10/09/2026
Throughout this week, Skydio and Axon visited Gallup to demonstrate the capabilities of drones as first responders for our community. Our high school and college interns attended these sessions to observe and gain hands-on experience with Skydio’s indoor operational capabilities. Earlier today, various department directors, including representatives from HR, the Fire Department, IT, and the City Clerk’s office, participated in a formal demonstration and engaged in direct Q&A sessions with the providers. Our community deserves to have their tax dollars working effectively to ensure our officers remain available for proactive and high-priority calls for service. During their time here, Skydio enabled our drone operators, Officer Brown and Officer Desiderio, to deploy to service calls. According to Officer Brown, Monday was primarily a training day focused on learning the system, which involved a significant amount of information. On Tuesday, they became more familiar with the technology, and by Wednesday, they were operating with great proficiency. In total, there were approximately two days of flight operations between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Across roughly 18 hours of monitoring and responding to calls, seven incidents were resolved without the need for a patrol unit. Regarding a report of a gunshot, the team was able to search the exteriors of the bus barn, Miyamura, JFK, and the field behind the bus barn in under four minutes. Patrol assists included providing officers with intelligence before they arrived on the scene, as well as assistance with traffic crash assessments, hazardous materials, vehicles blocking roadways, one missing person search, scene safety assessments, two smoke calls, and one medical assessment involving an injured individual in public. Additionally, there were 20 instances of patrol overwatch for units checking high-crime areas. Furthermore, a drone successfully located an aggravated battery suspect hiding from patrol, leading to an arrest. In one domestic disturbance incident, the drone captured the situation in progress, allowing for an immediate emergency response due to the involvement of children and the location on a roadway. Aside from this trial, he has also recorded approximately 50 patrol deployments in the field using our department's current drones from January to the present.
We want to send a very sincere thank you to the businessmen for coming and allowing us to see the possibilities of Skydio s Drone program.
