Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich and County Council President Andrew Friedson will join District 2 Police Commander Amy Daum and Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Director Peter Fosselman at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 17, for a town hall meeting about the upcoming implementation of the County’s “Drone as a First Responder Program” in Bethesda.
Residents can attend in-person or online to learn more about the value of the innovative public safety tool, ask questions and provide feedback.
The town hall will be held in the auditorium at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, which is located at 4301 East-West Highway in Bethesda.
The goal of Montgomery County Police Department’s (MCPD) Drone as First Responder (DFR) Program is to provide air support to 911 or police-generated calls for service in a safe, responsible and transparent manner.
The DFR program is designed to improve police response times, allow MCPD to be more efficient with police resources, provide real-time information to ground officers to allow for better decision-making, assist with de-escalation of incidents to enhance safety for both officers and our community and to assist with locating and apprehending criminal suspects.
The DFR program consists of prepositioning an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) on top of a building within an operational area. When a 911 or police-generated call for service occurs, the UAS will launch and fly to the scene of the call. If ground officers are still needed to respond, the UAS will stay over the scene until the call is stabilized. At that time, the UAS will return to the launch/landing location.
There likely will be times when the DFR may be able to discontinue a ground officer response to a call that would allow officers to divert to other emergency calls or law enforcement activities. The DFR program only will respond to 911 or police generated calls for service and will not be patrolling an area or proactively deployed for other reasons such as surveillance.
The DFR program started in Silver Spring in November 2023 and expanded to Wheaton in February.
