San Francisco Police | Drones
San Francisco voters authorized police drones in March 2024. The department has flown 7,481 times since, it publishes every flight as open data, and it had no drones at all in its 2019 surveillance inventory.
At a glance
- What authorized it
- Proposition E, passed by San Francisco voters in March 2024, and Administrative Code Chapter 96I.2 [1]
- Drones
- Six in the initial phase of deployment [1]
- Flights recorded
- 7,481 between May 16, 2024 and June 30, 2026 [2]
- Total flight time
- 126,284 minutes, about 2,105 hours, averaging 16.9 minutes per flight [2]
- Flights by year
- 325 from May 16, 2024; 2,968 in 2025; 4,188 in the first half of 2026 [2]
- Most common reason
- Criminal investigation, 4,991 of the 6,110 flights recorded since the reason field was standardized on September 1, 2025 [2]
- Where the flight record lives
- A public dataset the department updates on the city open data portal [2]
- Air support before this
- None. The department says this is the first time it has had air support for officers since 2000 [1]
- What the drones carry
- the department's program page does not say, and we have not read the use policy it names. The flight log records duration, location and a reason, not equipment [1] [2]
- Retention of drone footage
- not stated on the program page, and the use policy has not been read [1]
How it happened
- Context
SFPD has no drones to report
When city departments file their first surveillance inventories under Chapter 19B, drone policies are the first category the city plans to review. The department later writes, in its own compliance notice, that "SFPD did not have drones listed in its existing inventory, so this deadline did not apply." [3]
- Incident
A neighbouring department's drone, reported voluntarily
The department reports to the Board of Supervisors that it benefited from a drone "owned and operated by San Bruno Police Department" during an operation in South San Francisco. It files the report "out of an abundance of caution" because the presence of officers during another agency's drone use "does not squarely fall under the 19B.7 provisions." [4]
- Incident
The Sheriff's drone over a barricade
During a hours-long barricade following a robbery investigation, the San Francisco Sheriff's Department "deployed and managed the use of their UAS" for approximately 25 minutes. Footage was shared with the police department, retained, and provided to the District Attorney's Office as part of a re-booking package. [5]
- Decision
Voters pass Proposition E
Proposition E adds Chapter 96I to the Administrative Code. The department's own program page says it "began using drones, also called an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), after voters passed Proposition E in March of 2024." [1]
- Deployment
The first logged flight
The city's published flight log begins on this date. The initial phase of deployment is six drones. [1] [2]
- Context
The reason field is standardized
The department changes how it records why a drone flew, moving from free text to a fixed list of four categories. The dataset says the change "was made in order to better systemically capture data over time." Counts before and after this date are not directly comparable. [2]
- Expansion
Half a year outruns the year before it
By this date the log records 4,188 flights in 2026, against 2,968 in all of 2025. Total flights since the program began reach 7,481. [2]
What the record shows
San Francisco police fly drones because the city’s voters told them they could. Proposition E passed in March 2024, added Chapter 96I to the Administrative Code, and the department’s own program page puts the sequence plainly: it “began using drones, also called an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), after voters passed Proposition E in March of 2024.”
The department describes the starting fleet as six drones, and says the program “marked the first time SFPD has had air support for officers since 2000.”
Every flight is published
This is the unusual part, and it deserves saying before anything else. The department publishes a record of every drone flight on the city’s open data portal, updated as the program runs. Each row carries a date, a duration, a reason, and a location.
That is more than almost any agency on this site discloses about anything. It is also the reason the numbers below exist at all.
We counted them on August 24, 2026. The dataset held 7,481 flights between May 16, 2024 and June 30, 2026, totalling 126,284 minutes of flight time, which is about 2,105 hours. The average flight ran under seventeen minutes.
The growth is the part worth sitting with. From the start of the log through the end of 2024 there were 325 flights. In 2025 there were 2,968. In the first six months of 2026 there were 4,188. Half a year outran the whole year before it.
What the flights were for
On September 1, 2025 the department changed how it records why a drone flew, moving from a free-text box to a fixed list. The dataset explains the change in its own summary: it “was made in order to better systemically capture data over time.”
That means the record has two eras and they cannot be added together. For the 6,110 flights on or after that date, the reasons are:
| Reason | Flights |
|---|---|
| Criminal Investigation | 4,991 |
| Training / Test | 916 |
| Major or Critical Incidents | 113 |
| Fire / Mutual Aid | 90 |
The earlier 1,371 flights carry free-text reasons, entered by hand, with the same reason spelled several ways.
Before the drones, other people’s drones
The three years before Proposition E are documented too, and they show what a department does when it has no drone of its own.
Chapter 19B requires a written report to the Board of Supervisors when a department uses a surveillance technology in an emergency without an approved policy. Two of those reports describe drone footage the department got from other agencies.
In October 2023, during an operation in South San Francisco, officers benefited from a drone “owned and operated by San Bruno Police Department.” In November 2023, during an hours-long barricade after a robbery investigation, the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department “deployed and managed the use of their UAS” for about 25 minutes, and afterwards gave the footage to the police department, which retained it and passed it to the District Attorney’s Office.
Two things are true about that October report and both belong here. It describes a route around a technology inventory: a department without an approved drone policy still ended up with drone footage. And the department filed it voluntarily, writing that it was reporting “out of an abundance of caution” because officers being present during another agency’s drone use “does not squarely fall under the 19B.7 provisions.” A department reporting more than it had to is worth saying out loud.
What we are not putting on this page
The flight dataset records where each flight happened, down to a geocoded intersection, a neighbourhood and a supervisor district, along with a case number.
We publish the totals and not the rows. No map of flight locations, no ranking of neighbourhoods, no case numbers. Making surveillance visible is the point of this site. Building a searchable record of where and when police aircraft appear over particular streets would be doing surveillance, which is the opposite, and it is on the short list of things this project will not build.
The data is public and the city publishes it. Anyone can go and look. We are choosing not to repackage it into that shape.
What we do not know
- What Proposition E actually changed. The department names Administrative Code Chapter 96I.2 as its authority, and the code is published on a host that refused our requests, so we have not read the text. Nothing on this page describes what Proposition E did to the surveillance ordinance, because we cannot yet say.
- What the drones carry. The program page does not describe cameras, zoom, thermal imaging or any other payload, and we have not read the use policy or the two unit orders the page names.
- How long drone footage is kept, who may view it, and whether it is shared. None of that is on the program page.
- Why flights roughly doubled between 2025 and the first half of 2026. The log records that it happened; nothing we have read explains it.
- Whether the six drones of the initial phase are still the whole fleet. The program page describes an initial phase and does not say what came after it.
What you can do
Show up
Systems like this one are approved by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have not yet confirmed where each of them meets in San Francisco County.
What we have documented in San Francisco County →Protect yourself
Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail. Our guides publish at launch; until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.
Surveillance Self-Defense →Sources
- 1. San Francisco Police Department, "Drones" program page · Primary document · accessed · archived copy
- 2.
- 3.
- 4. San Francisco Police Department, section 19B.7 exigency report to the Board of Supervisors for an October 18, 2023 incident · Primary document · · accessed · archived copy
- 5. San Francisco Police Department, section 19B.7 exigency report to the Board of Supervisors for a November 13, 2023 incident · Primary document · · accessed · archived copy
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