Episode 226: Drones in Law Enforcement: A New Perspective with Gerald Baum

Episode notes

Can drones help catch criminals?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

Welcome back to this 20-episode Texas Robotics Summit Mini Series! This 4 day event (March 4-7, 2024) was hosted at the Reveille Peak Ranch and by our friends at Granite Defense , and showcased the use of robotics (air/water/ground) in public safety via keynote presentations, training scenario stations, roundtable conversations, and more.

In this episode:

How drones are transforming crime scene investigation

Ethical considerations and future advancements in law enforcement drones

The value of networking and innovation conversations at the Texas Robotics Summit

Hear from Gerald Baum - a detective from the Dallas Police Department.

Gerald talks about the benefits of networking and sharing ideas at the summit and the use of drones in crime scene investigation. He explains how his department has been using drones to capture video footage and improve the documentation of crime scenes.

Gerald also emphasizes the importance of using video to tell a story and engage juries. And lastly, he discusses the ethical and practical applications of drones in law enforcement and the potential for future advancements.

So click play now to hear what he has to share! And stay tuned for the next Mini Series episode!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Kevin's intro: the Texas Robotics Summit mini-series
2. 0:45 Gerald Baum of the Dallas Police Department joins
3. 1:17 Why Gerald came to the Texas Robotics Summit
4. 1:45 What Gerald learned from other agencies
5. 2:24 Public concerns and transparency with drones
6. 3:17 Vehicle crimes investigation and telling the story with video
7. 4:51 Starting the drone video program
8. 6:23 Working with the district attorney's office
9. 7:39 Drone protocols and best practices
10. 8:50 Tactical, first responder and evidentiary use cases
11. 11:09 Where drones can be a force multiplier in the next five years
12. 12:16 Events and initiatives on the radar for 2024
13. 13:18 What keeps Gerald up at night
14. 14:56 Parting thought: follow the law, don't take no for an answer
15. 15:23 Closing thanks
16. 16:00 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

How is Dallas Police using drones for crash and crime scene evidence?

Gerald Baum says his vehicle crimes unit uses drones to capture smooth, planned video flights that help tell the story of a crash or crime scene in a way juries can understand, similar to how the public sees drone footage on TV. The approach fills a gap between basic camera photos and expensive 3D laser scanning.

Hear it at 3:22

How long has Dallas PD been using drones for evidentiary purposes?

Gerald Baum says their program started about a year and two months before the interview. Working in a major city with a lot of traffic has given them the opportunity to gain a lot of experience in a short time.

Hear it at 5:10

What equipment does Gerald Baum need to do his evidentiary drone work?

He can do his job out of a backpack that costs about $1,200 total, all purchased from Amazon. He says it is relatively low cost, not software-heavy or equipment-heavy, so any agency can get into it quickly with not a lot of training.

Hear it at 11:09

How are drones helping save lives in law enforcement?

Gerald Baum says drones let officers see what is going on while keeping a safe distance. That buys time so officers won't be so quick to use force. It gives officers options and information to deal with situations better, and it saves lives of officers, citizens, and suspects.

Hear it at 9:25

What is Gerald Baum's advice on improving drone programs in law enforcement?

He says the three branches of drone technology, first responder, tactical, and evidentiary, should stay in touch and keep working under the same umbrella, sharing ideas. Conferences that bring everyone together make that possible.

Hear it at 11:33

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 226 transcript

Drones in Law Enforcement: A New Perspective with Gerald Baum

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Gerald Baum

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to a 20-episode mini-series at the Texas Robotics Summit hosted by our friends at Granite Defense. We dive into the evolving world of drones and robotics in public safety aviation. Through 20 fantastic conversations with leaders across public safety, from the fire service, law enforcement, EMS operations, wildlife management, and more, we explore the challenges, and the critical role of technology in enhancing emergency services operations. A special thanks to the sponsor of the Smart Firefighting Podcast, W.S. Darley & Company, for making this podcast possible. Enjoy the show. We are on to podcast 19, and I'm grateful to be sitting next to Gerald Baum, a detective from the Dallas Police Department. Gerald, how you doing?

[0:53] Gerald Baum: Great, man, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[0:55] Kevin Sofen: Man, it's good to have you in the pod. So we're sitting here. It's a lot of people have gone to the other side of the ranch to do other sort of live training activities. And so it's, it's a little quieter here. You know, the crowd isn't quite going wild yet.

[1:07] Gerald Baum: They'll gather, they'll gather.

[1:08] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, they're gathering up, but kind of interested in what's, why did you attend this event and what's, what's been the experience like for you at the Texas Robotics Summit?

[1:17] Gerald Baum: Well, this summit has been awesome. You can come here and get exposed to so many different agencies. And when you start getting exposed to different agencies, you get to share ideas. So this is an amazing place for training and it's also a really great place for networking, meeting these other agencies, seeing what their programs are made of, taking ideas, sharing ideas, and basically just a community coming together, saying, hey, this is what we're doing, what are you doing? And us being able to take ideas from each other and actually improve our programs.

[1:45] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. What have you learned from someone else in your time here?

[1:50] Gerald Baum: Wow, it's hard to pick out just one thing. I've picked up some hints on how to communicate between operators, things like that, great SOPs, standard practices, and a lot of things that were just regarding safety, how to keep our drone safe, how to keep the public safe, and a lot of how to work with the public to dispel rumors and some apprehension they might have with law enforcement using drones. And probably the best tip I've picked up is to engage with the public and educate them on what we're doing in how we're doing it.

[2:24] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, it's not sort of a us versus them. It's sort of, well, you know, the police force is serving a purpose and fulfilling a function. It all is in the Mike O'Shea's slide one. It's all in the direction of safety.

[2:37] Gerald Baum: Right, yeah, and I can definitely understand why the public would have concerns about this technology, but the more I'm around it, the more I learn about it's actually a great opportunity for actually police departments to become even more transparent with the public in what we're doing.

[2:53] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and I missed your presentation yesterday, but I had three different people bring it up. And I'm like, hey, that Dallas PD guy, Gerald, he was talking about this pretty cool stuff on collecting evidence and how evidence can be captured and transcribed and told to the jury in a more effective manner so it's just a more efficient process. I'm sort of regurgitating this secondhand. I'd love to know kind of what were you talking about your presentation, and I'd love to hear it, learn a little bit more from you on that.

[3:22] Gerald Baum: Well, I am assigned to the traffic unit, and I'm a vehicle crimes detective, and we investigate everything from your basic hit and run up to your in-tox assault, in-tox manslaughter, all the way up to murder, when it involves vehicle crashes. So that's what I specialize in, and I had the opportunity to start using drones in our crime scenes, and we were challenged with a way, like, how do we apply this drone? And this was a drone that didn't have mapping capabilities, but it had, hey, it could shoot great photos and great video. So we started experimenting in ways that we could apply that technology to our crashes, to our crime scenes. And we tried to think, like, what was the best way to apply it? And we started thinking about, well, who in the end, ultimately, who was going to see this video? Who was really our consumer of it? Who was our audience? And that would be juries, the citizens of our city. So how do they want to see it? How would they understand it? So we actually started taking some ideas like, well, how does the public generally see drone footage? And, well, it's from TV. It's from TV shows, movies, things like that's how they're used to seeing drone footage. And that's how they can understand it. So why don't we approach crime scenes in that, using that methodology by using nice, smooth planned flights that can help us focus their attention on what we're trying to explain and the story we're trying to tell.

[4:51] Kevin Sofen: And within your experience doing this for now, and how long have you been in this role, within the evidentiary role?

[4:58] Gerald Baum: I've been with the vehicle crimes unit for five years now.

[5:00] Kevin Sofen: So when did you first start including the usage of cameras and drones to make this process more effective?

[5:10] Gerald Baum: Our program started about a year and two months ago. Actually, we haven't been doing it long, but what we have had working in a major city with a lot of traffic and vehicles is we've had the opportunity to apply it quite a bit. So we've gained a tremendous amount of experience using the technology in a very short amount of time. And because we're taking this unique approach by using video to document the scenes, it's not something a lot of departments are doing. And it's generating a lot of interest, a lot of support from our district attorney's office. And we're just, my reason for being here at these summits is to share what we've learned and try to introduce it to other agencies to see if they might want to start doing it too.

[5:54] Kevin Sofen: I look at you as probably one of the early adopters within your program on leading this. And I'd be interested in your thoughts where you obviously see the value and the potential of this and technologies, I think we can both agree is probably still being underutilized, but have you had those aha moments with other people in your department where once they saw, hey, by leveraging the video and the documentation, the crime scene investigation in this capacity, it's like a, it's a game changer type. Have you had those sort of aha moments with other people in your department?

[6:23] Gerald Baum: Yeah, we've actually worked close with the District Attorney's Office and other forensic experts as we've developed this program. From the very beginning, we wanted them on board and to support us and guide us in the right direction. And I spoke to a video forensic specialist and showed her a lot of video. And we talked about it, what would be good for court, not good for court, some basic rules to follow. And I got an email from her a couple of days later and she said, I've been really thinking about the video you showed me. And she said, you're really filling the gap. You're filling a gap between just regular camera photos and that more 3D world. you're in the space where you can go and use a camera to collect evidence. And between that place where you're using expensive laser scanners and photogrammetry to create 3D models, you're in that middle that needs to be filled. And I didn't really understand that there was a gap between the two until she saw what we were trying to do. So that was probably the biggest aha moment that has happened for me early on in this, her saying that actually really helped us give us a direction to go. Like, don't try to replace anything. Try to create a new tool that will complement what we're already doing in crime scenes.

[7:39] Kevin Sofen: And you've now talked about this idea of video capture and obviously we're at the Drone Robotic Show. I mean, how are you using drones now within these contexts? And, you know, how is it from daytime to nighttime? And here, you know, I saw a bunch of people practicing on this that I'm kind of curious in, is that, are these the kind of protocols and best practices in how you're doing? or I'd love to hear that from your thoughts.

[8:01] Gerald Baum: Well, this industry is still fairly young and we're still working on best practices and things like that. And I think our program might have a place in that to start establishing best practices and some good guidelines when it goes to capturing this kind of footage, capturing it in a way that is a jury would be used to seeing it and actually, hey, make it enjoyable to watch so you can keep the interest of that audience and show what you want them to see. Show the evidence and speak in a very unbiased way by telling the story through video. These events are great. They do, we can take ideas from things that we've seen here just by watching some of these guys fly in a very tactical manner. It gives us ideas on what we can bring to our site also.

[8:50] Kevin Sofen: And you'd mentioned before we started talking about the ways that drones are being used now from a tactical standpoint, Joiner's first responder standpoint, evidentiary standpoint, and then, you know, the drones being the tool that is this piece of plastic in the sky that has payloads on it to help create data to bring that information back to make better decisions. You know, I'd love to kind of know what are maybe some very practical use cases that you see for the different areas being used and where else do you see the ways that these technology could be ethically and responsibly and effectively used?

[9:25] Gerald Baum: most ethically and responsibly. When you're talking about that, the first thing that comes to mind is these drones are being used in a way that they're literally saving lives. And they're not just saving lives of officers or citizens. They're being applied in a way that they're saving our suspects also. You know, the bad guys. We're actually getting in there and being able to see what's going on, keeping a safe distance. And it's buying us time so that we won't be so quick to use force. It gives us options, it gives us information and ways we can deal with these things better. And applying that to... the evidentiary side, what drew me in? Like, wow, if they can do that, if they can literally save lives with these drones, how can we apply it in other directions also to make such a big difference? And as a detective, our job is to tell a story. So if we can use this to tell that story better, I think we have a responsibility to apply it. And responsibility ethically and with what we're doing with video, relatively, it's very low cost. It's not software-heavy or equipment-heavy. A basic drone and an operator can deploy this and collect pretty convincing evidence at a very low cost, which really opens it up for a lot of agencies who may not have a large drone budget. So I can do my job out of a backpack, cost probably a total of about $1,200. I need is in that backpack. And I got it all from Amazon. So it's someone any agency can get into rather quickly and with not a whole lot of training and not a whole lot of software and heavy equipment and start making a difference immediately.

[11:09] Kevin Sofen: And you mentioned, I mean, we have the duty to be able to continue to leverage this technology ethically as it relates to saving lives. You know, is there a use case or application you see in the next one to five years where you really think there can be a force multiplier opportunity for how law enforcement or any public safety, but particularly law enforcement, your role of how you think you can leverage the technology to its full potential.

[11:33] Gerald Baum: I think as long as these three branches of drone technology are working together, you're a first responder, tactical and evidentiary, as long as we stay in touch with each other and keep working on the same umbrella and sharing ideas, I think that we will continue to do a better job by sharing with each other. And it's conferences like this that bring us all together at the same time, really make that possible.

[12:00] Kevin Sofen: I like it. This whole time I've been holding the microphones, but I didn't think the stands worked that well. But, you know, if you lean over a little bit, you know, the stands are a little heavy.

[12:07] Gerald Baum: Yeah. It gets heavy pretty quick.

[12:09] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, they do. I mean, these, I got like upgraded a nicer microphone, but it's actually been a little bit of a nuisance here at times, but, you know, sound great though yeah I hope so I mean you know with the car our crowd of one over there going wild later calm down over there but yeah no I've just got a little distracted all that so I'm making of control to lead my train of thought here but I guess just kind of curious I've asked this in a lot of other podcasts but it's sort of this idea that you know it's March 2024 right now and I'm interested in sort of other events or initiatives that you're tracking this year. I mean, obviously there's events like this, but then there's also, you know, big things within your city is like, what's taken up your brain power bandwidth that you're thinking about over the course of the next nine months, whether it's stuff in your own town or other industry events that you're interested in participating in?

[13:02] Gerald Baum: Well, my job and the responsibilities of my department always keep me engaged, that's for sure. Also on the horizon for me is LITA. There's a conference coming up in Boston in May. We'll be there presenting and sharing what we've learned so far, applying this in an evidentiary role. And what tends to always occupy my mind and keeps me up at night when it's hard to sleep is thinking about, how can I integrate what I'm doing with other facets of this technology? How can I make the videography work well with the mapping? Vice versa. Is there a place for videography during an active crime scene? Is there an area for videography during a tactical situation? Should we be collecting evidence as we are also addressing a tactical situation? Could we have multiple drones on a situation doing multiple things at the same time, where we have some that are focused on the tactical role, some are focused on the Overwatch role? Is there a place there for evidentiary ones also? So how can I make what I'm doing better? How can I do a better job? But how can I also interface with all these other aspects of drone technology and law enforcement?

[14:19] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that and continuing to be on the bleeding edge. I mean, I agree, Will. I think that's a funny dynamic. It's like, what keeps you up at night? And it's like, well, I love that you're keeping up at night. It's like, how can you get better?

[14:32] Gerald Baum: Yeah, what more can be done? Yeah. What am I not thinking about? What new ideas are out there? And being in places like this, being at these conferences, talking to like-minded people, the conversations you have, standing in line waiting for lunch, that's when great ideas happen. That's when great opportunities happen for us that the citizens that we serve can really reap the benefits from.

[14:56] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well said. So I've been asking a lot of people on this as far as kind of like a parting thought of, so a little bit of a mic drop, wild card thrown at you, but if you have like a, maybe a quote that you live by or kind of a quote that you could leave us with or a question, a comment or a challenge that you could leave us with here today, what would that be?

[15:16] Gerald Baum: Follow the law, don't take no for an answer.

[15:18] Kevin Sofen: Well said, I couldn't have said it better myself.

[15:21] Gerald Baum: Thanks, you can use that.

[15:23] Kevin Sofen: I'm writing it down and it's recorded. Well, Gerald, I just appreciate everything that you're doing for Dallas and really continuing to share that knowledge and best practices with other departments. I mean, there was, like I was mentioning last night, two other smaller departments that were saying, hey, you know, I think I could copy what Gerald's doing and replicate it. So that's what this is all about. And I hope we can continue to take the good work you're doing and control copy and allow other departments around the country to continue to build on the good work that you're doing.

[15:49] Gerald Baum: Thank you, and thank you for doing what you're doing, getting it out there and helping us all communicate together and share these ideas so we can do a better job.

[15:56] Kevin Sofen: Right on. Thank you, Gerald. Thanks for tuning into this mini series created at the Texas Robotics Summit, hosted by Granite Defense. Make sure to put this amazing event on your calendar for 2025. For this podcast episode, what'd you like? What'd you think? Drop us a comment on social media and let us know your favorite quote. Thanks for all that you do and have a great day ahead.