Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

to choose this work voluntarily, to welcome the independent scrutiny, and to act on the monitor's recommendations. This report demonstrates a strong foundation for the work ahead. It will be discussed in detail at the upcoming Community Safety Commission meeting, which I believe is August 20th. And you can find the full report online now at alifa.org slash Louisville. I also want to thank, while we're talking about law enforcement, thank LMPD, who recently has made some very significant arrests. I know many people across the community are concerned about car thefts that are happening across town. And I want to thank LMPD for their focus on this issue and some significant arrests that were also made. You can see the Belvedere in all its 50 plus years of glory right behind us. And for more than 50 years, the Belvedere has been one of our city's most iconic gathering spaces. But for too long, This landmark has been left without proper attention, without investment, and without needed repairs. We have to repair and rebuild this nearly 1 million square feet of aging concrete and ensure it can safely serve Louisville for generations to come. And today, I'm excited to offer a first look at the next chapter of the Belvedere. We're reimagining this space on the Belvedere as a welcoming, green, vibrant destination in the heart of downtown Louisville.

I've done a lot of traveling, a lot of research, and I have seen revitalized civic spaces like this absolutely transform other cities. And I have no doubt that we can make the Belvedere a place where everyone in our community feels welcome and included, a place that will bring energy and vitality to downtown and serve as the connective tissue between all these incredible organizations and institutions that call downtown home.

The rich cultural diversity in our community is part of what makes us so special and so strong. And I loved hearing the story from Alejandro about this company that he founded right here in Louisville, that he and his family and colleagues built through incredibly hard work with their deep connection to Louisville. Because Abastos is investing over $10 million to expand its Louisville operation, double its physical footprint, and prepare this hometown company for its next chapter of growth.

Louisville has become more than the place where I grew up. It's where we build our dreams. We're incredibly thankful to call it home.

Metro TV, 30 seconds, please.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

The time is 4.01 p.m. This is a regularly scheduled meeting of the Public Safety Committee. I'm your chair, Councilman Dan Syme. I'm joined virtually by my vice chair, Councilwoman Tammy Hawkins. Also virtually, we have Councilmember Scott Reed. In chambers, we have Councilmember Andrew Owen, Jonathan Joseph, Marcus Winkler, Betsy Rui, Kevin Bratcher, we have an excused absence from Council Member Jenny Mulvey-Woolridge, and Shemeika Parrish-Wright has joined us. Clerk, will you please read the virtual meeting language?

This meeting has been held pursuant to KRA 61.826 and Council Rule 5A, written in full.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

You're welcome.

We have a discussion topic on the agenda today. Today we're joined by Deputy Chief Kyle Fekete with the Louisville Fire Department, Assistant Director of Louisville Metro Emergency Services, and UAS Coordinator Dietrich Briggs with LMPD for an update on the First Responder Drone Program. Who's going to speak? Come on up and state your name. Title for the record, and please begin.

All right. My name is Trevin Hunter. I'm an assistant director with Louisville Metro Emergency Services. So thanks for having us back. It seems like it was just a short time ago that we were in here explaining what drone as first responder is as we... put that in our budget for previous fiscal year. So here we are a year later, wanted to come in and give a brief update of where we are, how we've used it to date, and where we're going in the future. So we've got a quick slideshow, then we'll follow up with some videos of how we've used it. So Drone is First Responder is a program where drones are stationed on rooftops throughout the city, ready to respond to 911 calls as they're needed. So today we have eight of those, seven of which are on firehouses on Louisville Fire property, one's on the new police headquarters, and we're looking to add eight more in the near future. So this helps to address several issues. People are calling 911. They may not know where they are. They may not be able to give exact information on what's going on. In those instances, we can deploy a DFR drone and get overhead and provide information to the responders before they get there. So this allows us to give them additional information that they have not had previously. So here we've got a picture of one of our DFR docks on top of police headquarters to sort of give you an idea of what this equipment looks like. The dock where the drone is on top of is a sheltered piece of equipment that has a fan for warm weather. It's got a heater for cold weather. And it also allows the drone to talk back to the network and that's how we're sharing the live streaming. So like I mentioned, these are pre-positioned. We've done some studies looking at call volume, where incidents are throughout the city and that's how we picked where the initial eight were located. We can get to the scene before any human responder can get there if we get the drone launched quick enough. and then that helps them have better information while they're en route to the call. So, Drone as First Responder is a pretty popular program throughout the nation right now, but we've found out multiple times over that Most of the time, these DFR programs are being ran by one agency. So here in Louisville, we decided to create a joint program because we believe that every public safety agency can benefit from it in some way. So it's housed at Emergency Management. but we are sharing the information and working with LMPD, the sheriff's office, the suburban city police departments, all the fire departments and EMS to make sure everyone is getting benefit from this program. Doesn't seem like a lot of agencies are doing that. A lot of it's police-centric. So we're expanding it and allowing everyone to have a little bit of say of how it can be useful. So our flights are triggered by 911 calls. Someone calls 911, then we can deploy it based on what's going on. This slide here talks about how we've handled some of that public messaging where it's only on 911 calls. It's not... used for surveillance or the drones aren't out patrolling, looking for crime or activity, each time they're launched, there's a purpose behind it. So just to give you all another idea of what kind of equipment we're using, got another picture of a dock there and an image from another remote operations center, which is what we're working on setting up. at the Metro Safe building now where the remote tactical flight operators will operate from. So they have, the drones have cellular connectivity that allows them to fly a little bit further than regular radio, radio frequency would allow like a standard commercial drone or drone that you go and buy from Best Buy to fly. So they've got a little further distance than that. And then that's all managed online through a cloud platform that allows us to share that live video with the responders and also track and monitor how the drones are being utilized. So we're working to hire five remote tactical flight operators. We, made some job offers late yesterday, and we've had some acceptances today. So the remote tactical flight operator, we required them to have the part 107 certification, which is the FAA license to fly a drone, and then we required them to have three years of public safety experience. We felt like those were good requirements so that they're able to talk on the radio, they're able to understand the responders, and understand the mission of the program. So they'll be monitoring computer-aided dispatch systems. They'll be looking at call data, where units are, and using some AI tools that we have with 911 to be able to determine what calls make the most sense to respond on. So they'll be making these decisions in real time and then responding to calls for service as appropriate. Then they'll share a link with the responders while en route, and then they'll be able to watch that video. So this is just a screenshot of what the Skydio platform looks like that the pilots use. As you can see, it's got the large circles with triangles are where the eight docks are located today. There are You can also see the police cars and body cameras. We're able to click on each of those and tell the drone to respond here. And that allows us to go directly to that officer or their vehicle. Then you can also see some red diamonds with telephones in them. Those are 911 calls that are coming over to the DFR system that allows the operator to select one and respond directly to that based on the call for service information. Yes, sir. So the large circles with the triangles are the dock locations. And then you'll see the little cars and the body cameras. So those are the police officers or their vehicles. And then the red diamonds with the phone are 911 calls, recent 911 calls. Oh, so those are the locations of the police officers, like, you know, their body cameras. It's transmitting the GPS coordinates, and it's coming back over to the system. So if an officer is in distress, we can find that officer on the map. We can click that. We can say, send the drone here, and it will immediately send the drone to that officer's location for us to assist. It's just the... The camera icon is what they wear on their person, and the car icon is based on their in-car video. Is that correct, Officer Briggs? I just want to make sure I'm articulating that correctly.

Yes, that's correct.

Excuse your microphones, please.

My bad. OK. So if I see the car, I know the officer is in the car. But if I see the camera, the officer is out of the car. Is that correct?

If I'm hearing you correct. If I'm hearing you correct, yes, they have all police vehicles, patrol vehicles have a car camera. They also have a body camera. It activates whenever they activate their emergency equipment. That in-car camera is on, it rolls back 30 seconds prior, and then rolls to live feed, so it catches anything that happened prior to, and then afterwards it records, just pretty much like the body camera does too.

So if I see the body camera, then we have an officer who's actually engaged in a call?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, thank you.

All right, so one of the main points of the DFR program is how we're gonna train our remote tactical flight operators. So like I said, they're all coming to us with their Part 107 certification, so they all already have drone experience. The platform we use today, Skydio, has a built-in simulator, so that allows us to put them through some simulated flights, allow them to decide how they're gonna respond and how they would handle incidents within a flight. Skydio also offers a certification program for the remote tactical flight operators. So they'll be going through that as well. That's a three day program. And then we'll also train them on our internal systems such as CAD, rapid SOS and how the public safety partners work. And then of course we'll continue recurrent training with them regularly. to make sure everyone stays up to speed. So we were able to do this with a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration. It's called the Beyond Visual Line of Sight Waiver. So we had to tell them how we're going to have a safe operational environment and what technologies we're going to use. So they granted us that. And then recently we were granted an additional waiver that allows us to fly four drones simultaneously. So this allows us to, while one drone is returning to its dock, we could be sending another so that it's able to get to the next call. Because those drones are flying to and from their docks autonomously. They land and take off autonomously as well. So I'm gonna pass it over to Assistant Chief Feckety and Officer Briggs, they're gonna talk about how these flights have benefited each of their agencies and sort of explain how they work operationally.

Yeah, so if you would, state your name and where you're from. Dietrich Briggs, I'm from Louisville Metro Police Department. The, well, my title is Drone One, but I'm the drone commander for LMPD. So the shots fired and active threats, kind of like ShotSpotter, if you all knew about that too. It activates just like that, so we're trying to get it in the system to where if a shots fired happens, shots fired runs happen, we can get the DFR drone up and running as soon as they hear that shots fired to get officers better situational awareness about what's going on, who's around there, so as they approach, they can make a good, sound decision. Because it's live stream, too, those officers are able to see that prior to getting on scene. Missing persons, that has been working very good for us as far as DFR. we were able to find a lot of missing people, a lot of young children, especially during any type of details that we have. We have one that's coming up, World Fest, but even Thunder over Louisville, a lot of people lose their children. DFR drones are well capable of finding the children. Welfare checks kind of work in the same way. just making sure that DFR gets there, they can check it, officers are able to check it, check the live stream and see as far as situational awareness on top of where the last stone may have been from welfare checks or missing persons. of barricaded subjects, DFR is able to get there, check all four sides of the house, but also for some of our smaller units like SWAT, they're able to give SWAT live on-scene situational awareness so that they can approach in a very unique and tactical way and foot pursuits. Foot pursuits, they help a lot. We have a video that we'll be able to show to how the DFR definitely helped find this suspect that was hiding, and all the officers were around, but the DFR was able to use, through thermal imaging, find this person hiding.

I'm Lieutenant Colonel Kyle Fekete. I'm an assistant chief with Louisville Fire. As far as how the fire department is using the Drona's first responder program, the first bullet points, structure fires, we are launching these about 15 to 30 seconds after a 911 call rings at Metro Safe. So it jumps up to 200 feet, flies at 45 miles an hour directly to the address, stops 600 feet short of the center of the address so that we're not looking straight down at the incident we're going to, and then the operator takes over and starts to orbit. All of that's being broadcast in real time to all of our members on the fire companies responding to those incidents. The captain in the front seat has an iPad, is looking at this feed on the iPad, but our members also have access to it on their personal devices through our CAD software that we use. So the members in the back seat can have their phones out after they've already gotten their protective equipment on and see what incident they're going to, what the conditions are, toggle back and forth between thermal and 4K, and have a much better understanding of what they're getting ready to deal with. And also at 360, because for... When I was on the street as a captain, the first thing we would try to do when we pull up on a fire is a 360 to get all the way around the building. But a lot of times that is inhibited by animals, by fences, buildings being too close together, you can't get between them. With that DFR drone, that 360 happens every time. And everybody can see it, not just one company officer doing the 360. So it's great for us for situational awareness. On smaller scale fires, so just fires close to structures or smoke in the area, stuff like that is not necessarily reported as a structure fire. We're using DFR to decide if our response is appropriate. Do we need to commit more resources or do we need to decommit resources and keep them in the area that they should be in. So an example is if we've got six fire companies and a battalion chief going to the area outside the Waterston that we cover, some of those companies were coming from close to downtown. So if, the drone gets there and it's a 800 square foot ranch on a slab with nothing showing whatsoever and no chance of communicating to neighboring structures, we can start sending those companies back into the downtown high demand area and keep them available where they need to be. So that's the actual fire part of it, but we're all risk, all hazards. So vehicle crashes, we're not sending them to surface streets, but to anything on the interstate. We send two fire apparatus to every interstate incident, one in each direction, because a lot of times when people call and say, hey, I just saw a crash or I just crashed, they have no idea if they're on 64 East or West or where they are in Spaghetti Junction. So that drone gets there and helps pinpoint exactly where the fire companies need to go and send the appropriate response. And then as far as HATSMAT and technical rescue, for hazardous materials incidents, it helps to determine if there's a cloud of product in the air, which way the wind's blowing, where an evacuation needs to start occurring. And for technical rescues, we have a fair number of people that end up in the water in the downtown area from bridges or from boating incidents or whatever. Just in the past week, we've located three people with these DFR drones in the water and then been able to put the drone 20 or 30 feet over top of the person so that the boats with limited visibility can see exactly where they're going because they're looking for a small object in the water.

So that's what DFR is already doing for us. Like I mentioned early on, this aerial perspective shortly after dispatch can give responders a lot more information for them to make better situational awareness decisions, potential de-escalation opportunities. It also comes with documentation, so every flight's logged, every video is saved, and we can use those in the future. And then we're just working to build confidence in what the drones can provide across responding agencies. So we're going to play two short videos here, and then we'll take some questions. Did you launch this in PowerPoint or Adobe? Okay. We do have videos. We can play videos in Adobe. Oh, okay. All right. So we will send, um, one of the videos is definitely on YouTube. So we'll share that and we'll share the second video, uh, as a link to the committee. So, um, Just a little timeline of where we're at. We're working on hiring those remote tactical flight operators. Hopefully this fall, they'll be up and running. We'll be adding those eight additional docks, expanding coverage across the county. And then in the future, we plan to create an additional role in the DFR operation where that individual would focus on flying the drones while the remote tactical flight operator would focus on watching the video feed, and then communicating with the responders on the ground. Today, the RTFO will have to both do the piloting and the communication, but I think we've learned very quickly that that's a lot for one individual to do. So by adding additional staffing in the future, we'll be able to make sure that that's going a little smoother.

All right, any questions for us? Thank you for the presentation. I have Councilwoman Shemeika Parrish-Wright in the queue.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for this presentation. I had already prepared some questions. You confirmed part of it. I just want to confirm. You said you have eight now, and you will be adding eight. That is correct. And so it'll be 16 docs total? Yes, ma'am. And you already just said that your expansion is going to cover countywide.

It'll be close to countywide, but it'll be outside of 264 for these next eight, and I'll be happy to share a draft map with you when we send these videos out of where we're looking at adding those.

Thank you, and thank you for sharing the videos. So my questions are, I know we talked about some success stories, but what are your metrics for success for implementation of the county work? Do you have any, and it's okay if you don't,

I think we're still working to identify those as we work with our public safety partners to understand how we can really quantify success and how it's beneficial to them. I know one thing we're gonna look at is, and that we're already tracking, is when the drone gets on scene before a responder. We also have the ability to track if the drone's able to clear out a call for service before a responder even goes. So, you know, if someone reports someone down on the sidewalk, the drone could fly over, say, well, we checked the block and there's nobody on the sidewalk, so we can close that call out. We're tracking that already. So we're tracking some metrics and I'm sure we'll expand that as we grow.

Okay, and my last question, and I said my colleagues answered, asked my other ones. I had questions around who owns these things because how long is the video information stored in a cloud platform? I know you mentioned that before, but I forgot. I was here for that last meeting.

Yeah, so that's gonna, the data is housed on Skydio's platform, but it's also uploaded to the LMPDEvidence.com Axon storage platform, so that would be contingent upon the established data retention policies.

Okay, thank you.

Next in queue, Councilmember Marcus Winkler, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a quick question, and probably more directed to Louisville Fire. So, Can you tell me, you know, you mentioned, so you get to the scene, you've got the iPad, you can see the life. How does that work with an interagency response with our suburban fire district? So I'll think of, for example, the UPS plane incident where Oklahoma is the lead agency. Can you just tell me how that coordination works with the drones with suburban fire districts specifically?

Yes, sir. So what we're doing is taking the link and copying that into CAD as a CAD note. So that goes out to every agency that's responding to that incident, no matter who it is, whether it's Oklahoma Fire, Louisville Fire, police, EMS, one of the county EMS departments. So it goes out to everybody that's responding to the incident. So they can see the live video as well? Yes. And right now what we're doing is we're responding to county incidents that happen within our coverage area. And when we do that, we're putting that CAD note in so that they have access to it. And they've been briefed on it and are aware of us coming up on the radio and telling them information. but we are sharing that video with their command staff afterwards so they can use it for critique purposes to enhance their response. And that's what we do internally at Louisville Fire is it's just as valuable afterwards to see what went right, what went wrong, improve.

Next in queue, Councilwoman Betsy Rui, please.

Thank you very much. My question involves flight time and charging. What's the flight time that they're able to do and how long does it take to recharge before they're ready to go back out again?

Flight time is very dependent on a lot of things such as wind and how much battery the drone has to use to get to where it's going. essentially how much it's moving around on the scene. We've typically seen about 30 minutes, 25 to 30 minutes be a comfortable flight time from launch to back to dock. And then that battery can charge in about 60-ish minutes.

Okay, so how long is one typically up in the air at an incident?

So these are, you know, we're using these for that initial response, so we're probably there on scene for about 15 minutes, and then we're coming back. And if it's going to be a prolonged incident where a drone could be beneficial, we have other units that can actually go to the scene and launch drones from the scene.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Andrew Owen, please.

Thank you, Chair.

So how many, you said you were hiring five more flight drone officer, flight technicians or whatever they're called. How many do you currently have on staff? So we don't have any today.

So the three of us are flying as time permits.

Okay.

just during our day jobs or in the evenings or weekends. But yes, we extended job offers today to four people, so hoping to get them onboarded.

So that answers my next question, too, which was more about numbers, and we're not going up very often as a result of what you're just saying right now. That's correct. Because you guys have other duties that you have to fulfill, and you're just doing it when you can. That's correct. Okay. Okay. I was trying to get a feel for how many times a day we can expect. You said you go to different incidents and you try to figure out which are the most appropriate incidents for a drone to be the first responder to. Do you have any idea how many we might see in the air on a given day?

I don't have that number right in front of me. I think we had an initial number back when we were putting the proposal together. Kyle, do you recall that?

It was close to 100 times a day for just that initial deployment of eight docks. When you look at all of those incident types that LNPD and FIRE are going to deploy to. We're somewhere around 100 a day just for that area roughly inside the Waterston, and that will grow as we go outward.

Sure, and that leads into my last question. So the five people that you're hiring currently, will it be a 24-hour coverage? So each of the five will be working part of that 24-hour coverage, or how will that work?

Yeah, that's our eventual goal. Once everyone's trained and comfortable in the platform, we're planning on 12-hour shifts. So each person would have with a two-team rotation, essentially. So then that fifth person would help backfill, time off, sick calls, stuff like that. So that would allow us to hit that 24-hour coverage. Great. Thank you.

Councilwoman Shemeika Parish-Wright.

Okay, we're almost done. I know. I just have these last three questions. One, I never did get the answer on or get to clearly ask who owns Skydio. Do you know?

Skydio is an individually owned company and we are contracting with them through Axon.

Is it federal or privately owned?

It's privately owned. Okay.

And then... I don't remember if you broke this down before, but what is the cost for a single drone that is associated cost too as well? So like cellular connectivity, upgrades, replacements, subscriptions, the cloud platform, have you broke it down per drone?

Yeah, so it's a package cost of $50,000 a year per drone dock that includes the cellular, It includes their warranty, which includes next day replacement if something happens to one, and it also has built-in upgrades. The drone would get upgraded in year three, and the dock would get upgraded in year five.

Okay, I remember we talked about the upgrades, but wasn't sure if the cost had been factored in. And then the last question is, how many times have Do you have an internal or a dashboard that your officers see that shows how many times the drones are being used? I know that Councilman Owen asked how many would be in flight in any given day, but do you have a regular counter on that?

Yes, the Skydio platform has a great reporting function that allows us to break down how frequently one drone was used, how often all of them were used, and we can even get as granular as how many flight hours I have compared to what these others have. And we can provide statistics on all of that.

Okay, that's very helpful to know. So when we, I just wanted to make sure there was more things in place so that you can, you know, I know you're monitoring any misuse and things like that. Sounds like you all are doing a good job. Okay, thank you.

And one thing, if I can add to that, Skydio's actually working on a public transparency dashboard that would be available on our website where the public can go and see the flights and understand why they were being flown. So if they see a drone over their house, they can proactively answer that question on what it was doing.

I love that. Thank you.

You're welcome.

I have a question. What are the restrictions? Do you coordinate with the airports, Bowman? What are your FAA restrictions on height?

Yeah, so we still have to follow the UAS facilities map. Our waiver says we can fly up to 200 feet. And we can fly two miles away from each dock. So we have to be very mindful of that. And the system has some built-in geofences to help us maintain compliance with that.

Are you in Fairdale?

At the Fairdale fire? Not today, but we will be soon. Okay.

Anybody else? Don't look like we have anybody else in the queue. No more comments. Do you have a question? Councilman Bratcher, please.

Have you had any constitutional issues that you've been bounced against, like this flock camera stuff?

We have not as of yet.

Because it's not triggered until there's an incident.

That's correct.

It's not like on constant observance.

There's no patrol functionality here. It's all responding to a call for service.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Are the license plate readers used in that? No, sir. In that call for service? Okay.

Thank you. Nobody else in the queue? Thank you all for coming. Important topic. I think it's going to help. We want to see more, and hopefully we can afford them. But there's nobody else in the queue. No more concerns. Our next regular committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, August 19th at 4 o'clock. If there's no other matters, this committee stands adjourned. Thanks for coming out, guys. Thanks for having us.