Case Closed Tuscon PD gets drone from Private Citizen donated through NPS-DDP

WHERE: 1310 West. Miracle Mile, Tucson, Arizona

WHEN: 3/20/21

Private citizen donate to drone to the national public safety drone donation program.

Their Request

On November 19, 2018, Tucson Police Department, Emergency Management Supervisor located at 1310 W Miracle Mile, Tucson, Arizona made application to the National Public Safety Drone Donation Program NPS-DDP.org for a free drone. The department explained why the drone would help protect the communities they serve. NPS-DDP was founded by Airborne Works. Mr. Brian Gant, ( a private citizen) contacted NPS-DDP with his request to donate a lightly used drone to a local department in need. “Since we no longer use the drone my wife and I wanted to donate it to a good cause. We came across your foundation and it seemed like a great fit for this donation” said Mr. Gant. The donation will be dropped off by Mr. Gant to the department. Although we have had other donations by private citizens this will be the first time the donating party makes the donation in person. In addition to the drone being donated by Mr. Gant, SkyeBrowse, and Loc8 as well as FoxFury Lighting Solutions all three are supporting partners will also donate a subscription to their forensics mapping and object detection software along with a drone light kit to help this police department leverage cutting edge solutions along with the capabilities of the drone. This donation will have over $6,500 in combined value. The new lifesaving technology has proven to be a valuable asset to other departments and is sure to help save lives, property and injury. This will be the 25th drone donation we have made since our foundation was established

 

“Eyes in the sky for every department in need"

Their Story

“Our department is located in southern Arizona. We serve a population of over 655,000 people with just over 700 officers. Our Field Patrol Units

officers currently handle an average of 1100 calls for service in a 24hour period every day of the week.
Our ultimate goal is to have several part 107 certified operators working in patrol and available to deploy a drone, (currently we have two). Our goal is to have the ability to deploy drones to serve as force multipliers in an array of different capacities from vehicle accident mapping, large scale crime

scene documentation, searching of missing persons and soft target protection. This new donation will help us reach one of our long term goals of drones deployed tactically with our SWAT and EOD teams” said Sgt. Smith.

The board of directors of the National Public Safety Drone Donation Program (NPSDDP) is proud to have the support of the above mentioned partner supporters who share our vision to help put eyes in the sky for every department in need. Public safety departments nationally may apply to receive a UAV/drone at no cost or obligation to the department no strings attached.

The Tucson Police department had been chosen as the recipient of this drone donation by the private citizen who donated the drone.

Specs of drone being donated: DJI / Model: Mavic Pro / Accessories: Mavic Pro (Gen 1) kit. Includes the drone, 6 batteries w/4 port charging hub, controller w/variety of connecting cables, 3D printed cover for controller joy sticks, additional protective cover for gimbal, ND filter set, 10 spare rotor blades, extension landing legs, 12v car charge adapter, and padded shoulder bag. Never crashed, hardly used.

SkyeBrowse: This solutions acquires mission critical data for your command staff with no training required. Make a 3D model with just 1 tap in the SkyeBrowse app. Fly your drone above the accident scene and tap the “SkyeBrowse” button in the iOS app. Departments have cleared crime scenes in 90 seconds, instead of 3 hours. Pre-planning is made easy — a 3 minute SkyeBrowse flight was used to position snipers in protests. Hazmat runoffs are cleared 90% faster with SkyeBrowse. Government buildings are being mapped by officers flying SkyeBrowse for actionable intelligence for future active shooter situations.

Loc8 : Offers a suite of software applications initially developed as a “resource-multiplier” to quickly and effectively scan thousands of digital images (still and video, RGB and thermal) collected by drones and manned aircraft during search and rescue (SAR) missions to look for missing persons or objects. Loc8’s patent-pending image scanning technology analyzes the individual pixels in any JPEG formatted digital image by searching for color(s) that match a user-defined color palette. Once the defined pixel color(s) are detected in the scanned images, Loc8 reports the latitude, longitude, altitude, and the estimated size, of the detected item(s).

FoxFury Lighting Solutions: (2)-D10 Drone light kit. FoxFury Lighting Solutions offers drone lighting tools for anti-collision and search and rescue operations. Innovative, powerful, and designed for small UAV technologies. Innovative Solutions for All Your Safety Lighting Needs When seconds count and lives are on the line.

The National Public Safety Drone Donation Program is pleased to see private citizens making donations to NPS-DDP.org in support of their own local public safety agencies. This will be our fourth donation made by a private citizen. The generosity of this type of donation cannot be underestimated as this hardware provides life saving value in the hands of those who work so hard to protect the communities they serve. We encourage private citizens and any company including public safety to contact us to recycle any unused UAV back into service so that we may donate it to a department in need.