El Paso Police Take To The Skies With New Drone Program

Calling the El Paso Police Department may now get you a drone instead of an actual  police officer.

Yep, the EPPD now has an air force. The helicopter(s), you're used to but now you will start to see drones zipping around, answering police calls.

The program isn't new, it actually got started about 6 years ago and now has 22 drone "docks" scattered around the city.

The main thing the drone program does is speed up the response time for cops and other first responders while getting critical info about crashes, missing persons, standoffs, searches for suspects, etc, into officials hands quicker.

El Paso Police Department EPPD’s Assistant Chief Humberto Talamantes said ...

"With those high optics and thermal imaging, we can locate missing persons or people in danger much more efficiently," Talamantes said. "It can quickly and actually capture three-dimensional modeling set traffic accident scenes, and this is done within minutes-- versus it will take us an hour or more. So we can open our roads for commerce and citizens much more quickly." - cbs4local

The drones are also very handy for monitoring large crowds or covering large areas from above and spotting potential problems sooner. They can also direct personnel on the ground to a problem they might otherwise take longer to find.

READ MORE: Walmart Delivery Drones

EPPD drone pilots are licensed and El Paso is the first city in the United States to receive a "Class C airspace beyond a visual line of sight". WTH is that? Basically, it means you can fly your drone without being, (physically), in the immediate area. Read more here.