Police departments across California are moving quickly to send drones into the air ahead of officers, and the expansion is meeting open revolt at city halls and police commissions, CalMatters reported on Tuesday, as residents object to warrantless surveillance and the vendors selling it.
Nearly 60 law enforcement agencies in the state now run drone programs, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. A 2021 state law requiring explicit local board approval for “military equipment,” including drones, has forced departments to defend the programs in public hearings before they can expand, and a landmark privacy lawsuit has given opponents new ammunition.
In San Francisco, an Oct. 14 police commission meeting drew a packed, mostly hostile room. The department asked commissioners to approve a policy allowing drones for “public safety response,” active investigations, training and “community outreach,” with public footage retained for 30 days unless tied to an open investigation. The draft barred random “general surveillance” and tracking of activity protected by the First Amendment.
“Public safety and personal privacy shouldn’t be competing interests,” said Anna Carney, the president of Stop Crime SF, urging commissioners to give officers every responsible advantage to save lives.
Opponents wanted a harder line. “If SFPD truly cared about operating these drones with any respect to privacy, the very least that can happen is one of you make an amendment to require a warrant,” said Manny, a member of the privacy group DeFlock SF, who urged the commission to cancel the department’s contract with the drone maker Skydio. Commissioners voted to advance the policy to labor negotiations without adding a warrant requirement.
Sonoma County shows where the legal fight is heading. The county began using drones for code enforcement in 2019, and investigators with the American Civil Liberties Union later documented hundreds of warrantless flights over private yards, homes and windows, all without a published policy. The ACLU of Northern California sued in 2025, and the county settled last month, agreeing to obtain warrants or consent before residential code inspections, restrict data retention and notify residents whose property was filmed from the air.
The rules remain thin. “There’s three main buckets,” said Katie Inman, a drone policy lawyer at Holland & Knight and a former Federal Aviation Administration official: constitutional principles, state statutes and FAA operating rules. California has no comprehensive statute governing police drone use, she said, leaving agencies to work out Fourth Amendment case law on their own. The Supreme Court has upheld aerial surveillance visible to the naked eye from lawful altitudes. “But those were manned aircraft; they are not drones,” Ms. Inman said. “With drones, you can fly at much lower altitudes, you can get thermal imaging, you can get tracking... a lot of surveillance potential there that you would not normally have.”
The industry is supplying the momentum. Skydio, based in San Mateo and used by both the San Francisco and Los Angeles departments, began by building drones to film extreme-sports athletes. After the federal government labeled the Chinese drone maker DJI a security risk in 2020, Skydio turned to military, police and corporate customers. At a recent customer conference, its chief executive, Adam Bry, described a lineup reaching from small drones that fly inside buildings to models traveling 100 miles per hour over a 30-mile radius, plus AI software that would analyze 911 calls in real time and recommend dispatching a drone on its own.
The money is piling up, from taxpayers and billionaires alike. Santa Ana approved $682,900 for its Drone as First Responder program with Skydio, and Stockton’s City Council approved a $3.15 million expansion with Flock Safety to add six drones to its network of 120 license-plate cameras. San Francisco’s department last year took a $9.4 million donation from Chris Larsen, the billionaire co-founder of the crypto company Ripple, to expand its drone and surveillance systems, Mission Local reported. Flock Safety has spent millions lobbying local and federal officials and says its technology helped “solve” a million crimes last year, a claim researchers are increasingly skeptical of, according to CalMatters.
But it doesn’t anymore because now we have sold out to tech billionaires.... SFPD has been sloppy and reckless with our privacy. How can we trust them with these tools?
That was Ilona, a San Francisco resident, at the commission meeting, faulting officials for accepting Mr. Larsen’s donation. The premise of the Bill of Rights, she said, “used to mean something in this city.”