ENFIELD — The Selectboard is weighing whether to accept a $15,000 donation to purchase a drone for the town’s police department.
The public will have a chance to discuss the proposal during a public hearing that is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday at Whitney Hall, located at 23 Main St. The hearing can also be streamed via enfieldnh.gov.
Enfield Police Chief Roy Holland brought up the donation, which is through the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation, during the Enfield Selectboard meeting Feb. 17.
Members questioned how the drone would be deployed and how the data compiled would be used.
“I do have concerns around surveillance state type stuff,” Selectboard member Erik Russell said in a recording of the meeting. He spoke in support of the department and its standards and the way officers would use the drone if they got one. “I would encourage a policy that basically treats the drone the same way it would treat an officer while entering private property.”
Holland responded to Russell’s concerns during the meeting.
“If it’s used in a surveillance tactical type situation, we’ll apply for warrants and if they’re granted we’ll use them,” Holland said in a recording of the meeting. “If they’re not, then we’ll find other means.”
Selectboard member Alice Kennedy expressed similar concerns about resident privacy.
“I understand the circumstances which you would want to use it if you were looking for someone,” including a missing person, Kennedy said in a recording of the meeting. “But I think the two words that come to mind when I think of a police drone in my town is … ‘creepy’ and ‘invasive.’”
She encouraged Holland to bring information about the warrant process to the public hearing and he agreed.
During a phone interview this week, Holland said there were eight incidents in the last five or six months when officers would have found a drone helpful. Those include older adults and a juvenile who were temporarily missing, as well as a person with mental health challenges who went into the woods. Police also responded to a drug-fueled argument that later led to assault charges, where “it was unknown if they had a hostage or not,” Holland said.
Enfield police reached out to the Lebanon Police Department, which has a drone, four times in December for assistance, Holland said. In two of those cases, a missing person was found before the drone was launched. In the other two cases, Lebanon police drone operators were unavailable, Holland said.
The $15,000 from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation would cover the cost of a drone, spare parts and training for two officers, who would become certified drone pilots through the Federal Aviation Administration, he said. If the Selectboard approves the donation, the Enfield Police Department has a drone use policy that would take effect.
“It’s not within our policy to use it for surveillance. I have no intention to use it for surveillance,” Holland said.
If police want to use a drone in a criminal investigation, they would be required to get a search warrant, he added.
“I see 99% of the deployments for this drone being for search and rescue,” Holland said, adding the police respond to 6 to 12 missing person calls every year, with the majority of the calls related to older adults who have wandered off.
Drones have become a common tool for law enforcement agencies, Hartford Police Chief Connie Kelley said. Hartford started using drones around three years ago and now has three, which they deploy a handful of times each year.
“We find it particularly helpful when it comes to missing people,” Kelley said, including looking for people who may be injured or missing at the Quechee Gorge.
The department’s two licensed drone operators have also used them to assist other town operations, including documenting erosion on riverbanks.
“If we were to use it for an investigation, we’d need to apply for a search warrant to be able to do so,” Kelley said.
Similar to Hartford, Lebanon Police Chief Phil Roberts said the department uses its drone, which it has had for six years, most often to assist efforts to find missing people, including lost hikers or people with a memory disorder who wander off. The department’s two certified drone pilots also use it in accident scene reports.
While the drones have the ability to record footage, it is only used for scene documentation, Roberts said.
“If we’re doing a search and rescue we’re not filming,” he said, adding that officers likely deploy a drone around six times a year. “It’s definitely not used for any surveillance.”
