Fort Worth police putting more eyes in the sky

Our Take

Credit to WFAA for flagging this one early: Fort Worth's new drone first responder program means police-piloted drones will be dispatched to calls, effectively giving the department a live aerial feed over neighborhoods before an officer even arrives. Departments always frame these programs as faster response times and officer safety, and sure, there are legitimate use cases. But "drone as first responder" almost never stays narrowly scoped to 911 calls — it tends to expand into general patrol, loitering over crowds, and quietly building a searchable video archive of daily life in the city.

This matters because drones don't operate in a vacuum. Fort Worth, like a growing number of Texas cities, is already leaning on Flock Safety ALPR cameras to track vehicle movements block by block. Add a fleet of police drones circling overhead and you've got two surveillance systems working in tandem — one recording who drives where, the other recording who's standing where — with very little public input on retention windows, data sharing, or which agencies get access to the footage. History with these programs shows mission creep is the rule, not the exception.

If you live in Fort Worth or anywhere Flock cameras are spreading, it's worth knowing what's already watching your street. Check our camera map to see nearby ALPR deployments, and if you want to push back on unchecked surveillance expansion in your city, our take-action page has concrete steps for making your voice heard at the next council meeting.