Everett police propose one‑year trial of ‘drone as a first responder’ system from Flock Safety

On April 2, 2025, Everett Police officials briefed the City Council at a Health & Safety community meeting on a proposed “drone as a first responder” (DFR) pilot with vendor Flock Safety that would deploy docked drones to provide near‑continuous city coverage and faster situational awareness.

Police officials said the DFR system could reduce the time from call to drone arrival to roughly the 80–90 second range within a dock’s coverage area, allow officers to see live video while en route, and help with search‑and‑rescue and suspect‑location tasks. Captain Robert Getz, the department’s project manager for the program, said the department has used drones for several years but described the DFR product as “a lot different” because it automates launches from docks and integrates with dispatch and existing license‑plate reader alerts.

The presentation included a live demonstration by Flock Safety staff. Brett Kanda, Flock’s West Coast DFR specialist, demonstrated a remote flight and said the company’s docks can supply about 38 square miles of coverage from a single dock and that customers report an average drone response time of roughly 86 to 90 seconds. Kanda said typical drone endurance per flight is about 40 minutes and that the vendor offers tools for airspace management, logging and evidence export, and a public-facing dashboard showing aggregated, non‑video metrics.

Why it matters: Everett officials said the program could act as a force multiplier at a time of constrained patrol staffing, yielding faster scene information that…