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House Judiciary hears wide-ranging public testimony opposing and supporting expanded police drone use in SB 238A
Summary
SB 238A would broaden when law enforcement may deploy unmanned aircraft systems; opponents warned of surveillance risks and civil-rights harms, while city and public-safety representatives said the bill clarifies use for emergencies, search-and-rescue and crash assessment.
The House Committee on Judiciary reopened a public hearing on Senate Bill 238A, a measure that would expand when Oregon law enforcement may operate unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), hearing extended testimony both opposing and supporting the bill.
Justice Raji, director of the Reimagine Oregon project at the Urban League of Portland, told the committee the expansion was made “without much community engagement” and urged lawmakers not to move the bill forward: “those who may be quite sensitive to the idea that an unmanned vehicle could land or show up somewhere in your neighborhood… would have concerns that evidence from that communication could be then taken and used to charge you with a crime.”
Multiple community and civil‑liberties groups opposed SB 238A as written. Jay Maci, organizing director for United Oregon, argued the bill “will expand unchecked surveillance in neighborhoods already overburdened by over policing,” and warned drones “equipped with zoom lenses, night vision, or AI analytics can peer into backyards, windows, and private moments.”
Grace Fortson and Cynthia Aguilar Arizmendi of Western State Center described fears that expanded drone authority could chill protest and free-speech activity and raise civil-rights liabilities; Aguilar Arizmendi urged the committee to reject the bill in its current form and to “work on this bill in the interim and shift to prioritize community centered approaches.” Emily Holly, a lawyer and atrocity-crimes investigator, said drones are already usable by police in exigent circumstances and opposed further erosion of Oregon’s privacy protections.
Elected officials also spoke against the bill. Portland City Councilor Sameer Kanal, who co-chairs Portland’s Community and Public Safety Committee, said SB 238A “provides a legislative blank check for law enforcement agencies to begin deploying drones in a wide variety of situations” and warned the measure could chill First Amendment activity and worsen disparate policing in communities of color.
Criminal-defense advocates raised constitutional concerns. Maylee Browning, legislative director for the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, cited longstanding caution that “once obtained, governments do not consensually surrender powers back to its citizenry,” and recommended tabling the measure and convening interim conversations to balance privacy and safety.
City and law-enforcement representatives testified in support, saying the bill would clarify permissible uses and reduce operational barriers. Scott Winkles of the League of Oregon Cities said the measure would let agencies use UAS for activities such as crash assessment, missing-person searches and disaster response, and said proponents were “not asking for any change in any privacy statute.”
Kyle Williams, a police sergeant in Eugene and vice president of the Law Enforcement Drone Association, gave the committee several specific examples the bill’s drafters intend to authorize, including: response to calls for service where risks are unknown, vehicle-crash assessment, public-safety emergencies (wildfires, floods, structural fires), and search-and-rescue. Williams told the committee that Bend Police Department deployed UAS on only 210 of about 75,000 events in 2024 (0.28 percent) and cited programs reporting that UAS clear roughly 20 percent of calls without officer deployment in some jurisdictions.
Proponents said the bill retains prohibitions against collecting information about political activity, religion, or immigration status and cited existing public-records and sanctuary‑law protections; opponents disputed whether statutory safeguards and reporting requirements in the draft are sufficient. Committee members asked for a written side‑by‑side showing what the bill would change relative to current law, and Winkles and other proponents said they would provide that comparison.
The public hearing closed without a committee vote. Several members asked staff to prepare additional materials and invite a broader set of stakeholders for follow-up work before the committee considers a work session.
