Community pushes back on Minneapolis drone pilot program

Community members fervently objected to what they described as surveillance, complicity with Israel and ineffective policing at the July 8 Public Health, Safety and Equity (PHSE) Committee meeting, where members weighed a “Drones as First Responders” (DFR) pilot program. Under the plan, the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) would use two Skydio drones, launching them to sites of 911 calls in Ward 4. Skydio is the largest drone manufacturer in the United States and has provided drones to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Ward 4 Council Member LaTrisha Vetaw wrote a legislative directive last spring proposing the DFR program.

During public comment, 40 community members asserted that the program is not how they want to be kept safe, and no one spoke in favor of the drones. PHSE decided unanimously to send the pilot program to a vote of the full City Council on July 16.

If the program passes, Minneapolis would enter a 75-day free trial with Skydio to determine whether the drones reduce MPD’s response time, clear low-level calls without a squad car, and improve other city services, according to Office of Community Safety (OCS) Chief of Staff Andy Skoogman.

“Minneapolis, like many cities across the country, continues to face [police] staffing challenges,” Skoogman said. “If technology can help us improve efficiency, enhance safety and provide better service to residents, we believe it’s worth exploring.”

The two drones would be stationed at Minneapolis Fire Department’s Station 14 in North Minneapolis and launched only after the 911 director’s approval, according to Fire Department Public Information Officer Brian Feintech. Drones would stream live video to dispatch, which would relay it to officers on the ground; if footage shows no further police presence is needed, responding officers could be freed for other calls.

“Drones are not a replacement for police officers, for firefighters, for EMS personnel or other first responders,” Skoogman said. “They’re simply a tool that helps ensure the right resources are sent to the right call at the right time.”

The Fourth Precinct sent Skydio its 2025 calls for service. Skydio determined its drones could have responded within two minutes to 4,643 of the precinct’s 33,402 Priority 0 and 1 calls that year, over 17% by the company’s count, according to Skoogman’s presentation. The actual number is 13.9%. Priority 0 and 1 calls are MPD’s highest priority, including auto thefts in progress, weapons calls, ShotSpotter alerts, shootings and suspicious persons.

Vetaw said she introduced the pilot as a possible response to low-priority calls in her district, including illegal dumping.

“I have been told that the reason that I should support this program by my council person is that it will do something about illegal dumping and chop shops in North [Minneapolis],” Ward 4 resident Sarah Heller said. “A drone will do nothing to solve this problem. … They want drones first, and they’ll figure out what they’re going to do with them later. That concerns me deeply, as someone who has lived in a part of town that has suffered a lot of police abuse.”

Opposition went beyond questioning whether the program would meet its stated purpose. Many raised privacy concerns about the footage and data the drones would collect, heightened by their communities’ experiences during Operation Metro Surge.

“This could be used as a tool to expand state-sanctioned violence, surveil protests and dissent, and bring in huge amounts of visual data on Black and brown communities,” said Maddie, a Ward 7 resident. “I wonder how this [would] affect community rapid response systems as we rely on community members to respond to ICE. And I’d like to know: how many of your immigrant constituents would feel safer with this expanded surveillance?”

Skoogman said drone operations would follow Minnesota Statute 626.19, barring drones from randomly surveilling or carrying facial recognition or weapons. “By no means are we using these drones for any type of surveillance,” he said. The statute also regulates when drones can be operated. However, pilots can request permission to fly drones for situations outside of the statute, including monitoring public events that pose a heightened risk to participants and bystanders, conducting threat assessments in anticipation of certain events, and non-law enforcement purposes for which a government agency has filed a specific written request. Several community members worried that the drones would surveil protests using these carve-outs.

“If it is not surveilling, what is the reason for the deployment of the drone in that situation?” Council Member Jamison Whiting said about monitoring public events.

Ward 4 resident Kaitlyn Metzel questioned the long-term use of collected data: “My main concern with this pilot program is what happens after the pilot. … Who will [data] be shared with? And how can we guarantee it won’t quickly be handed over to invading parties?”

Skoogman said drone cameras will point toward the horizon en route to incidents but activate once drones reach the scene. Data will upload to evidence.com; non-evidentiary data will be deleted within a week, while evidentiary data will be retained indefinitely.

Other community members objected to partnering with Skydio given the IDF’s use of its drones in Gaza. Sana Wazwaz, chapter lead of American Muslims for Palestine Minnesota, showed council members a photo of Mohammed Bhar, a Palestinian man from Gaza, saying drones identified his home as a target before the IDF raided it and attack dogs mauled him to death.

“This isn’t about rhetoric, this is about human life,” Wazwaz said. “Minneapolis, when you choose to contract with Skydio, you are deciding to be complicit in Mohammed’s death, complicit in the genocide of Gaza. In your pursuit of stopping crime, you are committing an even greater crime.”

The Skydio drones would add to MPD’s existing program: 12 exterior and 17 interior drones, 12 licensed pilots and over 640 missions since fall 2022. Skydio partners with five agencies in Minnesota: St. Paul, Duluth, Rochester, Minnetonka and Brooklyn Park, among 236 nationwide.

Ella Stern is a Macalester student and contributing writer for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. She welcomes reader responses at erstern10@gmail.com.