Eye in the sky is a police officer’s best friend

Drones have proved themselves indispensable in law enforcement — and Tasmania Police has expanded its fleet and trained new pilots to keep up with demand. LATEST >>

A relatively recent addition to the police arsenal, aerial drones have quickly proved themselves to be indispensable tools for law enforcement.

Tasmania Police boasts 30 drones of various sizes, which have been employed in nearly 700 missions in the last three years; ranging from pursuing suspects, to mapping crash scenes, providing intelligence and search and rescue operations.

Another eight police drone operators have recently passed their training.

Tasmania police chief remote pilot Mark Forteath said drones were becoming an indispensable aid to policing.

“The capability is certainly grown over the last couple of years with the technologies become available to us, it’s making our job as drone pilots much easier,” Senior Sergeant Forteath said.

“We’re getting much better results in the picture quality, laser rangefinders have come with some of these things as well the thermal imaging which effectively makes our job safer as police officers and assists the community.

Mark Forteath, Senior Sergeant and Matt Smith, Senior Constable are shown with the new Police drone at Hobart’s Domain. Picture Eddie Safarik.

We’re finding more and more that police forward commanders are requesting drone assistance to be able to get situational awareness from the air and be able to see what’s occurring in a scene that they might be controlling.

“And that makes the people’s job on the ground so much safer to know what it is they’re actually dealing with.”

Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Manangement Jacquie Petrusma said the government had provided police with $400,000 to expand its drone fleet since 2018.

“There have been a number of successes across Tasmania where offenders in stolen and evading vehicles have been apprehended with drone support, and a number of stolen vehicles have been located in bushland by using drones,” she said.

“Crash Investigators are also using data from drones in the reconstruction of crash scenes and calculating vehicle speeds.”

Police yesterday showed off the largest drone in their fleet: a DJI Matrick 300 RTK, a $35,000 unit capable of speeds up to 80km/h and flights of up to 45 minutes day and night.

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