Modesto PD uses surveillance tech, military gear to battle crime. Take a look
As Modesto police Officer Martin Lemus pushed forward the throttle to launch one of his department’s newest unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, it quickly lifted off the ground and within just a couple of seconds ascended to about 250 feet above MPD headquarters.
While it hovered, Lemus turned around the remote control he was using to pilot the drone and showed several people what the DJI Matrice 4T’s capabilities are. Displayed on the remote’s screen was a 4k video of the machine’s birds-eye view of Patterson and the mountains beyond it.
In the foreground of the video stream, was a map overlay of all the streets and highways in its view. This is so officers monitoring a suspect or a suspect’s vehicle don’t lose their sense of direction while flying the drone, Lemus said.
“Let me see if I can find a group of people real quick, so that you can appreciate the good quality of video to be able to put out a description of a suspect,” the officer said.
He then pointed the camera down toward Modesto Grub Hubs — a collection of food trucks two blocks away from MPD headquarters — and zoomed in on a man leaving for his car. His image was very clear.
“Should he be a suspect or something, … then we can tell the ground units, ‘Hey, he’s wearing black shorts, white colored shoes, a black T-shirt with a white emblem on the back.’ And then that would give a better description of what we’re looking at,” Lemus said, describing the man he’d zoomed in on.
The DJI Matrice 4T, which also has thermal imaging and video recording capabilities, was on display at one of the several tables put out for the department’s military equipment community engagement event Tuesday.
A community engagement presentation, done by Lt. Joseph Bottoms before attendees were shown the equipment, was part of the department’s legally required obligations, per a City Council resolution passed annually in compliance with California Assembly Bill 41. The bill, passed in 2021, mandates that law enforcement agencies document and publicly report inventory the state deems to be military equipment.
“When the rules changed, you know, we were happy to abide by those rules,” Bottoms said. “It didn’t change anything we’re doing, though. We’ve always been a transparent agency.”
The lieutenant also delivered a presentation on MPD’s report to the City Council earlier this month. In it, the department lists it has a fleet of 15 drones of six varieties. The drones are used in major collision investigations, search-and-rescue operations; SWAT missions and crowd-control situations, according to the department’s report.
On MPD’s “Santa Claus” list of drones it would like to request, many of which need council approval first, were four new DJI Mavic 4T’s that would cost about $32,000. This would replace the two it has and add two more to its fleet.
Amid statewide concerns of mass surveillance, legal compliance and data security, MPD discovered in March that several federal agencies — including Border Patrol — had access to information from its Automated License Plate Reader system, despite a California law restricting data sharing.
The Police Department stated it immediately disabled the access once it was discovered, strengthened its policy language and increased oversight of the ALPR program. When sent a list of questions from The Bee about compliance and security in regard to data collected by the city’s newly installed red light cameras, MPD did not respond.
When asked at Tuesday’s event about the rules surrounding the use of drones, Officer Mason Lewis said that any time they’re launched, officers have to document it in a supervisor-approved report. It’s video recording capability needs a warrant. Drone operators, Lewis said, cannot just “go out and start searching.”
“I can’t just be like, ‘Oh, let’s fly the drone, see what we can find today.’ It has to be an emergency. If there’s somebody we’re looking for that’s already wanted, and we know they went into a yard, that’s our only scope of the search that we could do,” said Lewis. “We can’t just start searching other backyards just because we believe they might be there. We have to have some sort of indicator that leads us into that direction.”
Other items
A group of about 10 people attended Tuesday’s event. In addition to the drone demonstration, it allowed attendees to climb aboard a 2004 Lenco Bear — the department’s $300,000 armored vehicle.
In September, the City Council approved the $526,000 purchase of a new Lenco armored vehicle. The department said it plans to receive the new vehicle sometime next year.
Bottoms said the level of public access to the Bear on Tuesday was typical. “That thing gets more use at schools than it does on actual SWAT missions, because the kids love crawling through it, you know, so we’re not trying to hide anything,” he said.
Also on display were the department’s less-lethal ammunition, which is fired from converted shotguns. Bottoms said all of MPD’s shotguns were converted for this purpose.
In its arsenal, MPD holds 86 mini flash-bangs, 48 gas canisters, 550 pepper balls, 50 liquid barricade ferret rounds — tear gas or pepper spray rounds typically used indoors — and seven aerial warning rounds. The latter are 40mm rounds fired into the air that produce 170 decibels of sound and bright light.
Law-mandated categories of MPD’s inventory include unmanned aerial vehicles, robots, armored vehicles, mobile command posts, training rifles; flash-bangs, tear gas and pepper balls; 40mm canister launchers and less-lethal ammunition. The total purchasing cost of its inventory is about $600,000. It costs roughly $56,500 a year to maintain. Out of California’s 15 military equipment categories, MPD’s inventory is part of six.
