Pretty soon, if you find yourself in a crisis, the first thing you may see coming to your assistance might not be a person, but a drone in the sky.
On Wednesday, the Reno City Council approved a $1.9 million contract between the City of Reno and Motorola Solutions for a new drone to be used as part of a First Responder program.
Sparks Police Department implemented the program earlier this year, but it was with a different company.Â
BRINC, the drone manufacturing company, works with 700 public safety agencies across the country.
The CEO says the drones allow two key components that are helpful for police.
"Number one, I would say, is 70-second 911 call response times," said Blake Resnick, CEO of BRINC. "Drones are just able to get on scene very rapidly after folks call 911. Number two would be that drones are able to clear about a quarter of calls for service without ever sending a person."
Resnick says the drones allow departments to better use their resources.
Reno Police plan to have four drones at separate locations.
Potential coverage areas for Reno Police's new drones. Police Chief says they are not set in stone.
​The locations are based on crime data. The twoareas in downtown will include the Reno Public Safety Center and possibly a fire station.
Reno Police Chief Kathryn Nance says they are still working out the details for the final locations.
The other two locations are looking to be in south Reno near Damonte Ranch and north Reno near the North Valleys.
"South Reno and north Reno both have staffing limitations," she said. "So, it does take us longer to get to calls for service there."
Nance is hoping to have those drones implemented in April.
The drones will bring the first eyes to the scene, so dispatchers can dictate a better response.
The program will allow collaboration between fire and other first responder agencies.
The drones will also be able to deliver lifesaving items such as Narcan, defibrillators, or EpiPens.
The drones can either be fully automated or remotely controlled by an operator. Nance says someone will be watching the live feed at all times.
The drones come with sirens, a speaker, and a microphone so someone can talk to the suspects.
According to Resnick, the drone can fly for 42 minutes on one charge. He added that the drones can typically fly about two to three miles from the launch site.Â
Resnick says the drones can fly anywhere there is a cellular connection.
Nance says some of the specific benefits are enhanced officer safety, reduction in use-of-force incidents, and reductions in dispatched calls.
The Chief says the drones will only be used for higher priority calls and won't do too much preventative surveillance.Â
"We're going to look for things like for somebody with a gun, a shooting, a car accident, maybe a robbery in progress," she said. "They also could be used for missing people to try and identify using the thermal technology to see if we can find somebody that way."
For those who are concerned about privacy, Nance says there are Federal Aviation Administration regulations and laws that must be followed.
"All of those things are already governed by current law, and we would fall into that just the same as we are now," she said. "We already have systems similar that are operated from patrol cars or from a static base, from a mobile base in a different area that we can deploy. And we already use the same rules, so we cannot conduct surveillance into somebody's house without a warrant."
Moving forward, RPD's first year in the program is free. There is a chance for the city to opt out of the agreement without having to spend a dime. It would have to be 30 days before the year is up.
If the city opts in, the rest of the contract is five years, and will total out to about $1.9 million during that span, which will come out of the city's general fund.
