Chula Vista’s drones are part of a pilot program between the Federal Aviation Administration and the cities of Chula Vista and San Diego. The program allows the Chula Vista Police Department to test drones and relay data back to the FAA as the federal agency rewrites regulations. The FAA gave the police department permission to fly drones at night and above people and traffic during emergencies.
Some of the regulations the FAA is considering changing is to allow drones to be flown remotely without someone maintaining a direct line of sight at all times. Currently, drones have to stay within a 1-mile radius of police headquarters while a trained pilot stands on the police station’s roof to keep an eye on the drone.
“Eventually ... they’ll be able to launch from their control center anywhere in the city without having the guy on the roof,” said FAA Program Manager Darryl Adams.
Depending on how the pilot program goes, that could happen as early as six months or one year from now, Adams added.
The police department is working with a company called CAPE, whose technology allows drones to be flown on autopilot while officers view live footage from miles away.
That technology helped Mexico's Ensenada Police Department make more than 500 arrests and experience a 10 percent decrease in crime this year.
Chula Vista’s long-term goal for the program is to have a fleet of about eight or nine drones set up throughout the city so that they could respond to any emergency call within 2 minutes less than one-third of the current response time.
©2018 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
