“Without appropriate safeguards around deployment and use, drones could be deployed to every call for service, collecting data along the way.”
SFPD flew roughly 350 drone deployments in all of 2024. It flew over 3,500 in the first five months of 2026. It bought the drones without the Board approval state law requires, and Prop E let it skip local oversight. Now it wants a policy that allows drones anywhere an officer can go and never defines the key term.