In agreeing to purchase a drone for the police department earlier this month, the Enfield Selectboard exercised appropriate caution by mandating that the town adopt a policy governing its use before it’s deployed.
Drones are powerful tools that can aid materially in law enforcement, but as with other forms of technology with which we are all familiar, they can also be subject to abuse. So having clear guidelines is a must.
Police Chief Roy Holland proposed acquiring a drone with a $15,000 donation from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation, and the board approved by a 4-1 vote. Holland has cited eight incidents in the past six months in which having a drone would have been useful, particularly in searches for missing persons. That makes a lot of sense, particularly in a rural area with large tracts of forest and open land.
Some residents had their doubts about the project. In response to concerns that the drone might be used for surveillance of peaceful protests, Holland responded that, “We won’t be using it to watch peaceful protests. We won’t be using it to patrol through Main Street.” But police administrations come and go, and it’s important to get those assurances settled in the form of policy.
The concern about mass surveillance is very real. For instance, the Town of Hartford’s official newsletter reported last fall that, “On Oct. 18, 2025, officers and detectives were in attendance at the No Kings protest to ensure the safety of the community. The Hartford Police Department also deployed a drone to assist in monitoring the crowd.”
At a time when local police departments are under intense pressure to cooperate with federal authorities hostile to such peaceful exercises of the First Amendment as No Kings protests, there’s every reason to prohibit the use of drones to monitor them.
Holland also noted that if the drone were to be deployed in a criminal investigation, police would need to seek a search warrant. That is an important safeguard. But what about using the drone as part of an urgent response to a crime scene? Certainly such occasions might arise, and with them the need for appropriate guidelines.
Drones also have unsettling implications for personal privacy. Residents who have outdoor showers or hot tubs on their property, or who sunbathe nude or have windows without curtains in their homes have ample cause for concern that their reasonable expectation of privacy might be compromised by, say, a drone launched in search of a missing person. Such incidents have been reported around the nation as more police drones come into service.
But besides such potential embarrassment, in some respects the essence of liberty is the freedom to go about the mundane tasks of one’s daily life without being subject to government observation. That liberty is already being eroded in many public spaces by cameras, so it’s all the more important to draw a bright line around the home and its environs.
Besides defining when and how the drone should be deployed, whatever policy Enfield adopts should detail what images gathered by the drone may be retained, for how long and in what circumstances, as well as who is authorized to have access to them. It ought also to require periodic detailed public disclosure of the circumstances of drone use and any instances in which it collected data or images of any person, home or area other than the intended subject of the surveillance. It should also establish independent oversight of the drone program.
While it may seem quaint to be worried about such things in an age already overtaken by mass surveillance, we hold that to whatever extent communities retain the ability to define and reinforce the values they hold dear — in this case the right to privacy, free of government intrusion — they ought to seize the opportunity to do so.