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The first time Stephanie Lozano saw the drone, she said, it was hovering over her Valwood Park backyard on a quiet weekend.
She pulled out her phone to record it. The drone flew away.
“That makes me think that they indeed were zeroing in on us,” Lozano said.
What she had spotted was the Farmers Branch Police Department’s Drone as First Responder program, a regional first that has been flying over the city since February. The department has logged 265 flights, helped officers catch burglary suspects hiding under a truck and spotted a concealed knife on a shoplifting suspect before officers approached him.
The program has also generated discussion on local social media pages, where some residents said they were unaware the city had deployed the drones. Lozano, a 23-year Farmers Branch resident and the wife of a police officer, said she did not know the program existed until neighbors started posting about it.
“I didn’t feel like we were properly informed about this,” she said.
Police Chief Kevin McCoy said the program is still in a training phase, with pilots flying daytime hours alongside personnel from Aerodome, a drone-as-first-responder company acquired by Flock Safety. Full independent operations are targeted for the end of May.
According to Heidi Smith, the department’s media and compliance officer, the drone arrives on scene before ground officers about two-thirds of the time. Average launch-to-arrival time is between two and four minutes.
“It really, more so than anything, is improving our response times,” McCoy said.
On April 21, officers responded to a burglary in progress near Bee Street and Valley View Lane. The drone launched, located the suspects before the call was fully dispatched and tracked one of them as he hid under a truck. He was arrested.
In a separate shoplifting case, drone operators saw a suspect place a concealed knife in his back pocket and alerted responding officers before they approached him.
The drone launches from Fire Station No. 1 on Webb Chapel Road and is operated by FAA-licensed pilots inside the department’s new real-time crime center. The Farmers Branch City Council approved the $341,912 project in December.
Crime Prevention Officer Michael Britton, the department’s primary pilot, listens to 911 calls in real time and decides whether to launch the drone, often before patrol officers are dispatched. The drone can fly at up to 400 feet, though it drops lower near restricted airspace around Addison Airport.
Its camera includes zoom capability but is fixed to the airframe.
“The whole drone goes where the camera goes,” Britton said.
The department said the drone is not paired with facial recognition software or the city’s license plate reader system and is not used for proactive patrols. Operators begin recording only when documenting a potential crime, similar to body-camera procedures, and footage is stored for at least 30 days in Flock’s cloud system.
“The department does not use drones to conduct surveillance of private residences,” Smith said. “Recording of a private residence would occur only during the lawful execution of a warrant or in other legally authorized circumstances.”
Lozano said she remains concerned about how the drone is used.
“If there was a true emergency or the need to do surveillance prior to, say, a warrant or such, then sure, no problem,” she said. “However, when it just seems to be hovering when we are enjoying a day at Rawhide Park or just sitting in my backyard on a quiet weekend, we have an issue.”
Another resident, Shelia Monreal of Valley View Estates, said she became concerned about the program after a drone flew over her property while she was outside with her child.
“They dropped down to about 12 to 18 feet and hovered right above my roof,” Monreal said.
She said the drone returned the following day and again hovered over her property. The experience raised privacy concerns and left her unsure how residents could find out when drones had flown over their homes.
“I would have no idea how to find out,” she said. “I think it should be very easy.”
Monreal said she understands the use of drones during emergencies, but questioned whether they are necessary for routine neighborhood responses.
McCoy said what some residents interpret as surveillance is often the result of camera positioning. Pilots fly the drone toward a call location, then hover and angle the camera toward the scene.
“When the drone is hovering, it’s not looking straight down, like people think it’s looking down,” McCoy said. “It’s looking out.”
Smith pointed to the program’s public flight dashboard, which logs each flight with a launch point, flight path and reason for deployment.
Privacy advocates have also raised concerns nationally about the growing use of police drones and related surveillance technology. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized efforts to combine drone programs with license plate reader systems. Smith said the Farmers Branch program is not connected to the city’s license plate readers and that the drones are used in response to calls rather than for continuous monitoring.
The program is funded through a Texas Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority grant. Farmers Branch’s FY2026 contribution was about $30,000, its share of the required 20% local cash match on a roughly $300,000 project for two drones and a radar system. The Carrollton Police Department, which operates a second drone from Carrollton City Hall, paid the rest of the local match.
Farmers Branch has reapplied for FY2027 grant funding to bring Addison into the partnership at a projected cost of $47,000 to the city.
“We are the flagship agency right now,” McCoy said.
Assistant Chief Paul Fritz described the operation as “the only regional command center with a drone in the region.”
While department officials emphasized the program’s role in improving response times and public safety, some residents say the drones’ presence over neighborhoods continues to raise privacy concerns.
“It’s kind of hard to trust anybody these days, even police,” Lozano said, “and I’m saying that as a police officer’s wife.”
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