--- title: "The NYPD Is Sending Drones to the Sites of 9-1-1 Calls" description: "The NYPD is now sending drones out on 9-1-1 calls to do the business of its bored, \"Candy Crush\"-addicted human cops." date: "2025-03-22" modified: "2025-03-22" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/nypd-sending-drones-calls" categories: - "Drones" - "Robotics" - "Robots and Machines" tags: - "drones" - "nyc" - "nypd" - "surveillance" --- # The NYPD Is Sending Drones to the Sites of 9-1-1 Calls ![The NYPD is now sending drones out on 9-1-1 calls to do the business of its bored, "Candy Crush"-addicted human cops.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is now sending drones out on 9-1-1 calls to do the business that their [Candy Crush-addicted]() human officers are too busy to tackle — and surveilling everyone in sight while they do it. As the cybersecurity news site [*The Record* reports](), these "drones as first responders" — or DFRs, as the NYPD calls them — can fly up to 45 miles per hour, filming everything on the block with telephoto cameras that can, [per manufacturer Skydio](), identify faces and license plates from nearly a mile away. Launched [last year]() as part of [embattled mayor Eric Adams]()' quest to [shove technology]() into everything [regardless of public opinion](), these drones were initially only going to respond to "select priority public safety calls," according to a [press release issued last November]() that formally announced the program. As *The Record* notes, however, the NYPD's definition of "select priority" seems awfully vague — and it [doesn't actually report]() how many drones are deployed on police calls, either. Prior to the program's official launch, the department revealed that they planned to [use drones to monitor house parties]() that receive noise complaints over Labor Day Weekend in 2023, which also coincides with J'Ouvert festivities that take place in New York's Caribbean communities. In fact, that festival was cited specifically by a former NYPD commissioner who called the drones a "[wonderful thing]()." If shelling out for party-surveilling drones seems to you like a misuse of taxpayer funds, you're not alone. In an [interview with *The Guardian*]() in 2023, a senior strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union called the NYPD's drone usage "dystopian" and a form of "racialized discrimination." Now that their use has been expanded to do more than just allowing cops to be remote spectators at peoples' backyard parties, those epithets feel prescient. Because the [US Supreme Court has ruled]() that law enforcement can legally surveil anyone's outdoor property without a warrant via drone, the NYPD has followed suit. Per NYPD policy, drones aren't allowed to operate inside a property warrantless, but outside doesn't count, basically. As constitutional rights lawyer Sidney Thaxter told *The Record*, that means the NYPD could film someone in their backyard — and because the department's Skydio drones are [equipped with telephoto lenses](), they could do so from a high enough altitude that anyone who wasn't looking at the sky wouldn't notice the lurking aircraft. "They can set a drone up in the air far enough away that you can't hear it," Thaxter said, "and they can zoom in and can literally see what's in your hands." While we don't know exactly how often the NYPD is using their drones, the department has already bragged about deploying them to help them surveil protests and the people demonstrating at them in recent years. After protests erupted across the city in response to the conflict in Gaza, police [boasted to the press]() that they'd used drones 13 times to make a whopping 239 arrests — all in a single week, and all in Brooklyn. "We got the whole thing on video," assistant NYPD commissioner Kaz Daughtry said, referring to pro-Palestinian protesters who were caught on video throwing eggs and bottles at cops during an [October 2021 demonstration]() in South Brooklyn. "We’ll be turning that evidence over to the Brooklyn DA’s office to help enhance the arrests." Amid a larger culture of crackdowns on freedom of speech in New York and around the country, this kind of drone use does indeed feel dystopian — or, as Albert Fox Cahn of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project put it to *The Record*, as if the NYPD was treating "Black Mirror" as an "instruction manual." **More on NYPD tech:** [*AI Completely Failed to Catch CEO Killer, With Cops Instead Relying on Random McDonald’s Employee*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()