HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Drones are used for all kinds of things, photography, agriculture, even completing deliveries. Law enforcement departments are also jumping in on this trend. And in most cases using drones to save lives,
The flying machines are on display in Huntsville this week.
James Bushey, Adorama Technical Services director, explains how drones can help first responders. "Coming from a public safety background myself. I worked in a very small community as far as population went but a large geographic size. And so for us to be able to get a hundred first responders out to an area where a child's gone missing, just is impossible. So to be able leverage technology in that way where we can supplement that personnel time with having basically flying cameras up in the sky that can help us locate people faster and easier. It makes all the sense in the role to me, especially when time is of the essence."
The Madison Police Department is one agency on hand for this week's demonstrations and training. Detective Theresa Taylor-Duncan says, "We can also use these drones in a barricaded subject kind of situation where we have a very high-risk situation where we can't go through the door without risking lives and safety of our officers and others involved. So by putting a drone up in an area like that, it gives us a better picture with taking advantage of every resource we have as opposed to having to delay and wait and recon the area. We can get an instant picture and give us an instant view of what's going on."
Chad Tillman, UAH Operations Director for the city of Huntsville explains another use. "We get a bomb threat or a suspicious package. We can put a drone up we can see what's going on. We can see if anybody standing around watching. We can actually zoom in on a package take pictures of it and send it back to the bomb squad. So that as they're coming in, they've got a live feed of what is going on"
Taylor-Duncan adds, "As a municipal police department, we don't have a helicopter. We don't have a submarine. But we do have airspace and we have underwater areas where we can use these resources. It's kind of a one-stop-shop where we can use it for multiple different purposes. And save a lot of money as far as keeping officers on the ground. We can put it in the air we can see what we need. We can go underwater and see what we need."