The Hawaii Police Department is observing with interest a pilot program started Aug. 5 by the Honolulu Police Department that uses drones as first responders to 911 calls.

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The Hawaii Police Department is observing with interest a pilot program started Aug. 5 by the Honolulu Police Department that uses drones as first responders to 911 calls.

The pilot program, which is limited to two urban Honolulu districts, is a partnership with the state Department of Law Enforcement and deploys unmanned aerial systems to “strengthen emergency response and public safety,” according to a statement by the Honolulu department.

“I know we’re looking into it. Nothing is on the books right now,” Maj. Levon Stevens of the Hawaii Police Department’s Technical Services Division told the Tribune-Herald. “We still have a lot of investigating to do, and I know that (Chief Reed Mahuna) is working really closely with the community.

“And, if we get to where we’re about to make a decision, I’m sure that he’ll consult with the community and see how they feel about that.”

Drones are “well-established” at law enforcement agencies across the country and improve service to the community by reducing 911 call response times, “improving the chances of locating and apprehending” suspects, enhancing officer safety, and increasing situational awareness so officers can make better-informed decisions in protecting the public, the Hawaii Police Department said.

The U.S. Department of Justice also routinely uses drones in Hawaii.

Honolulu Police Department’s program uses drones to respond to certain 911 calls ahead of officers on the ground. During preliminary testing, the department’s drones responded to incidents in Honolulu in as little as 30 seconds, police said.

The Chula Vista Police Department in suburban San Diego was the first in the U.S. to use the Drone as First Responder (DFR) program in 2019. Since then, more than 1,000 public safety agencies have received Federal Aviation Administration Part 91 waivers required to operate unmanned aircraft systems, “beyond visual line of sight for first-response purposes,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Atlas of Surveillance.

The FAA waivers also permit law enforcement agencies to eventually automate drone deployments from launchpads using AI. From April 2025 through February 2026, the FAA issued more Part 91 waivers to law enforcement agencies than in the previous seven years combined.

According to Stevens, while the Hawaii Police Department hasn’t been granted a waiver to deploy drones on first-response calls, the department does currently use the the devices.

“We just use them for investigative purposes. We don’t use them for first responders, and we don’t use them for surveillance,” he said, defining surveillance as “when you’re actually tailing somebody.”

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”But if there’s an investigation, and we need to do aerial photographs — like if there’s a traffic accident, and we need to take an aerial photo of the area, we can,” Stevens said. “Right now, we have drones in the different investigative sections — our Traffic Enforcement Unit has them, our Special Response Team has them.

“There hasn’t been a consolidation into a Drone Section. It may be something we look at in the future, but for right now, we have drones assigned to specific sections for their use in investigations.”

According to Stevens, there are about 14 FAA-certified drone pilots among Big Island police officers. He added that another 21 “are trained, but haven’t received their license yet.” He said that for the officers who are certified, being drone pilots is secondary to their everyday duties as part of their unit.

Stevens declined to say how many drones the department possesses, “but we don’t have enough for each pilot to have their own.” He also declined to share the makes and models of the department’s drones “for security purposes.”

“We know what Oahu is working on,” he said. “We have met with them regarding their program, and we are looking into maybe doing something like that, but no decisions have been made, and we aren’t even close … to taking on a project like that.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii on Aug. 6 issued a statement opposing Honolulu Police Department’s DFR pilot program and asked Honolulu police and the DLE to halt it “until the Honolulu City Council enacts binding oversight legislation with meaningful civil liberties protections.”

Among the protections being called for is a ban on the use of facial recognition technology, a step Honolulu police haven’t committed to.

“This omission matters,” the ACLU said. “Federal research has documented that facial recognition algorithms misidentify Black, brown, and Asian faces at dramatically higher rates than white faces and in some cases are up to 100 times more likely to produce a false match, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s 2019 Face Recognition Vendor Test.”

The Honolulu Police Department’s DFR policy, published on its website, prohibits “random surveillance” but doesn’t include a warrant requirement for drone deployment, doesn’t establish independent auditing, and doesn’t impose binding limits on how long footage can be retained or with whom it can be shared, according to the ACLU.

“Departmental policy written by police, without legislative backing, is not an adequate substitute for law,” the civil rights nonprofit opined.

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Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter Peter Boylan contributed to this story.

Email John Burnett at [email protected].