February 24, 2026 Safety & Security Committee - Feb 24, 2026

meeting

Fairfax County Board Committees 1h 21m 5 speakers 5 agenda items transcribed 2 days ago official recording ↗

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the Fairfax County Drone‑as‑First‑Responder program and how does it work?

Rodney L. Lusk 0:00

Good afternoon everyone. Uh we're gonna start the um safety and security meeting for today and we've got two agenda items um that we'll be covering. Uh the first is drones as a first responder, uh which I'm really looking forward to hearing and uh gotten the opportunity to see the drone in action. And then second, um our school crossing guard update. So we'll have both of those here on the agenda today. So let me start with uh drone as a first responder and I will turn it over, I guess, to uh Assistant Chief Blakely.

Unknown 0:38

Good afternoon, uh Chairman Lusk and members of the board. Thank you uh for for letting us come and talk to you about this exciting uh program that FCPD has been testing and evaluating along with our partners and the fire and rescue department. I'm joined here by Chief Craven, as we talk about uh drone as a first responder and how that's different from what we're currently doing. So, as you all know, uh FCPD has decades of experience in aviation excellence. We've been operating helicopters in this highly restrictive airspace for a long time, have a lot of expert uh uh leaders in that field, and for several years we've been operating a standalone drone program with our county partners and been doing so very successfully as well.

Unknown 1:22

So this is a a a program off of that program. So it's not something that's entirely new, but the concept as drone as a first responder is a national leading initiative and law enforcement uh in particular and I thought it was very interesting because we've taken this concept and made it a whole public safety uh program. So by sitting down early on with our partners in fire and rescue, we recognized that there were there was significant value in using drones uh to fly as first responders not only for police but for the fire and rescue space. Unlike others in the United States that have deployed these for law enforcement missions, uh this this does make our uh program unique, certainly even in the region.

Unknown 2:08

And I'm also happy to tell you that due to all this aviation excellence and the amount of time and energy we've put into this program, The Fairfax County Police Department is is the first department in the region to receive FAA waivers to fly drones beyond visual line of sight in the DC flight restricted airspace, which is uh something that uh no one else can say they've been able to accomplish uh uh at the point that we did it. So uh our goal in this program, and then I'm gonna turn it over to uh Major Hudson Bull to kind of talk about the nuances. Our goal in this program and why this is so different is to have a negative response time to an emergency in our community. And what we mean by that is very soon, with with your support and our full integration.

Unknown 2:52

We hope to achieve uh uh integration with our nine one one so that when key words are mentioned like gun, shot, fire, the drone uh or the technology is automatically saying, Hey, we we should we should start a drone now. And these drones would be uh launched from our real time crime center. And before police or fire and rescue personnel are even sent on the dispatch button, a drone would be arriving overhead. So in our pilot we've had great successes and we're gonna tell you a little bit about that and I'll I'll turn it over to Major Hudson Bull to share with you a little bit about our pilot and the successes that we've had. Yeah, thank you, Chief Blakely, and thank you to the members of the board for letting me present to you today.

Unknown 3:37

Uh over the past several years, drones have become commonplace in public safety departments to investigate crimes, search for missing people, and provide critical information at fire scenes or other major incidents. The drone is first responder program was established by the Fairfax County Police Department to study the ways in which a drone can Could decrease response times, increase information sharing, and create safer outcomes for the community and public safety members. This program is housed within the Real Time Crime Center where all the supervisors and detectives assigned to the unit became certified drone pilots by the FAA and the U.S.