A drone will likely be the latest high-tech addition to the Watertown Police Department, but the City Council had questions about where data collected will be stored and who will have access.
Watertown Police Chief Justin Hanrahan described the budget request during the May 6 Fiscal Year 2027 budget hearing. He also talked about staffing and a new AI program that will be used by WPD officers.
The drone, which costs $49,396, would be dispatched to an area where a crime or incident like an auto accident is reported, Hanrahan said.
“You can get to pretty much anywhere in the City in two minutes, and it’ll give us real time live feed of what’s taking place,” Hanrahan said. “So if there’s a bank robbery or car accident, whatever it might be, it’ll actually give us some intelligence before we even arrive on scene.”
It typically takes police four minutes to respond to a call, Hanrahan said. The drone would be located at the Police Station, and when it is given an address it will fly there automatically, Hanrahan said. It can also be overridden and controlled manually. The drone would also be available to the Watertown Fire Department.
The drone would be dispatched from the Watertown 911 Center, and would not go out to every reported incident.
“It’s discretionary based on the officer in charge. We have a lieutenant on every shift that will make that determination whether the drone should be sent out or not,” Hanrahan said. “There is a concern it has a limited battery life, so if you are deploying it to calls it really is not needed, you’re going to take the risk of depleting the battery and it may not be available for a call that you actually need it on.”
City Councilors had questions about the data collected, and who would have control of the data. This follows last year’s initial approval of the Flock license plate camera system, which City Manager George Proakis noted has been cancelled.
Hanrahan noted that the drone will not begin recording until it reaches its destination, so he does not believe it would be a privacy issue for areas it flies over to get there.
The name of the vendor is Paladin Drone, Hanrahan said.
“My understanding is it does go in the cloud, per se, but the vendor assures us that it’s not being shared outside,” Hanrahan said. “It’s going to be our data. It’s not going to go outside any other agencies.”
While other area police agencies, such as Waltham, Burlington and Woburn, have drone programs, Watertown would be the first police department in Massachusetts to use this type of drone, Hanrahan said. About 120 departments across the country use the Paladin drones, including in Connecticut. Hanrahan said he has not seen them working in person, but has seen videos of them operating.
Councilor Theo Offei asked, reflecting on what happened with the Flock cameras, whether the Council could approve the rest of the budget and wait on the drone until more information was available about the data.
“I’m incredibly appreciative of the technology forward approach. I think it’s visionary, and I think it’s what we need,” Offei said. “But obviously we want to make sure that the community is aware of what we’re doing. And, I would like to see if the ACLU has written anything about this, which often tends to express opinions about these kind of technologies and stuff.”
Proakis said the final vote on the budget will be May 26.
“At any point in time that you want to dig deeper into that over that time frame, that’s fine,” Proakis said. “It is always the Council’s purview to think it’s not ready for prime time, and then we keep working on what may or may not be appropriate, but over the course of the next three weeks, if there’s questions we can answer or things we can provide, we will do our best to do that.”
City Council President Mark Sideris encouraged Councilors to ask questions soon so that the concerns can be researched by the City administration.
“I just want to make sure before we vote on the budget, that we’re confident that you can provide us with something with their policies that it’s going to remain in the cloud,” Sideris said. “The mistake with Floock was that we weren’t the only ones that were going to have access to that.”
Councilor Tony Palomba asked who would control the data, and whether it could be used if another law enforcement agency, such as ICE, is doing something that is not lawful.
“Let me give you an example. So you sent a drone out there, and you saw — I’m not saying that this happened, so please — this person did something that didn’t seem particularly legal and that was caught on the drone camera,” Palomba said. “Could that be used by your office to say, ‘Hey, we have information that should be sent to another level of enforcement,’ or how might that data be used?”
Hanrahan said the data would be controlled locally.
“The data would be our data,” Hanrahan said, “So it’d be, it would be the data of the Watertown Police Department.”
Staffing
The Watertown Police Department has 67 of 72 spots for uniformed officers filled, currently, Hanrahan said. The department has three candidates in the Police Academy, and two members of the WPD Cadet program that they hope to send to the Academy.
The Police, however, had requested four more officers to help cover an increase in calls. Proakis said that request was not funded for Fiscal Year 2027. Councilors asked why additional officers were requested.
“The data that we’ve looked at internally, in the last few years, primarily since 2020, the call volume overall has gone up considerably,” Hanrahan said. “Particularly in the Arsenal Corridor where the retail and the housing (has been built), there’s been a significant amount of increased calls there.”
Currently, the WPD has four patrol areas in town, with one officer at a time assigned to each area. Having four more officers would allow a fifth area to be created focused on the Arsenal Corridor.
While the staffing is nearly full right now, Hanrahan said the WPD is a young department and there will soon be several officers on leave.
“We have, I think, 10 pending births,” Hanrahan said. “So we have a lot of officers going out on leave.”
The Police Department has funding for two clinicians who assist the police with and to help people in mental health crises. One clinician has worked with the WPD for several years but Hanrahan said it has been challenging to keep the second position filled.
“We actually have a new person just started maybe two weeks ago, so it’s kind of in there in the early stages, but it’s we’ve hired people in the past, and it’s through a vendor, so they really have the more control of the hiring, but we haven’t had really a second one consistently.”
Other Additions and AI
The FY27 budget includes $10,000 for tactical vests and ballistic helmets. The vests would have a 10-year life span, Proakis said, which would be double that of the current ones. There is also $67,000 earmarked for cruiser video, after adding body cams in the last budget.
Another budget addition is $15,480 for a closed loop, AI technology that allows officers to conduct inquiries on Massachusetts General Laws, department policies and other data sources, Proakis said.
The system is called Blue Voice, Hanrahan said.
“So it’s like an app the officers will have access to on their phones,” Hanrahan said. “And if you had a vehicle, for instance, that was parked on the street that had evidence of a crime in it, the officer could talk into the app, and say ‘Am I allowed to search this vehicle that’s parked on the street with a handgun visible?’ And it’ll actually pull data from resources, law books, things like that, a summary of the legality of what they can do there.”
Councilors were concerned about the type of searches, and where the information was coming from. Hanrahan said the technology also searched Watertown City ordinances and the Police Department’s policies and procedures.
“We have control of what goes in there and it doesn’t go into the internet and pick up something like a Google search,” Hanrahan said.
The final budget vote will take place at the City Council’s May 26 meeting.