A drone pilot program is being planned for this fall in SF's South of Market neighborhood in which the SFPD will be testing out the use of drones as pre-first responders to crime scenes or potential crime scenes, to provide assessments of the situations at hand.

Mission Local brings us the story today about an SFPD pilot program that is in the planning stages which will bring drones, flown by sworn officers, into the SoMa area to act as first responders when calls for police response are made. The concept is new to the department, which has been using drones to track down criminal suspects in chase situations, but not to respond to scenes ahead of or in place of live officers.

The department believes the drones may help in saving officers' time when a call gets made and the initial reason for it has passed. And the sworn officers operating the drones would be able to assess situations moments before live officers arrived in squad cars, being able to give those officers an assessment of the scene to prepare themselves.

Department spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky explained to Mission Local, "Because our drones are flown by sworn officers, they could respond to a call and advise if the reason for the original call is no longer present. This would shorten our response times."

Southern Station, which oversees SoMa, is going to see its district boundary expand this fall to include areas all the way up to Market Street, and as Mission Local reports, the department has been warning of the likelihood that response times will likely get longer as a result.

The city and the SFPD are working to staff up Southern Station to address the issue, but the department is hoping that the drone pilot may help in handling lower-priority calls, and confirming when they are low-priority.

A sponsored blog post from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which mostly uses San Francisco as an example (but oddly features a nighttime skyline image of Las Vegas), suggests that the SFPD has been testing DFR or Drone First Responder programs for several years. The post is sponsored by drone maker Skydio, and the Redmond (WA) Police Department is cited as saying they've been able to cancel calls 25% of the time thanks to DFRs letting them know that the reason for the call has lessened or disappeared.

What will this be like in practice when drones are zipping around the city and police are eyeing all kinds of situations from the sky, instead of from the ground? We'll have to wait and see.

The SFPD seems to be implying that the DFRs won't be put in use when the reason for a call is obviously more serious and high-priority.

Related: Video: SFPD Uses Drone to Track Robbery/Auto Burglary Suspects, Four Suspects Arrested

Top image: Photo via Skydio