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Skagit County Sheriff | Drones

Flying since 2018, over 500 missions, and a fleet the office names itself: a thermal Matrice, a loudspeaker-capable Mavic, and a Brinc Lemur that enters buildings ahead of SWAT.

At a glance

Since
"The Skagit County Sheriff's Office began operations in early 2018 with Unmanned Aerial Systems" (the office's own annual reports, verbatim in 2022 and 2025) [1] [2]
Volume
36 missions in 2022; "over 500 active missions and training flights" since inception by the 2025 report [1] [2]
The fleet
Brinc Lemur for indoor operations "primarily used with SWAT operations to check for people inside a building"; Matrice M210 with thermal and zoom cameras; Mavic 3 Enterprise with thermal, zoom, and attachable loudspeakers (named across the reports) [1] [2]
Pilots
Commissioned deputies with FAA certificates: eight in 2022, seven in 2025, working toward 24x7 callout availability [1] [2]
Stated uses
Search and rescue, locating missing persons or fleeing suspects, K9 assists, flood survey, public demonstrations; mutual aid to local police and towns [1] [2]

How it happened

  1. Deployment

    Operations begin

    The office begins UAS operations, per its own annual reports. [1]

  2. Expansion

    The indoor drone

    A new Brinc Lemur arrives and two pilots complete training; the aircraft flies into buildings ahead of SWAT entries. [1]

An agency that shows its work

Most drone programs on this site surface through a procurement line or an Atlas row. Skagit County’s surfaces through its own annual reports, which name the aircraft, count the pilots, describe the missions, and date the program to early 2018. The candor cuts both ways: the same reports establish that the Brinc Lemur exists to fly into buildings ahead of SWAT entries, and that the Mavic can carry loudspeakers, capabilities a reader would otherwise learn about from a records request.

What the reports do not carry is the policy. The rules for when a thermal camera flies over a neighborhood, what happens to the video, and who approves a flight are described in outline, deployment for public safety missions, FAA certification for pilots, but the governing document itself is not published, and the records request asks for it.

What we do not know

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 Skagit County.

What we have documented in Skagit 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. 1.
    Skagit County Sheriff's Office 2022 Annual Report (Unmanned Aerial Systems section, Sgt. Ben Hagglund) · Primary document · accessed
  2. 2.
    Skagit County Sheriff's Office 2025 Annual Report (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles section) · Primary document · accessed

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