Torrance Police Department (CA)

Voiceover

00:00

Welcome to The Beat—a podcast series from the COPS Office at the Department of Justice. Featuring 

interviews with experts from a varied field of disciplines, The Beat provides law enforcement with the 

latest developments and trending topics in community policing.

Today’s interview is on-location at the COPS Office sponsored, PERF-hosted Forum on Unmanned 

Aircraft Systems.

Jennifer Donelan

00:23

Hello, I’m your host, Jennifer Donelan. In 2016, when the Federal Aviation Administration sketched out 

its official rules for how drones could be operated safely, the Torrance California Police Department was 

ready. Today we are pleased to have with us Sergeant David Maitlen and Police Officer Matt Slawson, 

both founding members of the department’s drone team. Welcome to The Beat. 

Sergeant David Maitlen and Officer Matt Slawson

00:46

Good morning. Good Morning. Thank you for having us.

Donelan

00:49

Let’s start with a basic question. What drove the Torrance Police Department to be ahead of the curve 

and to start its own Drone Program? Sergeant Maitlen, what was the impetus?

Maitlen

00:59

So in 2016 we started a users’ group, kind of a working group just to try to see if drones were going to 

be something we could use in police work and how we would use those drones. With that, we had one 

lieutenant, one sergeant and multiple officers kind of sit down and try to sketch out exactly how we’d 

use it. At that time we came up with probably five, maybe six things that we’re thinking. Basic stuff like 

crime scene investigation, like overall photos, perimeters, searching for missing people. Since that time 

we’ve had our program approved and deployed almost 200 times now. And, it’s really gotten the ball 

rolling. And now, we’re figuring out that it’s not just those five or six times that we can deploy. We’re 

now figuring out we have a lot of different ways we can deploy. We have deployed not only police workwise, but we also have helped out the city and inspected cell towers in our city. We have coyotes that 

run around the city and we get calls from residents. We’ve actually searched for coyotes which, I can tell 
you, we never thought we’d be doing as a police department with a drone when we first started to roll 

this out.

Donelan

02:04

Officer Slawson, anything to add?

Slawson

02:06

So early on, when we were just starting to sit down and consider using drones, we considered the fact 

that the technology is so much more affordable so it’s essentially off the shelf that we’re buying from 

companies that anyone can really buy off, at Amazon or in the Internet. The technology really became 

affordable and it was easy for us to obtain.

Additionally, another reason why we consider using it was because we don’t have a helicopter program 

at our police department. We rely on neighboring agencies such as the L.A. County Sheriffs or LAPD for 

manned aerial support. However, when they come over to assist us, their primary function is going to be 

in their jurisdiction. So they maybe overhead in an incident of ours but have to leave or have to refuel or 

whatnot. So now having the drone program allows us to have constant aerial support for our operations.

Donelan

02:56

You mentioned cost effectiveness. Just curious, what is the cost of the drones you use, Sergeant 

Maitlen?

Maitlen

03:03

Ah, it varies depending on the type of drone. The real expense that we’re finding, again, something we 

didn’t understand when we first started, is actually the payload, it’s the camera system you’re using. A 

lot of times, for an infrared camera, that would actually cost you more than the drone itself.

Donelan

03:18

Officer Slawson, what is your current drone capacity in Torrance? How many units, operators, number 

of mission, primary functions and uses? Those kinds of things.
Slawson

03:28

Currently we have ten drones right now, some of which we’re the same platform that we initially started 

with, a cheaper model that was here with in training. So we have six of those. On our bigger end, we 

have two larger drones, both that are capable with infrared or as we call it FLIR, Forward Looking 

Infrared, which allows us to see heat signature. So, if someone is hiding in bushes, under a car or 

whatnot, we potentially will see their heat signatures. That really helps us in trying to locate suspects at 

night.

Donelan

04:04

Sergeant?

Maitlen

04:06

And then as far as our team goes, we have one lieutenant, myself as the sergeant, and then ten officers. 

Our capabilities are most of our people are on patrol, so we actually have them in the cars with us and 

can deploy on patrol. We also have—One of our members is in detectives, another one in personnel. We 

kind of have them staged throughout the day and throughout the week when they work. So we’re 

basically available 24/7. And, if there’s not somebody available, we get called out which seems to 

happen on a regular basis.

Donelan

04:35

Do the officers that operate the drones have any special skills or certifications? How do you develop 

them Sergeant Maitlen?

Maitlen

04:43

So everybody on our team, from lieutenant on down, including myself, all fly the drone and can get 

deployed. As far as our training, we are all 107 certified, and we also have a two-day in-house course 

that we do as well where everybody has to go through this two-day course. Part of that is flying. Part of 

that is learning about the airspace COAs and different things that we do and are going to do on a regular

basis when we do deploy. We also do a monthly training with our team. During that time, one of the 

things we quickly learned was drones were really kind of regulated.

A lot of the ideas were coming out from helicopters, but we also quickly realized we’re not the same as a 

helicopter. One of the helicopter things was, for them to stay proficient, they have to have three 

takeoffs and landings. I don’t want my guys to only have three takeoffs and landings with the drone, it 
doesn’t make sense. So, we implemented more of a qualification where, like for our trainings, we’ll go 

out and basically reenact a situation that we may have had during the month that we had problems with 

something that happened. Then we’ll practice that and we’ll qualify on that to make sure everybody’s 

proficient with it. Again, that’s our idea of how to keep the drone program safe. And that’s a big thing, 

the safety.

Donelan

05:57

You mentioned that your pilots are Part 107 certified. Can you tell us more about that certification and 

process Officer Slawson?

Slawson

06:05

Sure, I can touch on that. In 2016, the FAA established regulations in the framework regarding the 

commercial use of UAS or commercial use of drones. That took place in August of 2016. And, public 

safety can also fall under that although it’s intended for commercial use. For example, someone taking 

real estate photos and making money by using their drone. Public safety also falls into that category.

All 11 of us on the team are Part 107 certified which requires taking a 150 multiple choice–question test 

given by the FAA. Essentially, it’s the same as ground school for a manned pilot. So you’re not learning 

everything that a manned pilot would learn but definitely all the same materials, such as aerospace and 

other aviation topics related to that.

Donelan

06:56

Sergeant, tell us some of the success stories of your drone deployment, particularly if it pertains to cost 

reduction or easing of liability for your department?

Maitlen

07:07

Sure. Absolutely. We have a ton of great use cases and again now we’re starting to see them on a 

weekly basis. One of the first ones that was really interesting that we had was a felony stop, basically a 

high-risk stop on a stolen vehicle. The driver exits the car. The passenger, we get no response from him. 

One of my guys was actually out taking pictures of a traffic accident that had occurred. Here’s a call, go 

out. Here’s that they can’t get the person out. They have K9 en route and a couple of other tactical 

resources in route.

Ultimately, what happens, the initial thought was that we were going to send the dog on the person that 

wasn’t responding and get him out. This was gang-related as well. And instead, they ended up using one 
of our smaller platforms actually flew it up on the car. We quickly figured out that the person had 

passed out inside the car and that was why he wasn’t responding. It wasn’t willful not responding.

And the other good thing about that is around the city we have people that film and that are negative 

obvious on YouTube. We actually got a really positive response from some of those standing around 

filming. How great it was that we’re using a drone to get basically live time information and figure out 

what was going on. Further, they used it to see what stores were unlocked. Then they came up with a 

tactical plan of how they were going to get them out. And then again, limiting liability, no force was used 

now when he is taken out of the car. So it gives us great intel into what’s going on.

Donelan

08:31

Officer Slawson, any other examples?

Slawson

08:34

I can provide a couple more instance that was really beneficial with the drone. We assisted our 

neighboring agency closer to the LAX Airport. It was an individual who had ran from the police, actually 

shot at the police and there was an exchange of gunfire. No one was hit thankfully. The suspect ended 

up hiding and barricading himself up on the roof of an apartment complex in that city. They called for 

our assistance. We responded and we launched the drone. We actually got the clearance to fly in very 

close proximity to LAX Airport and we’re able to keep constant visual of the person on the roof with the

drone.

And we were so close to the airport that the police helicopter actually was not allowed to fly there 

because they were so much higher than drone. In regards to that, the drones are never going to replace 

helicopters. We don’t see it that way, but definitely they complement each other. We can both share 

the airspace and work at the same time. It was pretty impressive.

Donelan

09:28

Your response, Officer Slawson, brings up a quick question. Some listeners may not be aware that 

Torrance is adjacent to the city of Los Angeles and near the complicated airspace of LAX airport. What 

size is your city, and what unique challenges do you face operating so close to a major airport in your 

area.

Slawson

09:48

Torrance is a suburb of Los Angeles. We’re about 20 miles south of L.A. We’re about 20 square miles. 

We, from my understanding, we are in some of the most complicated airspace in the country. We have 
upwards of 20 airports within L.A. County. We have multiple airports right around us, Torrance being 

one of them. We have Torrance Airport in our city. So there were some unique challenges for us when 

we were getting started.

As part of the rules under Part 107 that we discussed earlier, in order to operate a drone as a public 

safety entity within what they call controlled airspace, basically within close proximity to the airport, you 

have to get certain authorizations and waivers from the FAA. This was back in 2016 when we started 

working on this. And from what the FAA told us, we are actually the first public safety agency in the 

country to have received a Part 107 airspace waiver, which is pretty neat. So we kind of worked on that 

together. We built really strong relationships with the FAA. We now have authorization to fly not only in 

our city but within the LAX airspace, Hawthorne airspace, and the surrounding area.

Donelan

10:49

We are talking with Sergeant David Maitlyn and Police Officer Matt Slawson of the Torrance California 

Police Department about Unmanned Aircraft Systems and their drone program.

This next question is directed to you first, Sergeant Maitlen? What was the response when your 

Unmanned Aircraft System was introduced by the Torrance Police Department? Did you have a public 

conversation about the implementation of your drone program in the beginning, or was it an internal 

process within the department and city?

Maitlen

11:19

So I guess a little bit of both. We didn’t know how we are going to be accepted. It hadn’t been tried in 

L.A. County really. We had seen LAPD I guess kind of tried, and that didn’t go over very well. So we 

weren’t really sure what kind of response we were going to get. Our citizens are very positive towards 

our police department, so we knew that would be beneficial. Ultimately we went to the City Council first 

and did this closed session and told them what we were planning on doing, the different mitigation 

things we’re looking at for safety, and how we thought it was going to benefit the police department 

and the citizens for that matter. Then ultimately, when we got it approved, we went before the City 

Council and in front of an open forum and we had very little push back by anybody.

Again since we’ve had the program started, we go to co-partners in policing, teams in policing, different 

basically public avenues where we show what we do. We were using, I don’t want to say off-the-shelf 

drones but we go back to you can buy any of these drones on the Amazon. It’s just how we fly them, and 

we have a lot of flight time into them, and it’s how we’re using them. It’s no different than with the Ford 

Explorers we use, right? We drive them better a lot of times than the general public. But I think our 

openness and the fact that we have gone to these different things. If there’s a question in the field, I 

know my guys will always stop and answer questions.
We’re always happy to show off the drones. I know one of the things we do at some of the public ones, 

we’ll let people fly the drones so they can understand exactly what we’re seeing and what we’re trying 

to see. We make it very clear that we’re not there to look into your house.

We’re not there to fly them next to your window unless you’re the bad guy, unless we’re, you know, 

doing some tactical situation. At that point in time if the SWAT team’s outside your house, you’ll know 

we’re there. It won’t be the drone flying in first.

We’ve had a great response. We really have had a lot of positive feedback. Truly, and I never thought 

about this when we started, they like it because there’s less noise than the helicopter. So now when 

we’re flying, they generally can’t hear it inside their house. Compared to when you have a police 

helicopter at 400, 500, or 600 feet, it’s very loud. Especially at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning you’re going to 

hear that. It’s going to wake you up. A lot of times they don’t hear it if it’s a drone.

Then with that we also put out a PA announcement and let people know that we are flying and that we 

are going to be filming if we’re going to be filming. Then we also have the ability to put out what’s called 

Torrance alerts. It’s basically an alert system that goes out over people’s phones. So we’ve tried to be 

open and honest about it. Also my team members, if there’s drone calls in the field, we’ll go and try to 

educate and also talk to people in the field. So if we get a police response to something that has to do 

with drones, we also respond out to that and try to educate them as well.

Donelan

13:59

And you, Officer Slawson?

Slawson

14:25

And just quickly, I’ve been on the team coming up on three years now. And we have hundreds of 

deployments. So I can say we have never had a negative comment even one time on the field. It’s been 

very supportive. In fact, on one of the search warrants we had done, there was an individual who came 

out of his home. Unrelated to the search warrant, he was coming out to go to work. He came out and 

saw us flying the drone. He looked up and looked at us and said, man, why can’t all the departments use 

a drone instead of a police helicopter. So it’s been very positive.

Donelan

14:25

That’s an interesting concept, particularly about helicopters and how drones afford you uses that 

helicopters simply cannot. What conversations did you have within your department about 

incorporating drones and the process of when drone deployment is requested? Sergeant?
Maitlen

14:42

Yeah, that’s been an interesting road to say the least. I’m a patrol supervisor as well, so that helped 

because I was in the field and I can also okay it. So that really helped out with deployments. Because I’m 

always pushing my guys when something did come up, take it out there and fly.

Initially, one of our first things I believe we went out on was a traffic collision. Unfortunately it’s a 

fatality traffic collision but the debris field probably went for 200 yards. It was a big scene, lots of skid 

marks and stuff. Nobody really understood, I don’t know if we totally understood the things you could 

see with the drone and what you could actually photograph and videotape. So we put it up on that and 

instantly they were amazed because they get to see not only the debris field. They could see skid marks. 

They could see where the cars collided. They could see so many different things. Again that’s all going to 

help with prosecution. So I think thatwas huge. That literally started pushing us forward.

Then the first perimeter we had when you have a sergeant that knows nothing about drones standing 

next to you, and all of a sudden he like, oh my gosh, look at that, look at that. And then we ended up 

having another one where there was a different sergeant standing next to Officer Slawson and he 

actually finds the guy. The sergeant was beside himself on the radio trying to tell the units where this 

guy was standing at as the bad guy, next thing you know, ends up giving up to the drone. He does and he 

just puts his hands up and basically gives up and they catch him without an incident.

Donelan

16:03

So it was like, surrender to the drone.

Maitlen

16:06

He surrendered. He didn’t know quite what to do. We were fairly early on. We weren’t totally sure what 

to do either. So we just guided in units and went from there. So we’ve had so many successes and that’s 

what really pushing us along. It almostsnowballs.

Once you have one success, that turns into two more. And now we’re non-stop. Now we actually get 

called not only by our police department but by every other surrounding police departments that 

doesn’t have a drone team as well.

We have also found success not only with the drone but utilizing the drone with a helicopter. So that’s 

been the other interesting one, that we never thought we’d actually work alongside the helicopter. We 

had a department that had some bad experiences with the helicopter. Then we had them out to our 

training and said, hey, here’s what we do, here’s how we can mitigate the risk. We had a lot of long talks 

about, hey, this is what we’ll do, this is what you guys can do. He actually flew the drone a couple of 

times and he was like, man, this is great.
Not too long after Matt actually ended up finding a guy that was running from the helicopter. He was 

actually watching the helicopter and running when the helicopter was in orbit and the drone was 

following the whole time. So we had even more conversations after that. That pilot actually calls us out 

now when they have a perimeter so we can work in unison with them.

Donelan

17:15

Interesting. You’ve talked about how you use drones tactically, and its different surveillance uses and 

flexibility, as well as drones as a police responder in capturing a scene. What about enforcement of 

drone use, by which I mean people who fly drones recreationally, or possibly for criminal or illicit 

purposes. Have you had reason to address this issue Officer Slawson?

Slawson

17:39

This is a large topic of discussion right now. In our opinion there’s quite a disconnect between the 

enforcement powers, between the federal government and local agencies. So to put it in perspective, 

the FAA is the sole jurisdiction for where drones can fly in the air. The FAA has sole jurisdiction on where 

drones can fly. Where that leaves us as local police is that creates an issue for us because we can’t 

enforce that law. We actually have no enforcement power over that federal law.

I gave the example of someone trying to operate a drone close to an airport. We don’t have a local 

ordinance in Torrance that covers drone law. Even if we did, once again it’s only the federal law that can 

control where the drone can fly. So really the federal government, and the FAA, and essentially the FBI 

would have jurisdictional power. So it’s a problem we’re running into. Thankfully we haven’t run into it 

much, maybe one or two times in Torrance, but we can see it being more of an issue. From my 

understanding, that issue is being addressed right now. There’s recent legislation that’s being looked at 

and a report going back to Congress to kind of address that. So we’re looking forward to what’s going 

come of that.

Donelan

18:55

Anything you would like to add, Sergeant Maitlen?

Maitlen

18:58

If I can just correct something as well. When we talked about surveillance, I know that was one of the 

big issues we had. And that was one of the things that we saw other departments don’t do well when 

they talked about surveillance and stuff. That’s one thing the Torrance Police Department really tries to 

stay away from. We don’t do surveillance. The only time we use the drone is when have a crime, an 

actual crime minus missing people and things of that nature. But we don’t do surveillance on anybody’s 
window or just randomly put it up to follow somebody. We always have some type of crime or 

something specific we’re looking for during that time.

Donelan

19:30

Interesting to know. We are getting to the end and it brings up this question. If you come across a

department that is considering a drone program Sergeant, what advice would you give them?

Maitlen

19:41

I think the big one is you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. When I started this, I put my 

hand up and said, yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. Next thing you know we get phone calls constantly. 

Yeah, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. The couple times you think you can use it, it’s 

amazing all the different ways you can use it on how you’re going to save yourself and the department 

the liability and you’re going to make your officers safer. So what did they need to do? I think they need 

to look at their cases and not look at the technology. Use the technology but more look at how they’re 

going to use that technology and so more the officer’s safety side of it. That’s really where I think the 

bonus of this is, is the officer’s safety and how we can make our officers and citizenssafer.

Donelan

20:22

And your advice, Officer Slawson?

Slawson

20:25

Yeah. I will just add personnel. It’s very, very important within public safety to find your motivated 

personnel who are somewhat tech savvy; who can understand the equipment, understand troubleshoot 

issues and really put forth the effort. I think this detail within our department differs from others in that, 

with the technical aspect, they really have to be motivated. For agencies who are looking at starting the 

program, I would suggest reaching outto neighboring agencies or someone else in your area who you 

know has a program. See if you can attend their trainings. See if you can learn from them and obtain as 

much information from those agencies that already have programs up and running.

Donelan

21:01

One last question. If someone wanted to pick your brains about drones, how would they get in touch 

with you? Sergeant Maitlen?
Maitlen

21:08

The best way is probably email. I work graveyard, evenings. So unless you’re up at 2:00 in the morning, 

email is probably the best way. My email is D-M-A-I-T-L-E- N-at-Torrance, T-O-R-R-A-N-C-E-C-A-dot-G-OV.

Donelan

21:28

And for you, Officer Slawson?

Slawson

21:30

Matt Slawson. Email is M as in Mary, A, S like Sam, L-A-W, S like Sam, O, N as in Nancy-at-Torrance-C-Adot-gov.

Donelan

21:43

Thank you both Sergeant David Maitlen and Police Officer Matt Slawson of the Torrence California 

Police Department for joining us on The Beat. 

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21:52

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22:51

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