“Dayton Police Department continues to evolve its use of technology to support public safety while ensuring transparency and accountability,” said Dayton police Assistant Chief Eric Henderson in a statement.
Drones
Pilots with the Dayton Police Department utilized drone technology on 370 occasions in 2024, primarily to assist officers during searches, SWAT operations, search and rescue missions and crowd control, says the police department’s 2024 annual surveillance technology report.
In 2023, patrol operations pilots utilized drone technology on 11 occasions, including 44 flight missions to try to locate a child who went missing in the spring, according to the 2023 surveillance technology report.
The police department has 16 drones, also called unmanned aerial surveillance (UAS) vehicles. The agency says it first purchased several drones back in 2018, but it has acquired more equipment and last year it trained multiple new operators.
The surveillance technology report says drones are used by the bomb squad, SWAT team, hostage negotiation team, traffic services unit and patrol operations.
Police say drones can help officers make tactical decisions while maintaining a safe distance from a potential threat. The police department says drones last year helped deescalate a situation involving a suicidal subject and assisted officers when they had to search a vacant structure that had people hiding inside.
“The increase in unmanned aerial vehicle deployments is mainly due to expanded operational use,” said Assistant Chief Henderson. “These include building checks for suspects, traffic crash reconstruction and searching for wanted or missing people.”
The Dayton City Commission in December gave the police department the OK to purchase “tethered drones” that can be launched, fly and land with a push of a button.
These drones, which are connected to a power supply, can remain in the air for long periods of time.
Downtown cameras
The Dayton Police Department last year replaced the city’s downtown security cameras with 17 new Axis cameras, according to the surveillance technology report. The downtown security camera network has grown by three cameras.
The University of Dayton Research Institute gifted about two dozen security cameras to the police department that were installed downtown in 2013. But officials said the camera system was aging and some of the equipment had stopped working.
The police department says it spent about $40,000 on new security camera hardware last year, plus $4,425 on maintenance costs.
Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein last fall said police were able to identify and arrest a couple of men who violently tried to rob a TV cameraman in downtown within hours because of the cameras. She said the cameras protect downtown, which she described as the city’s economic engine.
Because of the cameras Dickstein gave this warning to people who commit crimes downtown: “You will be seen. We will catch you. We will arrest you. We will prosecute you.”
The Dayton Police Department a couple of years ago launched a Fusus pilot program with funding from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
Fusus technology allows law enforcement to access live and recorded video from public and privately owned security cameras. Under the voluntary program, camera owners can provide police with full, limited or emergency access to their live and recorded video footage.
Fusus technology can extract a live video feed and send it to an emergency operations center or to officers out in the field.
The Ohio Attorney Office’s Fusus pilot program concluded at the end of June last year. Dominic Binkley, deputy press secretary for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, said the pilot project was to allow law enforcement to test out the technology and its capabilities.
The police department stopped using Fusus when state funding went away.
But the department said it transitioned to a comparable program last year through Flock, the company that provides the agency with 72 fixed-site automatic license plate readers stationed across the city.
The department spent about $49,700 to upgrade to FlockOS. Henderson said police found the technology to be useful.
Police surveillance technology has been controversial. Some community members have said that the police department needs robust policies in place to make sure that people’s rights aren’t violated and the technology is not abused.
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