St. Paul City Council set to vote on police department's drone program

Our Take

KSTP 5's report on St. Paul's drone vote follows a script we've seen in city after city: police make the public safety pitch, residents raise privacy concerns, and the council votes on a program before the community fully understands what it's approving. Drones are just ALPRs with wings — another tool for persistent, warrantless tracking that expands faster than the policy debate around it.

The real question St. Paul residents should be asking isn't whether drones can help solve crimes. It's who controls the footage, how long it's kept, whether it's shared with other agencies or federal databases, and what stops "public safety" flights from becoming routine aerial surveillance of neighborhoods that never agreed to be watched. Those guardrails are almost never nailed down before the vote, only argued about after the cameras are already in the sky.

Credit to KSTP 5 Eyewitness News for putting this vote in front of viewers before it's finalized. If you're in St. Paul, now is the time to show up and ask hard questions — check our camera map to see what's already watching your area, and hit our take-action page for tools to push back before this program is locked in.