give arriving human first responders as best a picture as possible of what they are getting into.

Red Deer made the list as a test site because it is a large city detachment that is already experienced with using drones, although in a more limited way than is envisioned in a drone first responder program.

Nine local RCMP officers are trained as drone pilots and they have used them more than 300 times in nearly three years. Drones arrive at a scene with an officer and are then launched.

First responder drones can be launched from a detachment and controlled from there, with images sent to officers on laptops and even smartphones. During trials in Lac La Biche a drone was operated from K-Division headquarters 250 kilometres away, said Kunetzki, who is K-Division’s deputy criminal operations officer.

A drone launched from Red Deer’s downtown detachment can get to either end of the city in two minutes, he said.

“Then all of a sudden gets you that advanced awareness of a situation. Do we need to scale up our resources? Do we need to scale them down? Is the person gone on arrival or are there actually five people fighting instead of two?

“Are there any weapons involved? That can be very important from a police and public safety perspective.”

Kunetzki said drones have proven so successful there have been cases of suspects raising their hands and surrendering to the drone hovering overhead knowing arrest is imminent.

Const. Tim Reid, a five-year Red Deer RCMP dog team member, sees huge potential in drones to make arrests.

“Once they know we can see see them and follow them, there’s little recourse but to give up,” he said.

Reid, whose dog was stabbed in the line of duty, also sees the safety benefits of the kind of advanced knowledge provided by drones – not always in the way one expects.

A few years ago, he was tracking a suspect with the aid of a drone near Morley, Alta. when a drone’s thermal imaging camera picked up a mother bear and her cubs directly in his dog’s search path. Reid and his partner were able to give the bear a wide berth.

Barry Kelly, a civilian assisting local RCMP with the drone technology, said they have been often used for locating missing children or tracking down break and enter suspects in areas such as industrial parks.

Using drones as first responders has been used successfully by a number of U.S. police forces. He has seen statistics showing drone response times of as little as 90 seconds of an incident.

During the Red Deer trial, drones have been launched in aid of Red Deer Emergency Services, which is seen as a potential partner in any first responder drone initiative.

In one instance, a drone was able to pinpoint a fire in a wooded area almost immediately with no need for firefighters to try to follow the smoke from the ground.

Red Deer Fire Chief Ken McMullen offered his support for expanding the use of drones.

“We’re certainly all in,” he said. “I think this is the right community to do some really good work with some of these tools in the background.”

Red Deer RCMP Supt. Holly Glassford said the detachment has already had success with drones.

“That’s really our goal is to build on that capacity with what we’ve been doing.”

During the trials, which will wrap in Stoney Nakoda First Nation next month, a variety of drone models and related technologies are being tried out.

Drones range in price starting around $10,000. The model used in Thursday’s demonstration cost around $30,000, including the docking station which has clam shell doors that open to release the unit and close when it returns to protect it from the elements while it recharges.

By comparison, an RCMP helicopter costs around $2.5 million each year to operate.

After the trials are completed, RCMP will assess the results and determine how to proceed.