Police Using Drones: Which Drones do Police Use?
David: Hey everybody, David Plummer here from Aerial Influence. I'm here with my business partner, Michael Ferguson, and our special guest Lieutenant Matt Udelhoven of the Elgin Police Department. This is part four of a six-part series, and what we want to talk about now is the different drones that are available to police and how you guys are using them.
One of the questions I have is, because drones are so different...you've got the Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual, which is small, and you've got the Matrice, which is huge, but the Matrice has much higher quality. So what's more important, the quick deployability of the Mavic, or the slower deployability but higher quality image of the Matrice? I know that's a hard question!
Lt. Udelhoven: It is a hard question. It is. I hate to deflect it and say it's a case-by-case basis, but it would truly come down to your needs assessment as well as budget. The Enterprise is great. Like you said, it's out of the box and up and running in about a minute. So, for the quick subject-bailed-on-a-traffic-stop or a burglar alarm and you want to check the roof, things like that, it’s very quick and ready to go. The downfall to that is, compared to the Matrice, all you have is zoom, or you could have a thermal, but it's a lower grade than the Matrice 210 with the incredible zoom and magnificent thermal. So it's kind of your preference what would be best for you.
David: Yeah. And obviously, price range. You're looking at a pretty hefty fee for something like the Matrice 210, obviously, but the quality is crazy. I mean, when you can zoom in from a mile away on something and read a t-shirt, that's pretty great!
Michael: Yeah, and I would say that what we've been...and you can probably back this up...when we've tested the Dual, it's a much smaller thermal and I've been kind of saying, you know, if you're under 200 feet, then it probably is a great drone.
Lt. Udelhoven: Yeah. I would say 150-200 feet and lower, it is a great camera for the money and for the thermal. But if you're up 400 feet, you're going to notice a major difference between the Matrice and the Enterprise.
Michael: Yeah, you're not going to know the deer or bunny rabbit from a person.
David: And there are some other options coming out. But I think what it comes down to is there is no one perfect drone yet, and there probably won't be because then they won't be able to sell several of them in several different options. What everybody wants is that small, foldable drone that’s quick to deploy and also has a 30-times optical zoom and also has the top-of-the-line thermal. That's what everybody wants right now and that doesn't exist.
Now, there are companies like Autel, they just came out with the Evo II. know they've had a lot of delays and a lot of issues getting that thing out, but that's got replaceable gimbals on it and it's going to be, I think, around 9 or 10 grand with the thermal on it.
Michael: Yeah and it's got a full 640x512 high-resolution thermal on it.
David: And you can actually switch the gimbals on it. So we'll see! Autel is a good company, they've had some success, but are they going to be able to go over into this realm with the thermal cameras?
Michael: You can get something cranked out where if something goes down, they can get another drone into the police’s hands.
David: And is it as reliable? I mean, that's the one thing DJI has going for it. It seems that regardless of what you think of the company or your politics or anything else, nobody's making drones the way they are. And as high quality as they are.
Lt. Udelhoven: I was just gonna say, David, you hit the nail on the head. There isn't one all-encompassing drone just yet, but I kind of equate that even to the patrolmen on the street. The things that you have...you're talking a drone with a thermal, a light, a PA system, a dropping device...there may not be that one drone. That's like an officer saying, you know, I'm carrying my body-worn camera, my taser, my nightstick….you can only put so much on a person. Same thing with a drone. You're going to have to kind of choose your call that you're going on or choose your battle if you will, your assignment.
Michael: Yeah, and that kind of gets into where if you have a crash scene or reconstruction, that's a completely different drone, a completely different procedure altogether.
David: And so many departments are using the Phantom 4 to do their mapping. We recently tested out a system called SkyeBrowse, which is really interesting because it's super fast. One of the issues with them is that they still have not had a map put into a court case or anything like that because they're not sure how accurate it is going to be. I mean, it's definitely a lower resolution map than something like the Phantom would produce, and obviously not as accurate as something like the Phantom 4 RTK would reproduce because that's going to be like centimeter-level accuracy.
But I think as this is all evolving, police departments are figuring out what they need. You know, because this is all such new ground. Like, do they need the Phantom 4 RTK? Maybe they don't. Maybe they just need the Phantom and maybe they need something else. We're all figuring that out as we go.
What I do know is we got two more episodes left of this podcast with Matt Udelhoven! How do you like that for a transition? We've got two more episodes left with Matt. We're so grateful he's here with us. We'll have another episode soon, so you should totally come back for that.
Drones are our future and we want to be here as a resource for you. So subscribe to our emails to get the latest drone knowledge.
Michael: As always, thank you for reading. We're excited to share the future of drones with you.