Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office launches drone program

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office has launched a new drone program, the Unnamed Aircraft System, Sheriff Rob Streck announced Monday.

The innovated tool for the office will be used in various critical incident and special operation investigations.

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Deputies received aerial system training certification through Sinclair Community College and became Part 107 certified through the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for commercial drone use.

“The use of drone technology will not only be highly effective for investigation, but most importantly, this will help us keep citizens and our first responders safe from a distance, if necessary,” said Streck. “If we have better information going into a call, then we can use the best tactics to hopefully deescalate the situation and have better outcomes.”

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Drone technology will also be used to assist the investigation on capturing additional data of crime and accident scenes. The drone regulations stipulate that they’ll only be used for first responders at emergency calls or crime scene investigations.