Greg Fischer, the mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, in an interview has expressed a strong interest in utilizing a fleet of drones to act as first responders in the event of gun fire. Drones would be deployed in the area of an event to survey for any danger, or capture videos from a bird’s eye view. The city hopes that with a drone fleet at their disposal, the drones can aid emergency responders into surveying the scene for damage, danger, and evidence.
Utilizing a ShotSpotter system, the area can detect firearm discharge, leading to the drones being deployed as an unmanned surveyor. With this system alongside a readily available fleet of drones, the city can still respond in a quick manner to incidents without its citizens having the need to report it to the authorities via phone call.
Louisville, Kentucky has had its history of gun incidents, from shots being fired to actual gun violence within the streets. Fischer hopes that a fast response in the form of drones could help prevent these gun-related incidents, or if not, be the first responders and get shots of the persons who fired the gun. A drone’s camera can easily fly through an area and capture photos from the people themselves, to car license plates, or directions of where they headed.
Louisville is one of the many cities all over the United States to apply for federal funding to create their own drone programs and response systems. There is an estimated number of at least 300 cities that share this interest, so we may be seeing the future of local enforcement in the form of drones flying through the skies of an incident.
As for the 300+ applicants, so far only five have been chosen and approved for the funding and drone integration, however it is only Louisville who have shown particular interest in using an entire fleet of drones for their response system. This drone fleet proposal not only makes the human responders’ work and investigation more effective, this method is also cheaper and is expected to incur lesser privacy violations.
