The Syracuse Common Council rebuked the Syracuse Police Department’s push for controversial new drones until the department provides councilors with a policy governing their use.
The department was seeking funds for three drone expenditures – but the council withdrew the items after the department failed to provide sufficient responses to councilors’ detailed questions.
Two of the items were meant to renew and update contracts with Axon Enterprises, Inc. for the software on the department’s existing SWAT drones. Sandwiched between those asks was a request for the council to approve a contract with Axon for the licensing, equipment, and software for a “drone as first responder” program.
The DFR program would allow Syracuse police to dispatch drones ahead of officers to the scene of 911 calls.
During the common council’s study session last Wednesday, councilors pressed Deputy Chief Richard Shoff for details on the DFR program. When his responses left councilors with more questions than answers, Councilor Chol Majok scheduled a Public Safety Committee meeting for the department to present more details to the council.
Majok, who chairs that committee, said that the meeting would help assuage councilors’ concerns and reassure residents – who overwhelmingly rejected the proposed drones during a public comment period.
“This gives me concerns about ethics in technology, privacy, and efficient use of taxpayer money (in an already inflated law enforcement budget),” one resident wrote. “I do not support this.”
Deputy Chief Richard Shoff joined Lieutenant Brian Williams and Sergeant Wells – the officers overseeing Syracuse police’s drone programs – to present the Public Safety Committee with more information on the proposed drone as first responder program.
During the committee meeting, Councilor Corey Williams expressed confusion with the department for pushing the council to vote that afternoon, even though the department did not provide its proposed drone policy – or a recommendation from the city’s technology experts.
“I’ve got a whole sheet worth of questions that I imagine could probably be answered in that report, and I have a hard time moving forward with an item with this asymmetric information,” Williams said.
The officers said that the department has completed a draft policy for the drone as first responder program, and would soon share it with the council once that draft is finalized.
Wells said that the program should create a demonstrable reduction in the amount of low-level calls that officers have to respond to; if the department can send a drone that can beat responding officers to the scene of a call, Wells said, the drone might determine that officers aren’t needed.
Proponents of the drones say this can help departments preserve resources and save manpower, but advocates question if the debatable benefits of the drones are worth the intrusion into residents’ lives.
The SPD officers presented a few PowerPoint slides breaking down the basics of the DFR program, and the data that it would collect. The officers showed councilors how Axon can automatically “migrate” flight logs from each drone mission to a public website, where residents could review the details on each flight (unless that flight contained sensitive information relating to an ongoing investigation).
The officers then tried to show a YouTube video from a drone marketing firm, but ran into technical difficulties.
The department has largely referenced the Chula Vista Police Department – the first in the nation to implement a DFR program – and Axon, the drone manufacturer, when presenting information on the proposed drones.
Chula Vista’s drone program thrust it onto the global stage. Now, many former Chula Vista PD officials have landed PR jobs in which they help sell drones to other police departments around the nation – using their Chula Vista connections to lend credibility to the sales pitch.
Central Current asked Shoff if the department has consulted any outside research or independent investigations into DFR programs.
“Anytime we purchase or are being courted or anything for any kind of software, you have to do your due diligence, you have to look around, and you have to do all your homework,” Shoff said in an interview after the meeting.
Following the SPD’s presentation on the proposed drone program, the council removed all three drone items from its agenda.
Councilors have waited for months for the department to provide more details.
The council previously approved $250,000 in November for the department to implement a “drone as first responder” program.
However, reporting by Central Current revealed the city and police department had skipped a step before getting the funding approved: The drones had not been reviewed by the city’s Surveillance Technology Working Group.
The advisory group — which includes mayoral administration appointees, community stakeholders and tech experts — was created by an executive order issued in 2020 by Mayor Ben Walsh. Its job is to review surveillance technology the city plans to use and make recommendations for how to best curtail the technology’s use.
City officials ultimately changed course after Central Current reported that multiple community stakeholders on the working group pushed internally to review the drones and submit a recommendation to the mayor.
The working group finalized its review of the DFR program and submitted its recommendation to the mayor last week, according to Shoff, who also sits on the working group.
When the working group reviews a new proposed technology, it also holds a concurrent public comment period.
The Syracuse public’s scathing feedback on the proposed drones constitutes the most negative response to a proposed police technology to date: Of the 141 responses, 95 respondents (67%) disapproved of the DFR program.
Several negative responses explicitly point to the department’s rollout of the proposed drone program and condemn a perceived lack of transparency from the department.
“Opposed to it. unregulated invasion of privacy. no apparent oversight, as usual, for the continued efforts of the city supporting the SPD for increased surveillance of its citizens,” one resident wrote.
At the Public Safety committee meeting, though, Shoff downplayed these concerns, suggesting critics of the department’s drone use are misinformed.
“It was conservative to expect, from people who don’t understand what the program is,” Shoff said. “There were a lot of negative comments.”
But Wells and Shoff said they expect this negative sentiment to reverse itself once the department communicates details to the public.
“Before we roll out, we will be doing a public education engagement period,” Shoff said. “I think that when someone sees what we’re actually doing, what the program’s used for, will assuage a lot of a lot of fears.”
When a reporter asked Shoff why the department had not done public education before asking for funding from the city, Shoff said, “It is what it is. We haven’t rolled the program out yet, so we still have time to do that.”
Majok called for another Public Safety Committee meeting before March 31 for a deeper discussion on policies for the proposed DFR program.
After withdrawing the SPD’s drone funding requests from the council’s agenda, Majok was frustrated that the police department is pushing the council to vote before answering all of its questions.
Majok said that the council does not accept the police department’s urgency to get the funding approved before March 31 – the deadline for the grant the department plans to use for the DFR program.
The council is willing to miss that grant’s deadline, Majok said, if the police department doesn’t satisfy councilors’ concerns before the end of March.
Majok, who has announced a run for mayor, said the way the department has pushed the Council to vote is reflective of how the city treats the council.
“If you talk to any councilor, a major concern with the administration is that they hold information,” Majok said. “And they never give it to us in time to be able to saturate, and read it through and make decisions.”
The Council did not schedule in November a committee meeting to learn more about the drones when the department first brought the drone program the council.
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