Lyon County Sheriff | Sheriff's drone program

A standing program, described by the people who run it

The Sheriff’s Office 2025 annual report is the fullest account of any surveillance system in this county’s record, and it is the office’s own.

“In Lyon County, UAVs have become essential for Search and Rescue and tactical operations. They offer real-time aerial surveillance, which is vital for critical incidents, large public events”, and for the office’s more complex operations.

On the aircraft: “In addition to flight endurance and night vision, our UAVs are equipped with features such as zoom lenses for precise visual monitoring from a secure distance, as well as thermal imaging and night vision.”

On how much they fly: “This year, the UAV Team/SAR has been deployed more than 100 times, including barricaded subjects, searching for a homicide suspect, surveillance, tactical breaching, extensive searches, training, 3D modeling, and ensuring the safety of participants” at public events.

Seven Sheriff’s Office pilots and three search and rescue pilots did that work, and four more joined during the year. The county budget agrees: a drone expense line rising to a $20,000 request, a second line in another department, an aircraft bought with $9,600 in donated money, and four staff sent to instructor training in Utah in May 2026.

Most of the list is search and rescue. One word is not.

Read the list of uses honestly. Barricaded subjects, extensive searches, 3D modeling and search and rescue are the uses most people picture when a rural sheriff gets a drone, and a county this size with mountains and a lake has real need of them.

One word in the middle of that list is doing different work. Surveillance is named by the office itself, in its own account, alongside aerial coverage of large public events, by aircraft carrying thermal imaging, night vision and a zoom lens for monitoring at a distance.

That is not an accusation. It is the office’s own description, and it is the reason Nevada’s drone statute exists.

The statute is stronger than most, and the paper trail is thinner than it should be

Nevada’s NRS 493 is better law than most states have. Law enforcement needs a warrant to gather information by drone where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, capped at ten days. Fly on an imminent threat instead and the agency must file a sworn statement with a court within two business days. Evidence gathered outside those rules is inadmissible and cannot establish reasonable suspicion, and that exclusion follows the information even if it passes through another agency.

And NRS 493.118 requires the Department of Public Safety to keep a registry of every public agency drone, listing the aircraft, its operators and the agency’s statement of use, and to publish that registry on its website, with an annual report to the Legislature each February.

We went looking on 4 September 2026. The department’s registration page carries the form, the statute and the regulations, and links no registry and no annual report. The only list we could find published names sixteen agencies and contains nothing more recent than 2018. Lyon County is not in it.

Scope that carefully. It is a finding about what the state publishes, not about whether this county registered its aircraft. A registration filed after that list went up would not appear in it, and the duty to publish belongs to the department. What it means in practice is that a resident who follows the statute to the state’s own website cannot find out whether the drones flying over their county are registered.