Since the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia stood up its drone program about three years ago, it has been able to deploy unmanned ariel vehicles for a myriad of uses
“We support patrol when they have incidents such as runaways or missing people. If they have car accidents sometimes, we’ll support them on traffic problems,” says Deputy Mike Christie. “One of the most important things is that as soon as we have somebody missing, we can get on scene pretty quick. We have a vehicle with all of our equipment, and we have a driver that is nearby the office who can jump in it with myself and anybody else.”
Spotsylvania County has a heavy population area, but also has quite a bit of rural area. Also within the county is Lake Anna, which is one of the largest freshwater inland reservoirs in the state. Covering an area of 13,000 acres, it was created in 1972 to support the North Anna Power Station. Responses to the lake usually involve calls for drowning victims, missing persons or boat crashes.
“We have our search team that will get out and we can support the ground units in a couple of different ways by doing overwatch for them, we can drop water bottles if they need water, or first aid packs if there is no medic there,” says Christie. “We have several different attachments that we can attach to the drones to look for missing people.”
Earlier this year, the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office responded to a reported drowning on its side of the lake. The drone team provided quick coverage of the area and located a flipped vessel in about 20 minutes. Divers were able to enter the water and quickly recover the body.
Continue reading: https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/security-surveillance/uav-uas/article/21278317/operating-drones-in-remote-areas
“We support patrol when they have incidents such as runaways or missing people. If they have car accidents sometimes, we’ll support them on traffic problems,” says Deputy Mike Christie. “One of the most important things is that as soon as we have somebody missing, we can get on scene pretty quick. We have a vehicle with all of our equipment, and we have a driver that is nearby the office who can jump in it with myself and anybody else.”
Spotsylvania County has a heavy population area, but also has quite a bit of rural area. Also within the county is Lake Anna, which is one of the largest freshwater inland reservoirs in the state. Covering an area of 13,000 acres, it was created in 1972 to support the North Anna Power Station. Responses to the lake usually involve calls for drowning victims, missing persons or boat crashes.
“We have our search team that will get out and we can support the ground units in a couple of different ways by doing overwatch for them, we can drop water bottles if they need water, or first aid packs if there is no medic there,” says Christie. “We have several different attachments that we can attach to the drones to look for missing people.”
Earlier this year, the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office responded to a reported drowning on its side of the lake. The drone team provided quick coverage of the area and located a flipped vessel in about 20 minutes. Divers were able to enter the water and quickly recover the body.
Continue reading: https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/security-surveillance/uav-uas/article/21278317/operating-drones-in-remote-areas
