The drones

Nearly half the launches aren't the emergencies the city described

“They're really not intended for surveillance purposes,” the City Manager said at launch. “They're intended to respond to what we call priority one calls for service.” The city's own log says otherwise: of 398 calls the drones flew to, 186 were priority two, three or four — including “Paperwork – relay paperwork” and “Patrol check – routine.”

30 April – 9 October 2026

What 672 flights add up to

Every number on this page comes from the city's Aerodome flight dashboard, pulled on 11 October 2026, and from reading all 398 call narratives the police attached to those flights. The dataset and our coding are published below.

47%

of calls flown were priority two or lower

P0: 6 · P1: 206 · P2: 155 · P3: 9 · P4: 22. The City Manager said “priority one.” The police policy says drones fly only when a statutory exception applies — emergencies with “immediate danger to any person,” missing-person alerts, crash imagery, felony warrants.

Aerodome flight log; OPS-615 §C

70%

of calls were in a single ZIP code, 23607

278 of 398. Another 82 were in 23605. The southern third of the city — the same neighborhoods the CNU study found four to eight times more camera-dense — gets 90% of the drone flights. The North End effectively has none.

Aerodome flight log, postal code on each call

38%

of real responses: the drone searched and found nothing

135 of 355 usable narratives. On 116 (33%) it located who or what it was sent for, or told officers something useful. The rest stood by, or were cut short by battery, geofence or connectivity.

Our reading of all 398 narratives, coded below

test and training flights logged as emergency calls

Twenty were typed “Test call – do not dispatch.” Five were logged against real call types — a “Suicide” call and a commercial “Fire alarm” each carry the one-word narrative “test.” Eighteen more narratives are blank or unusable.

Aerodome flight log

The log runs from 30 April to 9 October 2026: 672 flights and 134.3 hours in the air. 377 flights carry a call for service (398 calls; a few flights served two, and a few calls drew a second drone). The other 295 — mostly in May, June and July — carry none: training, testing, repositioning. Since August every flight has carried a call. Flights peaked at 232 in July, then fell to 77 in August and 71 in September; October has started at about three a day. The mix has shifted too: of the 53 calls flown from 20 September to 9 October, 39 were priority zero or one. Nothing published explains either change.

What they fly to

Disorderly conduct, not shootings

The city's launch coverage listed “a homicide, shooting, missing person, or medical emergency.” The most common reason a Newport News drone leaves its dock is a disorderly-conduct call.

Call type, as dispatched	Calls
Disorderly conduct / civil disturbance — in progress or just occurred	47
Nature unknown — combined police/fire response	27
ShotSpotter activation — immediate response	22
Domestic problem — just occurred or potential threat	22
Test call — do not dispatch (police only 16, combined police/fire 4)	20
Missing person under 21 — immediate threat	17
Domestic assault — just occurred, suspect possibly in the area	16
Domestic assault — combined police and fire response	15
Motor vehicle collision — combined police/fire response	13
Person with a gun — armed, possible threat	9
Gunshots heard — in progress or just occurred	9
Assault — just occurred, suspect in area	8
Everything else (76 call types)	173
Calls with a drone attached, 30 Apr – 9 Oct 2026	398

By priority

Priority	Calls	What that looks like
P0	6	Shooting, robbery in progress, vehicle pursuit, code blue
P1	206	Person with a gun, ShotSpotter, missing juvenile, structure fire, crash with injuries — and “Accident – property damage”
P2	155	Disorderly conduct, domestic problem, gunshots heard, suspicious person, E911 hang-up, BOLO
P3	9	Trespassing, check the welfare – routine, paperwork – relay paperwork, patrol check – routine
P4	22	Test calls (20), a “message – routine” that was a training flight, and one simple-assault call that turned out to be a person in crisis at a bus stop

Priority codes are the city's, from its CAD system, as published on the dashboard. The department's policy (OPS-615, §C.3) says pilots “evaluate calls for service based on call-type and priority” and deploy only when the statutory criteria are met. It does not say “priority one.” The City Manager did.

What happened when they got there

The dashboard says 345 subjects located. The narratives don't.

The dashboard's overview counter reports “345 subjects located” across 386 calls, 69% “first on scene,” and 14 calls “cleared without patrol resource.” Since 20 September the counter has added 38 subjects located; the pilots' write-ups for the calls flown in that time describe the drone locating its target or giving officers something useful 13 times. Read one by one, the narratives tell a more modest story.

What the narrative says	Calls	Share
Drone located the person, vehicle or scene it was sent for, or gave officers something actionable — a location, a plate, a lane closure, “no fight, slow down”	116	33%
Drone searched and found nothing; subject already gone; patrol or fire found them first	135	38%
Drone stood by or provided overwatch; no result stated	79	22%
Aborted or limited — geofence (14), battery (16), connectivity or hardware (12), canceled	25	7%
Genuine responses with a readable narrative	355

Excluded: 25 test flights and 18 blank or unusable narratives. Thirteen narratives describe the drone finding someone who was then detained or arrested. Fifteen describe a false alarm the drone helped confirm: fireworks, a backfire, a neighbour grilling, a trash truck, a hot-air balloon that turned out to be power-line markers, a “burglar” who owned the shop.

ShotSpotter sends the drone; the drone finds nothing

Twenty-two launches were ShotSpotter activations — the $204,750-a-year gunshot sensors. On fifteen, the pilot reported no subjects, no evidence, nothing suspicious. Three found fireworks or a backfiring car. This is what it looks like when one surveillance system feeds another.

Read them yourself

Each flight number links to the city's dashboard for that day. Quotations are the pilots' words. We include the ones that went well, because they exist.

NPNPD-260610-0007P1 · SUICIDE – COMBINED POLICE/FIRE
The entire narrative: test. Same on NPNPD-260612-0001, a commercial fire alarm.
NPNPD-260529-0004P3 · PAPERWORK – RELAY PAPERWORK
A 17-minute flight attached to a paperwork call. No narrative. NPNPD-260616-0015 is a “Patrol check – routine.”
NPNPD-260929-0005P1 · MISSING PERSON < 21
DFR intended to fly out to missing juvenile call but was outside of geofence. Two minutes later a second dock launched NPNPD-260929-0006: The juvenile was quickly located by the drone, two blocks from her home. The geofence decided which dock could go.
NPNPD-261002-0001P2 · DOMESTIC PROBLEM
DFR responded to the area and was able to locate the suspect hiding in a back yard. DFR directed units to the suspect and remained on station until officers took custody of the suspect.
NPNPD-260720-0010P1 · NATURE UNKNOWN
Observed subject on the 71st/Warwick traffic camera walking in the roadway… Continued to follow subject with the drone until PD arrived. The traffic cameras are in the loop too.
NPNPD-260720-0011P2 · DOMESTIC ASSAULT
The drone watched a couple argue on a porch for 11 minutes. Video downloaded but not imported to evidence.com due to no IBR being taken. Downloaded to where, kept for how long? See what we don't know.
NPNPD-260621-0003P2 · PERSON WITH A GUN
A caller reported a woman in a pink robe brandishing a firearm in front of her child. Once over head I saw she was not holding a firearm and had a cell phone in her hand. A drone corrected a bad call before officers arrived — the case for the program, in one flight.
NPNPD-260718-0010P1 · AUTO/PEDESTRIAN ACCIDENT
A vehicle struck a nine-year-old in a car park. The drone maintained visual contact as the vehicle pulled into a parking space and directed responding patrol units to its location. Patrol units ultimately located the driver and placed him under arrest.
NPNPD-260621-0012P1 · SHOTSPOTTER ACTIVATION
Patrol advised that juveniles were present and that it was only fireworks. NPNPD-260711-0006, five rounds: Confirmed fireworks.
NPNPD-260726-0003P2 · UNSPECIFIED PROBLEM
Checked area in reference to reportedly a hot air balloon in distress… confirmed they were likely looking at the balls/aerial markers on the nearby high power lines.
NPNPD-260917-0003P0 · SHOOTING
One of six priority-zero calls in the log. DFR responded to Geofence limits and attempted to locate a victim. Unable to locate. The drones can't leave their boxes on the map, even for a shooting.
NPNPD-260810-0001P2 · DISORDERLY CONDUCT
The female was not disorderly or fighting, advised dispatch of my findings the call was cleared without dispatching a police unit. One of the fourteen calls the dashboard counts as cleared without patrol — a drone, not an officer, decided nobody needed to come.
NPNPD-260824-0001P4 · TEST CALL
Training flight for new pilot. Inadvertently attached to BOLO, did not respond to this call for service. The public log is only as good as what pilots type into it.

Where they fly

Ninety percent of flights over the southern third of the city

The docks and the geofences decide who gets watched. Pilots' narratives refer to a South Precinct dock, a headquarters dock and “south and central” geofences. North of Hilton, the log is almost empty.

ZIP code	Area	Calls	Share
23607	Downtown and the Southeast Community	278	70%
23605	Jefferson Avenue corridor, south-central	82	21%
23601	Hilton and the midtown waterfront	32	8%
23606	Riverside and CNU	1	<1%
23608	Denbigh	1	<1%
23602, 23603	Kiln Creek, Lee Hall	0	0%
—	No postal code on the call	4	1%

Fourteen narratives say the call was outside or at the edge of a geofence. The CNU researchers found Flock cameras concentrated in majority-Black tracts at four to eight times the rate of white ones; the drones follow the cameras. Whether that is because that is where the calls are, or because that is where the docks were put, is a question for the people who chose the dock sites — see who decided.

For comparison

Chesterfield publishes less, and flies to warrants

Chesterfield County's drone program (Skydio, not Flock) started 15 July 2026 and publishes a dashboard too. It is thinner: purpose, duration, a case number and one free-text line — no priority code, no narrative, no outcome. Newport News's log, for all its blanks, is the more transparent one. It is also the answer to “what if we just switched vendors”: a Skydio dock flies to the same disorderly-conduct calls with less paperwork. The demand is removal, not a new logo.

306

Chesterfield flights, 15 Jul – 16 Sep

190 training (62%), 116 calls for service. Eleven calls have a blank description.

Skydio public dashboard, 20 Sep 2026

warrant-service flights, plus two “traffic surveys”

One survey hovered over a school pick-up line. Two flights were launched by a plate-reader hit — a camera dispatching a drone, no human call.

Skydio public dashboard, 20 Sep 2026

The gaps

What the log doesn't tell you

?Which retention period is realThe police policy says the vendor keeps drone video 21 days. The contract the city signed says 30. The city's FAQ page says only “not kept indefinitely.” Nothing published says which number the system is set to. Details and the FOIA that settles it.
?Why nearly half the launches are priority two and lowerThe City Manager said priority one. The policy says statutory exceptions only. Neither explains “Paperwork – relay paperwork.” Is there a written dispatch threshold, and who signed it?
?What “345 subjects located” countsThe dashboard's headline metric is not defined anywhere we can find, and the narratives do not support it. What is the definition, and who enters it?
?Why flights fell after July, and why the mix changed in September232 flights in July, 77 in August, 71 in September. Most of the fall is training flights stopping, but calls flown fell too, from 158 flights in July to about 70 a month. Then from 20 September three in four calls flown were priority zero or one, against half before. A dock down? A new dispatch rule? The public has been told nothing.
?Where footage goes when no report is filedOne pilot downloaded video of a domestic argument and noted it was “not imported to evidence.com due to no IBR being taken.” Downloaded to what, retained under which rule?

Each of these is a records request. File one; five working days to a response. And none of them needs answering before council can act: the contract lets the city give notice at any time, and the only demand that fixes this is to cancel it, along with Fusus and ShotSpotter, and take the docks down.

How we counted

Check our work

Everything above is reproducible from two files. If our reading of a narrative is wrong, tell us and we will change it and say so.

The data

nn-drone-flights-2026-10-11.json — all 672 flights as the dashboard served them on 11 October 2026: flight number, launch time (UTC), duration, and for each attached call the CAD number, call type, priority, block address, postal code and narrative. Dates and monthly counts are UTC, as the dashboard serves them.

nn-drone-calls-coded-2026-10-11.csv — the 398 calls, one row each, with our outcome code. The 345 codes from our first reading are carried over unchanged except one, below.

Correction, 11 Oct 2026: our first reading recorded the narrative of NPNPD-260730-0012 as “$34”, and this page quoted it as the entire narrative. That was our error: the dashboard sends long narratives as a separate block, and “$34” was a pointer to it. The real narrative is a detailed report in which the drone located the victim. It is now coded A, not E. The 20 September files (JSON, CSV) stay up as published; no other narrative in either pull was affected.

The coding

Every narrative was read and assigned one code: A the drone located its target or gave officers actionable information; B it searched and found nothing, the subject had gone, or others found them first; C it stood by with no result stated; D aborted or limited by geofence, battery, hardware or cancellation; E blank or unusable; T a test or training flight. Where a narrative could be read two ways we chose the one more generous to the program.

Judgment calls are ours and the file shows every one. Percentages exclude E and T.

Sources

City of Newport News, Public Safety Flight Dashboard (Flock Aerodome) — community.newport-news.va.us.aerodome.com. Flights list with date range 1 Jan 2025 – 12 Oct 2026, retrieved 11 Oct 2026 (first pulled 20 Sep 2026); overview counters for the same range. Data © City of Newport News.
Newport News Police Department, OPS-615 Unmanned Aircraft Systems, issued 11 May 2026 — public.powerdms.com/NNPD1/documents/4282606 (§C deployment criteria; §D.1.b retention)
City of Newport News / Flock Safety, contract 26-1342-00 — DocumentCloud 28547306 (order form retention period; T&Cs §1.15, §5.3)
City of Newport News, Drones as First Responders — nnva.gov/3269 (FAQ retention language)
WHRO, Newport News to launch drone first responder program, 17 Jun 2026 — whro.org (City Manager's “priority one” statement; launch call types)
Chesterfield County Public Safety, DFR flights dashboard (Skydio) — cloud.skydio.com/dashboard/chesterfieldpublicsafety, all flights 15 Jul – 16 Sep 2026, retrieved 20 Sep 2026
Finn, Keener & Baird (Christopher Newport University), Flock camera distribution in Hampton Roads, Jan 2026 — VPM
ShotSpotter cost: SoundThinking renewal quote, 16 Mar 2022 — DocumentCloud 28547138