Oro Valley police leasing controversial Flock Safety drones

The Oro Valley Town Council authorized the town’s police to use $145,887 to lease drones to help detain people charged with drug trafficking, human smuggling, illegal immigration and other border-related crimes within the town just north of Tucson. The council voted unanimously on the measure in January.

The program is called Drone as First Responder Program, and it’s offered by Flock Safety.

“This program is probably the one I’ve been most excited about,” said Lt. Kevin Peterson of the department’s special operations bureau. “I really think it can revolutionize and change the way we respond and make our community safer and our officers safer.”

He noted that while Oro Valley isn’t on the border, it is affected by border-related crimes, such as fentanyl and other narcotics and human smuggling.

In response to questions from officials about using these drones for immigration enforcement, Peterson said the department did not originally list immigration in its grant application.

What do the drones do?

While Oro Valley has had drones since 2017, they require an on-site operator and take time to set up and fly. The Flock Safety drones can operate immediately from anywhere there is internet access.

Peterson said the greatest benefit of the automated drones is faster response time. He noted that other agencies with these drones are seeing response times to calls ranging from 90-100 seconds, he said. He also noted that 70% of the time, the drone arrives on the scene before an officer.

“The current model that we have now, a drone operator has to respond to the scene, unload the equipment, get a visual observer for a visual line of sight and then launch the drone,” Peterson said, noting how the time it takes to set up creates a gap in being able to contain someone who is dangerous.

He noted other uses for the drones include finding missing people and helping locate fire hotspots with thermal imaging.

What is Flock Safety? What do its products do?

Flock Safety is a company that produces automated drones, license plate readers and security cameras.

Flock’s automated license plate recognition software collects details and the movement of vehicles and stores them on the cloud, an online storage space. Flock uses machine learning to identify a range of details of vehicles, like the make, body type, whether it is missing a plate and other identifiers, like window stickers. Flock provides searchable data and alerts to law enforcement.

Oro Valley is one of many police agencies across the state that use Flock Safety cameras to detect license plates, according to Darren Wright, a department spokesperson.

Some critics have concerns about Flock cameras' use in immigration raids. While Flock says its license plate readers help deter crime, critics say they differ from other surveillance equipment because they collect personal data. 404 media found Flock safety data had been accessed by immigration officials.

Oro Valley maintains it does not use Flock cameras to detect facial recognition, people, gender or race, according to the town’s transparency website.

Data from the department’s Flock cameras is retained for 30 days. Wright said the policy for footage retention from drones is the same as footage collected from body cameras and depends on the crime. If the footage is for a serious felony, it would be kept longer, Wright said.

In a recent social media post, activist group DeFlock Tucson posted the department’s audit logs obtained through a public records request. It showed Oro Valley police logging one search for “protest.”

While the group criticized the department for surveilling protesters, Oro Valley police maintained the search in that Flock camera was mislabeled. The search was for someone who had assaulted a person during a "No Kings" protest, Wright said.

Does Oro Valley share its Flock data with immigration officials?

Wright said Oro Valley shares its data and footage with regional partners. Each request is considered case by case.

“If they're doing it for legitimate law enforcement purposes, then the grant request is probably going to be granted,” he said.

Asked if crossing undocumented is a case the department would consider a legitimate reason to access data or footage, Wright said it depends on whether the case was tied to criminal activity.

“It's case-by-case basis. It depends on if there's another criminal aspect to it,” he said.

What about oversight and privacy measures?

Peterson, who is leading the effort to find grants to fund the automated drone program, said the Oro Valley Police Department's policy is not to conduct random surveillance. He defined surveillance as “preplanned operations to watch people in their actions.”

Peterson pointed to Flock’s transparency page, which logs the number of searches, other agencies with which Oro Valley has shared its data and more. He said that page also would log data from the drones, including a drone’s flight path, distance traveled and number of minutes in the air.

Drones that are used by the department do not record the entire time, police said.

“If it’s up in the air and there’s nothing that needs to be recorded by the drone pilot, it’s not going to be recording,” said Zachary Young, a commander with Oro Valley police. “Our policy is very strict. We do not do random surveillance with this platform. That is not the intention of it, in any way, shape or form.”

The department’s policy manual prohibits unmanned aerial systems to conduct “random surveillance activities” or to target a person based on race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation and more. The manual also prohibits drones from being weaponized.