Police departments across multiple states are increasingly using “drone as first responder” (DFR) technology to live-track and apprehend fleeing shoplifters who target big box stores.
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The Daily Wire reports that police drones can beat officers to a crime scene by roughly two minutes while providing live footage to officers on the way to the scene in their patrol cars.
🚨 Police drones are now chasing suspected grab-and-run thieves through parking lots in California — and this is one use of technology that could actually make policing safer.
In Concord, a drone tracked two fleeing shoplifting suspects through a Ross parking lot, helping…
— MDBayNews (@MDBayNews) September 6, 2026
Officer Ty Wood with the Clovis, California Police Department said the drone footage gives law enforcement a significant advantage, noting, “We have the ability to see license plates and get physical descriptions of suspects.”
According to The Daily Wire, the city of Chula Vista, just south of San Diego, uses the DFR system to “transmit critical information back to emergency teams in real time, allowing for faster and better-informed decision-making.”
The Daily Wire reports Chula Vista police launched the drone program in 2018, making it one of the first of its kind in the country and one of 10 agencies the Federal Aviation Administration selected for its original drone pilot program.
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Law enforcement agencies across the nation, including departments in Redmond, Washington, Bensalem, Pennsylvania, and Arvada, Colorado, have used drones to successfully track fleeing suspects who otherwise might have escaped.
Authorities state that the drones are strictly deployed in response to an active emergency or 911 call rather than being used for randomized public surveillance.
Footage from the drones is stored in a private cloud service where police Body Worn Camera (BWC) footage is also stored.
That footage is stored for one year or less unless it is categorized as evidence in a crime or formal investigation.
Operating drones over crowds or in tight commercial spaces introduces complex Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) compliance challenges regarding line-of-sight laws and overflight restrictions.
The FAA issued 976 waivers between 2018 and 2025, but that number doubled from April 2025 to February 2026, signaling a demand for the new technology across emergency response services.
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