The White County Sheriff’s Office will pursue grant funding to establish a drone program to assist with search and rescue operations, crash scene investigations and the pursuit of fleeing suspects.
White County Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant James Blankenship said the agency currently owns no drones and lacks the local funding necessary to purchase the technology.
“Within just the last few weeks we’ve had several fleeing suspects run off in the woods and without those we were not able to successfully find those individuals in those foot chases,” Blankenship said. “Our K9s are not always available and so we got to have other technology or other means of tools to be able to pull out of the bag in order to help us, but it would be tremendous to be able to use them.”
Blankenship said the estimated cost for the equipment starts in the upper $20,000 range. Blankenship said Captain Nate Theiss serves as the grant writer for the department and is handling the application process to secure the necessary funds.
“Axon is what we’ve been looking for, but because pricing and what not right now I don’t know where we’re at with trying to get a grant for it but pricing for the county to be able to purchase it is something that we’re not able to do at this present moment,” Blankenship said.
Blankenship said the drones would be used to locate lost or injured hikers in the county’s various hiking areas. Blankenship said the technology would also allow the department to reach desolate areas that are otherwise inaccessible to officers on the ground.
“They’ll be really useful because we do have a lot of desolate areas that lead off into areas that we can’t always get to and so to have that technology to be able to get them in get in the air and get to areas that we can’t access would be something that would be very very beneficial,” Blankenship said.
Blankenship said the department previously possessed an American-made drone through a grant several years ago, but the equipment became obsolete before it could be fully utilized. Blankenship said the agency currently relies on drones operated by the White County EMA, though that resource is not always available when needed.
“We do have a drone in the county that our EMA operates for us if we do have to have them, but they’re not always available either,” Blankenship said. “So we’re kind of- we got several pilots but we have no ability to be able to use any drones and that’s the only one that’s available but that’s kind of hit or miss.”
Blankenship said the department intends to follow strict privacy protocols and will require search warrants for criminal investigations unless consent is provided. Blankenship said the agency also hopes to implement a Drone First Responder program to provide EMS crews with aerial scene updates and patient information while they are in route to an emergency.
“Just getting the word out there, getting- trying to get grants, people maybe try to help us along the way in pushing to get get this program up off the ground with something we’ve been trying to do for the last couple of years and it’s just not one of those things that we can reach at this moment due to due to the funding,” Blankenship said.