Drones & Law Enforcement: Vital to Today's Police Operations | Dolan Consulting Group
The short version: A police-training vendor's promo video sells drones as routine policing tools, glossing over the surveillance creep that pairs neatly with ALPR networks like Flock.
Our Take
This isn't independent journalism — it's a training company, Dolan Consulting Group, marketing drone programs to police departments, with a friendly Indianapolis Metro PD sergeant as the pitchman. That's worth keeping in mind as you watch: the video's job is to make "drone as first responder" sound as uncontroversial as a new patrol car, not to weigh the privacy tradeoffs of putting eyes in the sky over every 911 call.
We cover Flock's ALPR cameras because they quietly log where you drive, but drones are the next layer of the same trend: persistent, low-cost aerial surveillance sold to agencies as an operational upgrade with little public debate about retention, geofencing, or who reviews the footage. Departments building drone fleets are often the same ones wiring up Flock cameras block by block — different hardware, same appetite for constant monitoring with minimal oversight.
Credit to Dolan Consulting Group for putting a real practitioner on camera describing how these programs get built, since that's useful intel for anyone tracking how surveillance tech spreads department to department. If you want to see whether your town has already said yes to this kind of infrastructure, check our camera map, and if you'd rather push back before drones and ALPRs become permanent fixtures, our take-action page has next steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Dolan Consulting Group, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.