Supt. Don Chapman is standing on the roof of the Vancouver Police Department’s Cambie Street precinct and taking questions about the 20 drones used in various operations by officers.
A small group of journalists had just observed an officer fly a drone out over False Creek and back to a designated landing pad on the roof on what was an overcast Wednesday afternoon.
The flight was a demonstration of the drone’s capabilities, which include its bird’s-eye view, its speed to get to scenes faster than officers in vehicles and ability to carry a small first-aid kit or inflatable life preserver to a person in distress.
The camera-equipped flying machines range in size, with some used outdoors and others indoors. The model used depends on the type of call, with the VPD’s emergency response teams using them to assist in arrests of people in houses, buildings and vehicles.
Chapman was clear on what they are not used for.
“We're not interested in looking in people's windows or anything like that,” he said, noting the department’s use of drones was approved by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C.
Stranger attacks
The VPD’s program began in 2019 with the purchase of six drones — three big ones and three small ones. The department now has 20 for a total cost of $302,000.
The four-rotor machine used in Wednesday’s demonstration — a DJI Matrice 350 RTK — cost $40,000.
While the department’s use of drones has been steady and has increased in the past six years, it was a high-profile incident on Sept. 4, 2024 where one was used that caught the public’s attention.
Police were called downtown just after 7 a.m. to a pair of unfolding unprovoked stranger attacks, which left one man dead and another with a severed hand. The first attack occurred near Cathedral Square, and the second at West Georgia and Hamilton.
Shortly after 9 a.m., police were led to Habitat Island adjacent to Olympic Village after responding to reports that a man behaving erratically had approached a stranger and began yelling at him.
Police located and arrested the man with the assistance of a drone.
Sgt. Daniel Cameron, one of the department’s 25 trained drone pilots and officer at the controls of Wednesday’s demonstration flight, explained how critical the drone was in the arrest of the 34-year-old White Rock resident.
“It worked well in the sense that we were able to get a live feed up right away and send that video feedback to our operations command centre,” Cameron said. “And we were able to keep visuals for those [officers] outside of the island to understand how the arrest was taking place.”
Man with a gun
During Wednesday’s demonstration, police also showed footage of a “man with a gun” call that occurred a couple years ago. A caller noticed a man with a gun in an area near the Home Depot at Terminal and Clark.
The drone footage shows the man doing something with the gun behind a wall. He then proceeds along Terminal, near the Starbucks drive-thru, before several officers are seen telling the man to drop the gun, which he did and was arrested.
Last week, police used a drone to locate a vehicle and person reported to be waving a gun in the air. The gun ended up being a replica firearm, according to Deputy Police Chief Howard Chow, who circulated a photo of the arrest via the X social medial platform.
Drones have also been used to find missing persons, monitor large protests, assist traffic officers in collision investigations and in rescues, including responding to a woman and her daughter in a kayak who got off course last summer in English Bay.
“So we were able to take the drone out, locate her fairly quickly, and then guide search and rescue to her exact location,” Chapman said.
436 criminal investigations
In 2024, police launched 1,826 drone flights, which were connected to 436 criminal investigations. Some were launched via an officer’s desk in the department’s command centre at the Cambie Street precinct, others from the roof.
Along with emergency response teams, some officers carry drones in their vehicles and can be launched remotely — particularly in an area where a drone is not visible from the roof at Cambie Street.
When a drone is launched from Cambie Street, another officer equipped with an air traffic control radio must be on the roof to ensure the machine doesn’t interfere with any other air traffic.
50 miles per hour
Typically, they are flown no higher than 400 feet and their use is limited to their power source, with a battery swap necessary after 30 to 40 minutes. A large drone can reach a speed of 50 miles per hour.
“We can get to Main Street down near Cordova in about a minute and a half, if we need to,” said Cameron, adding that infrared and night vision are other features of some of the drones.
He cited an example of the use of that technology when police working the night shift were searching for a missing person.
“The drone operators that were working night shift came out and utilized the infrared night vision cameras we've got, and were able to actually spot her underneath a picnic table that no one would have seen her otherwise,” he said, noting she was in medical crisis.
“We were able to get [paramedics] and police officers over to her right away, instead of having to comb the field person by person — 10 feet apart — making a line and having to do things the old fashioned way.”
'Sitting inside with weapons'
Police had some of the smaller drones on display on the roof. Cameron showed one that didn’t have infrared or thermal imaging capabilities.
“But what it can do is it can go down hallways, edge into rooms, go up to cars where people are sitting inside with weapons, and it can get a live observation of what is going on in that space in real time, and feed that back to officers to make the best decision possible,” he said.
Though the department has more than two dozen officers trained in how to operate drones, there are only four full-time pilots. What those pilots are seeing during a flight, however, can be flipped to a patrol officer’s cellphone.
The majority of the flights are not recorded, said Chapman, noting officers hit the record button about five per cent of the time. So far, none of the recorded footage has been used in court cases.
He emphasized the department does not use facial recognition software or artificial intelligence software to try to identify people.
“We actually don't have that capability in the VPD, nor are we looking to go in that direction,” he said, noting also that the suggestion from some critics that police are sharing data from recordings with other police departments is false.
BIV reached out to the BC Civil Liberties Association Thursday to comment on whether the organization had concerns about the VPD’s drone program but was informed via email that no one was available to respond.
