San Joaquin County Sheriff | Drones

California’s AB 481 requires a law enforcement agency to publish an annual report on the military equipment it holds. The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office publishes one, and its first category covers unmanned aerial and ground vehicles, the drones the office flies.

What the inventory lists

Category 1 of the report lists the office’s current unmanned aircraft as rows, each with a quantity, a stated cost and a description of what the model does. Two DJI Mavic Enterprise Advanced at a stated $7,000 fly for 25 minutes with optical color and thermal cameras, a spotlight and a speaker. Two Skydio X2 at a stated $17,000 fly for 45 minutes with optical color and thermal cameras. One BRINC Lemur at a stated $12,000 flies for 20 minutes and carries “glass-breaker and item-dropper attachments, 2-way cellular-based communications.”^[1]

The two largest rows split indoors from outdoors. Eight DJI Matrice 30T at a stated $11,801 fly for 35 minutes with optical and digital zoom color and thermal cameras and are “Utilized for outdoor flights.” Five DJI Avata at a stated $2,278 fly for 25 minutes and are “Utilized for indoor flights.” One DJI Mavic Air at a stated $700 and one DJI Spark at a stated $300 each fly for 15 minutes and are marked “USED EXCLUSIVELY FOR TRAINING.”^[1] The report presents these as separate rows and states no total, so we publish them as rows and do not add them up.

What the report says about use

The stated purposes include “Missing person searches,” “Natural disaster management,” “Crime scene photography,” and “SWAT, tactical or other public safety and life preservation missions.” Two more are broader than a single call. One covers use “In response to specific requests from local, state, or federal entities, provided the use complies with Sheriff’s Office policy.” The other covers use “On jail grounds for locating escapees or persons in unauthorized areas.” On who may fly, the report says “Only assigned operators who have completed the required training shall be permitted to operate any UAS during approved missions.”^[1]

On the rules themselves the report points elsewhere: “Use is established under Sheriff’s Office Policy Manual (Lexipol) section 463 and FAA regulation 14 CFR Part 107.” It also records “Complaints / Concerns received: None” and “Violations of Military Use Policy: None.”^[1] Those two lines are the agency’s own entries in its own report. We have read no complaint log, and section 463 sits inside the 838-page scanned manual we could not read.

What the office says it plans to buy

The report’s acquisitions section is headed “Intended Equipment Acquisition 2025.” It says “The SJSO UAS Team is purchasing new Drones to replace current ones reaching the end of their service life,” and lists “6 - DJI M4TD Drones totaling $42,000”, “6- DJI M30T Drones totaling $30,000” and “1- Paladin Drop Mechanism $1,000”, followed by a line headed “Base DFR Program.”^[1] DFR stands for drone as first responder, a program in which a drone is sent to a call before officers arrive.

A list of intended purchases is not a purchase. No order, invoice or delivery record for any of these aircraft is in the documents we fetched.

What it does not establish

The report inventories equipment. It does not say how often any of it flies, for which of the stated purposes, or how long the video and images it brings back are kept.^[1] The office’s policy manual, which carries the flight rules the report cites, is published as 838 scanned pages with no text layer, and we have not read it.

The file’s own dating needs a note. It is published at a 2025 address, and its inner pages carry the header “2023 Annual Report” along with a Lexipol copyright line dated February 2, 2023. Its acquisitions section is headed “Intended Equipment Acquisition 2025,” so the content is 2025 content under an older header.^[1]