Members of Syracuse's Common Council discussed Syracuse police's proposal to begin a "drone as first responder" program. Credit: Patrick McCarthy | Central Current

A day after residents sounded off on the Syracuse Police Department’s plans to implement an unpopular “drone as first responder” program, leaders from the department offered responses to some residents’ questions and criticism.

Members of the Common Council on Tuesday peppered Deputy Chief Richard Shoff and other department leaders during a Public Safety Committee meeting.

Councilor Chol Majok, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, called the meeting following 10 months of back-and-forth on the controversial drone program. Tuesday’s meeting was the third committee meeting Majok has held on the drone program and follows a public hearing on Monday that featured four residents railing against the proposed drone program.

Tuesday’s meeting was the most dynamic public discussion since the department first approached the council in November 2024 for approval on the drones. All nine councilors and Council President Helen Hudson were in attendance, and most asked multiple questions of Shoff and his colleagues. 

Shoff began the meeting with a pledge to revise the department’s policy in response to some of the concerns expressed by residents in the public comment period.

“We’re willing to make some changes, and put in some safeguards,” Shoff said.

The councilors followed up on concerns expressed in the previous day’s public hearing, while others voiced questions of their own. The conversation largely focused on recent updates to the policy that governs the department’s drone use. Specifically, councilors pressed on protections for protesters and residents’ reasonable expectations of privacy in areas of residence, such as a backyard.

“We had a fairly robust privacy protection that has now been watered down,” Councilor Corey Williams said.

Lieutenant Brian Williams said that the department’s drone policy was outdated, and said the department had recently consulted the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, a national nonprofit that  credentials law enforcement across the country, to update the drone policy. He said the carve-outs that removed protections for protesters was not deliberate.

“We kind of cherry picked what we felt worked best when we wrote this policy, so that certainly wasn’t intentional, to water this down,” Lieutenant Williams said.

Shoff committed to working with the council to revise the department’s drone policy to add back protections against surveilling protesters. The department pushed back, though, as the council expressed concerns about SPD’s intention to send the drones to respond to “low-priority” calls, such as a noise disturbance.

That sort of nuance has defined the debate on the drone as a first responder program ever since the department first tried to implement the program in November of last year. 

The Common Council approved the department’s purchase of drones for the program without any public discussion in committee meetings, but investigative reporting from Central Current then revealed that City Hall was skipping its own established process for implementing such powerful surveillance technologies.

In March, Majok held the first public safety committee meeting on the drones, wherein Sergeant Jason Wells and Lieutenant Williams failed to satisfy councilors’ concerns about the ramifications of sending drones to the scene of 911 calls.

 Then in April, the department returned to the council chambers for a second committee meeting. In that meeting and in internal documents, Williams and SPD pushed for the ability to send the drones to any and all 911 calls, marking a shift from the department’s original stated intent to use the drones for high-priority calls.

On Tuesday, the police department argued that the DFR program will enhance, rather than replace, the work that SPD officers already perform.

Shoff said the “four pillars” of the program are:

  • to improve police response to college service
  • to enhance the efficient use of police and city resources
  • provide real time situational awareness 
  • to support and de-escalate incidents

But when asked, the Syracuse community, in two separate formats, has criticized the drone initiative.

In February, the drones received the most negative public response of any surveillance technology ever considered by the Syracuse government. Then in Monday’s public hearing, a handful of residents doubled down on that criticism and urged the council not to approve SPD’s purchase of the software needed to operate the DFR drones.

Residents also pointed to the city’s significant reduction in crime. Governor Kathy Hochul visited Syracuse’s Public Safety building Monday morning to celebrate a 28% reduction in year-to-date crime in Syracuse – which residents pointed out that the city achieved without a DFR program. 

Other community members expressed concern over the integration of military-grade technology into everyday local policing. 

But some law enforcement lobbyists embrace the military-level capabilities of drone as first responder programs. Police1, a Lexipol-funded publication that posts daily articles encouraging local police to purchase surveillance technologies, argues that “DFR gives patrol officers some of the same advantages SWAT teams enjoy.”

During Tuesday’s committee meeting, Majok asked Shoff what the department thought of that negative response.

Shoff called the city’s public comment period an “unscientific poll.” He and other SPD leaders insisted that the community would change its mind, just as city residents changed their tune on COPS cameras after they were installed.

Backyard privacy was a sticking point, though, for councilors. 

Monto and other councilors asked about residents who are not the subject of a police call or response, but are nonetheless subjected to unwarranted surveillance by being caught in the background of the drones’ camera frames.

“The same could be said about the COPS cameras as well, too, right?” Lt. Williams said. “So I think you’re going to inadvertently touch some things for sure, but that’s the same for every camera we have in the city.”

Monto rejected that characterization.

“Except those don’t inadvertently catch backyards, right?” Monto said. “The COPS cameras don’t go over someone’s backyard.”

While SPD committed to ceding back some safeguards against unmitigated drone use, the specific protections to be added – and what exactly they will portend — remain unclear right now.

Without revisions, SPD’s current plans for the drones fly in the face of the stipulations that Mayor Ben Walsh endorsed when he granted qualified approval. The Surveillance Technology Working Group, (the mayor’s handpicked experts and community stakeholders), explicitly instructed that SPD implement a policy that includes, among others, the following measures:

  • It is understood that this program is exclusively to respond to emergency and service calls and shall never be used for general surveillance or routine patrols.
  •  It is prohibited that drones are used to monitor protests, demonstrations, or other political activities protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States

Elsewhere in the letter, the group made clear that its recommendations were designed to safeguard privacy and maintain community trust.

The group encouraged SPD to perform extensive public outreach, and to create a channel for residents to file complaints, concerns, and questions about the DFR program before and after its implementation. 

During the meeting, Majok acknowledged those privacy concerns, and pressed the department to do more outreach to convey the department’s intentions to the public.

“Just like everybody, I’m nervous,” said Majok, who is sponsoring the legislation to purchase software to operate the first responder drones.

Majok said that, after the department and councilors revise the policy, the council would consider the drone program at its next voting session on September 29.

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...