At the BRINC headquarters in Seattle, engineers are creating what the company believes is the future of law enforcement — Responder DFR drones, DFR standing for "drone as first responder." "It's meant to deploy immediately to 911 calls once a call for service is being placed and basically arrive on scene within 70 seconds," said David Benowitz, the firm's marketing director. Recently put on the market, the responder is meant to be the eyes and ears of law enforcement before a uniformed officer even steps foot on the scene, Scripps News reports. "First responders just have more information before they arrive so they can more accurately evaluate how dangerous or not dangerous the situation is, then they can scale up or down their response to be appropriate," said BRINC's CEO, Blake Resnick. So far there are contracts that would get the responder to four different departments by the end of the year, and the company is in talks with about 150 cities about being outfitted.
Resnick says that the idea is to have responder charging stations positioned on top of fire and police stations, ready to be sent out to the next call, while giving police a live-streamed view so that they can decide what resources should be deployed, or if it's just a false alarm. At a recent Homeland Security Committee hearing, the issue of privacy and drones was addressed, asking the question: Does this technology make it easier for civilians to be spied on by the government? Another concern from lawmakers is law enforcement departments using drones from China that may be susceptible to hacking from the Chinese government. The company encourages agencies to be upfront with communities about how the technology is being used. Resnick says BRINC is working on software to help agencies get more data about their drones so they can be transparent about their use, making sure privacy also has a place in the future of law enforcement.