Criminal Justice Committee.

Transcripts may contain automated transcription errors. Verify important details against the official recording.

Item 3: Metropolitan Crime Commission/NOPD – National Guard Deployment Overview

Item 3 (cont.): NOPD Presentation – Plan for Post-Guard Transition

Item 4: Carnival Gap Fee Amendment – Presentation and Discussion

Item 5: Contracts for Approval per Council Bill 57

Item 6: ACLU of Louisiana — Eye on Surveillance

Mr. Gordon-Etching

Mr. Gordon-Etching presents crime-trend data and the National Guard deployment, explaining how the Crime Commission tracks calls for service and crime outcomes, and highlighting recent reductions in homicides, nonfatal shootings, carjackings, and armed robberies. He discusses the Guard’s historical presence in New Orleans—post-Katrina and for major events—its role as a partner rather than a responder to 9-1-1 calls, and the Guard’s measured involvement before the current withdrawal. He cites patrol counts (over 4,100 patrols and more than 31,000 patrol hours), detail on the Guard’s visibility as a deterrent, and the impact of their presence on allowing police to be more effective. He notes the Guard’s departure was announced to last through August, after which planning would continue with the NOPD and LSU Police, emphasizing the Guard as a force multiplier that will be missed but that the police and state police will fill the gap. The closing remarks anticipate a follow-up from NOPD to discuss post-Guard plans and how to address any gaps.

NOPD Speaker (Representative)

We were in partnership. I won't repeat the points that Mr. Ghionichi pointed out, but the National Guard were not engaged in police powers because they didn't have any. But they were great partners in terms of presence and deterrence. We know for a fact that presence matters in the deterrence of crime. But in this preparation for their departure, we have a plan, and we put it up here for you on the screen so that you can follow along. I do have the Chiefs with me over patrol, so Chief Lebrano is at the end of the table here with me. We all know the Assistant Superintendent, Hans Gantier, to my right. But I also have asked for Captain Palumbo to be here because Captain Palumbo is over the commanding rank officer of the 8th District, which is where the National Guard was deployed. So because of that, we have added 16 officers to the 8th District itself. We got those additional officers from the class that just graduated. So they were assigned to the 8th District. Usually we disseminate our new officers around the city, but we did want to prepare for this departure of the National Guard. We increased the Bourbon Promenade from 10 officers to 15, and we also shored up our platoons for the 8th District, as well as like the 1st District, 6th District that surround the 8th District. You are aware through the Mayor's initiative, we have the Downtown Enhancement Unit. And I'm going to let the Captain address that. But if you wouldn't mind, Captain, to address the Downtown Enhancement Unit, and then we'll go through a little bit more of what the plan is. Yes. So a large majority of the issues we have, not only in the French Quarter, but the entire downtown area, have to do with all of the quality of life issues. Whether it's noise complaints, it's party buses, it's illegal vending, illegal cooking, issues around certain establishments with illegal parking. So what we have done is we have taken one supervisor, assigned him to that role to where he oversees, not only along Canal Street, but the entire downtown area, doing targeted enforcement on these issues. And what we have done right now is we're rotating new officers to him on a regular basis so that the entire district can become trained in many of these issues as well. So it kind of takes the need for the platoons to respond to certain things because we have a dedicated staff to deal with many of those issues. And so as we move to the next portion about what are we doing right now, these are the action items in progress. We are putting the focus and resources, police resources, with our partners that we've had now for two years, two and a half years, with the Louisiana State Police, as well as OPSO has been here to support us. But we've been putting these resources primarily on Canal Street, on the lower quarter, and in Jackson Square. So that is an action item. The next action items, if you'll look at, we've also, we have almost 100 reserve officers at our disposal. So we are really utilizing these reserve officers more than we have in the past. We obviously, we've already addressed our current and continual relationship with the state police and with OPSO. In expansion, though, we have really tried to expand our relationship and activity with the Harbor, Harbor Police. We've had great relationship with their university police, and we just are trying to build on all of our law enforcement community. We have also been emphasizing using technology as a leverage. And then finally, as our new classes start to graduate, and for instance, right now, we have 60 recruits in the academy, and when they graduate, we will continue to devote. of more officers in training into the 8th District. The 8th District has to continue to be a priority district in so many ways because it is the tourist hub, and so we have additional more population than the 3,000 residents who live there. And so that's why it demands more resources. And then lastly, that's kind of the overview of the program and we're happy to answer questions with you.

Mr. Turner

Mr. Turner presents background on Mardi Gras expenditures versus city receipts, explaining the current deficit and the study-based 2023 direct expenditure model. He outlines a three-tier gap-fee system for carnival crews, with example figures showing a combined revenue of about $265,000 and per-rider fees that vary by crew size (roughly $6.64 average per rider). He notes Mardi Gras costs roughly $4 million to stage and emphasizes not placing the entire burden on riders. The slide also references feedback from Mardi Gras crews and council members; public commentary is summarized, including calls to apply the fee broadly to all parading groups and to adjust routes (e.g., Magazine Street) to maximize sales tax revenue. A subsequent exchange discusses the potential for across-the-board permit-fee increases, year-over-year adjustments (such as CPI indexing), and the broader discussion of hotel-motel tax shares and state revenue, with several public comments urging a broader, fairer approach and transparency.

Administration

These are contracts for approval per Council Bill 57. I don't know if anyone is here from the administration, but we have amendment number three to the agency agreement between the city and Leeds Online for electronic reporting and criminal investigation software. It just extends the term and increases the maximum amount payable because it's an additional term. Okay. So moved by me. Any second? Second. Greene. Council Member Greene. All in favor? Aye. Four yays, no nays. And then the next is a memorandum for understanding between the city and the state of authorizing the police department to participate in the statewide rapid response search team for endangered persons and critical incidents. So moved. Second. Second by Council President Morrell. All in favor? Aye. Four yays, no nays. Thank you. I believe we are done with item number five. Next item, number six...

ACLU of Louisiana / Eye on Surveillance presenters

The data scientists with the ACLU analyzed it, and I do want to make clear that what we will not be able to do today is give any inexact or inarticulate extrapolations of what this data does. Data sometimes can have data distortions or hallucinations, which we may have heard earlier this morning about causation and correlation, which we cannot speak to, but we hope that this council can ask those questions of NOPD. I'm disappointed that they're not actually still here for this presentation to hear and understand what their own data is showing them about a drone program. And then we'll end it with the questions that we think that this council should raise for members. And I do want to start by acknowledging that for the ACLU of Louisiana and for ACLU nationally, we have to acknowledge and understand that drones are different. The most serious concern that we have is that drones inherently are unlike any previous police or state surveillance that we have seen because of the asymmetric public observation abilities that they have. So this creates the ability for police to watch people without knowing that they are being watched. This is not the same as a helicopter. You hear and see a helicopter. Oftentimes people do not look up to see and hear drones. And so we have to understand that what this could do is cause all people in public to start behaving as if, or in any outdoor spaces, not just public, but in outdoor spaces, our community members may start behaving as if they are being surveilled by police. And that is inherently not being able to behave in a free manner. So we'll talk quickly about drones and I'll allow Edith to introduce herself. Yes. So my name is Edith Romero. I'm part of Ion Surveillance. And I want to also say thank you for this opportunity. Thank you to the ACLU. Thank you for VOTE, who I know is here. Thank you for all the community members who have consistently been showing up to try to get accountability and transparency regarding this program. Thank you to Councilmember Harris, Councilmember McCarran, and Councilmember Willard, who are not here, but we truly appreciate their efforts. And to start, we wanted to introduce, what are the drones that are being used by NOPD? And according to our data, they're using at least eight Skydio X10 models. And these are actually deriving from military-grade drones. Skydio provides the military, the Department of War has billion-dollar contracts with Skydio. And they have military capabilities. They have a standard thermal imaging camera. Their max flight time is around 40 minutes. And they have high resolution 4K HD+. They can read a license plate at 800 feet. And I also want to say that according to our data, the DFR program, the Drones as First Responder, this is the model that they will be using as well. And so to start with, I just want to quickly run through some of the main concerns that we found when we were looking at the 2024 policy and acknowledge that the changes in 2026 are as scheduled. This was a drone policy that was intended to be reviewed and updated this year. So this is expected, but we also want to call out that it was done without any public notice, public comment or opportunity to weigh in. And so a few pieces here that we will talk about in the change this year, from 2024 to 2026. The first is across program administration, where in 2024, it required a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement or an MOU with other law enforcement agencies as approved by the superintendent of police and on file. And additionally, the operational procedure acknowledged that any deviation from the use of drones would require writing, written approval from the superintendent prior to deployment. And then this has a very text heavy slide. So I tried to highlight and bold the important pieces here. We know that this was one of our biggest causes for concern is how and when we would be able to get data on when, where and how drones are being used. So this is the 2024 policy that was actually requiring all flight logs, checklists and data to be available for review and provided to our Professional Standards and Accountability Bureau, including within that, the reason for use, whether it was effective for its intended purpose, whether it was used for ongoing criminal investigation, which would require reporting the demographic information of that criminal investigation, and then whether or not there were any further safety concerns. And so all of that was also going to be reviewed quarterly and be provided with an annual report. No annual report was created or provided, no quarterly reports were provided. And so with that, there was no actual publication or publishing of this information to the public. And we will return to that later. But that right now is actually like where we will spend the bulk of this presentation on the policy changes. Ion Surveillance requested the flight records for the current police drone program. And I want to say this is not an easy process. It took us almost a month to receive these flight records for January 1st, 2025 to January 30th, 2026. This information should have been public already in an accessible, understandable way to anyone who wants to access it, including city council. So we received exactly 1,000 flight records, which I thought was very interesting. 78.7% of all the flights were missing the type of incident. We had no reason on why they were being deployed. 93.1% were missing incident details. So it's impossible to understand what they were using this drone for. 94.1% of flights are missing a summary of activities required under the policy that we just reviewed. 94.1% of flights are missing the supervisor approval required under section 14 that we just reviewed as well. And 98.9% of flights are missing whether it assisted officers. So we don't have any information on if this actually was effective at reducing crime, at reducing violence, at reducing use of force.

Yeah, thank you for this data collection. We don't have a copy of this. Can you make sure that you send it to every single council member so that we can have it in our hands to take a look at and examine? Council member, this will be posted online with the agenda once the meeting is complete. Thank you. To clarify, Council Member Harris, do you want the raw data or do you want the presentation? We can provide both. Both. Great. We can absolutely send that out. Here is a breakdown of the drone models that were deployed. As I said, most of them are X10 models and we have NX2 model. This is a breakdown of when drones were flown. Most of them are for the evening with landing around 7 p.m. And this is a flight length. Most of them were around 30 minutes. I want to remind everyone that usually their max flight time is 40 minutes. And then, so within this as well, we were able to actually heat map where these drone launch sites were coming from. And so part of that is, and I think we have to acknowledge and see that there are multiple flights that occurred outside of New Orleans. So there is at least one point from Kenner and down in Chalmette. And so what we don't know or understand if the MOUs and the CEAs that may have been required for those launches are actually on file with PSAB at this point. We're not going to infer whether or not they were or weren't improper, but I think those are part of the conversations and questions NOPD does need to answer is when and how these drones were used outside of New Orleans, for what purpose, and to support what other law enforcement agencies. And now additionally, the purpose of the drone deployment. And within this text, I also want to acknowledge and remember, Edith was able to say, this is only for 22% of all of those 1,000 flights that we received. The most common piece of this was related to people blocking the sidewalks. And we do want to call out one of them specifically said that it was a dispatch call for service for a homeless person blocking the sidewalk. I think that needs to be named. And we do want to spend time here because I do not know how a drone will support any law enforcement action for a person on the sidewalk. That doesn't actually allow an officer or anyone to engage, ask the right questions, potentially offer the support that that person needs just for being there. I do also think it's concerning that when we were receiving the incident type or purpose, it was protests, second lines, festivals, the Sugar Bowl, and other public gatherings. We cannot comment on whether this was even requested by organizers for this level of support for these events. We don't know that. But I do think we have to acknowledge that this list of the 22% that we know about does cause concern about the First Amendment implications of the use of drones in this city by NOPD. And this policy required notice to the public when drones would be used for any First Amendment related activities. I do not recall seeing or hearing each of these incidences being publicly notified as required under the previous policy. Again, it also leads for an understanding for people engaged in protests, engaged in second lines, engaged in any Mardi Gras activities. We now have to question, is that drone potentially from an organizer and they're catching footage for social media or advertising or promotion, or is that an NOPD drone, and how would a person know? And so that, I think, for us was a serious cause for concern. And so I want to bring us back to the missing data that we saw for around the year 2025 that we just reviewed. This is new data. This is January 30th to March 29th, 2026. This is this year. And so the pattern that we were seeing with missing data, it not only continues, it gets worse. So we got a total of 187 flights for this year. There were no other notes. 100% of the records were missing details about whether the drone assisted or not. 100% were missing incident details. 100% were missing whether the drone assisted a police officer. 100% were missing if the drone cleared the scene for officers. 100% were missing whether the drone got to the scene first. 99% were missing type of incident. There were two entries for event Overwatch on St. Claude. And the supervisor variable was completely out of the data set. So this brings a lot of concern because we went from 2025 having a pattern of missing data and policy violations to even worse. This is a breakdown of flights per week. Of course, there was an increased use during Mardi Gras. And these are the launch sites. As Sarah said, they are flights that were outside of Orleans Parish that we have no information on why they were deployed outside. This is everything we received. We don't have any explanation for why these drones, you know, 99, 70% of the drone deployments were deployed. Yeah, there are a lot of questions that we have about this data. And I think, too, the reason that we are here today and what we acknowledged in that letter is the policy that was posted online on June 21st that allowed for the weaponization of drones. And so we know that this made news. We know that allegedly it was a draft policy. It is not the current act of policy and we understand and acknowledge that change and we thank council members and the public and the media that raised the concerns that we have. But I do think we still have to have a very necessary conversation about accountability that this came from NOPD. And so I think we have to understand and have answered for the community who drafted this policy and who thought that that was an appropriate use of drones to be weaponized against our community and how was it discussed internally that this could even potentially be a change in the policy.

Did NOPD conduct any investigation or follow-up on this draft policy and or did it result in any discipline or termination? Because I would have serious concerns for an officer with an NOPD who would draft this policy and potentially also be serving on the streets trying to keep our community safe because this clearly is a shoot first, ask questions later policy. It is a clear escalation of this type of mentality in a department that just came out from under a consent decree. And there are still lingering concerns over use of force, specifically against community members. And again, the most serious concern that we raise is that this was posted online and caught with no opportunity for public comment, no feedback, no understanding of where this came from and why it occurred. We need a public process that indeed is democratic. And we would add to that as well just to speak specifically to the constitutional concerns to put on the record. We have case law, Carpenter v. United States, that you cannot have prolonged surveillance or tracking of a person without a warrant. And additionally, any uses of these drones that sort of circumvent any other potential warrant requirements would be extremely problematic and we don't know in these first responders when and how a drone may or may not be looking into homes, if it's in the French Quarter looking into private courtyards where people may or may not be doing anything, and this policy language alone is insufficient because it also, and we'll get to this, doesn't talk about when and how this data is stored, used, or anything that would follow that. And so I do think again, we still have a lot that we would ask to see added to the policy that we know Council Vice President Willard did propose earlier, but all of this current policy still causes serious questions and concerns. Again, in 2024, the last piece of this was the data reporting policy. We had something that was moderately robust and called for an accountability and effectiveness and demographic information being collected. The 2026 policy, again, this is prior to Council Member Willard's ordinance, gutted all of that and did not just like remove it. It is entirely gone and gutted. And so they were ignoring the data requirements that they did have in 2024. There was no internal quarterly review made available. There was no public facing dashboard made available. There was no annual report. And again, as of July 1st, they just said that the data could be accessible, not provided, and that there is potentially a public facing dashboard unless there is an operational security or privacy concern, which I cannot imagine with an NOPD force that was unwilling to fill out the paperwork the first time on that policy, that they would not very conveniently find plenty of opportunities to say that there's an operational concern about when and how these drones are flying. So again, we know that there was an ordinance that addresses some of these concerns. But again, we do have to acknowledge that we don't know where these drones are flying and whether they're still over policing specific communities and targeting specific populations within our city. And we do not know where these drones are actually going. Even when we know their takeoff point, if they can fly 35 miles an hour for 40 minutes, they could go anywhere within the bounds of Orleans Parish and back to their docking station. And so what we are still waiting for and what we have to acknowledge again is that we don't currently have training documents for any of the pilots or flights associated with this. We've also specifically requested drone footage. We want to know when is the camera facing down? When is it facing forward? What is it seeing? We haven't received that yet. We do acknowledge it's been received by the city on our due date has been pushed back due to staffing concerns and an inability to respond to all public records requests. And then we've also requested and O. P. D. Has advised and I believe it was under the draft policy that potentially they're using some form of manual data entry. And we requested those records as well to see if there's anything potentially on paper that they did not provide as part of ion surveillance's initial request. We have also requested the planned location for the drone docking stations. This is especially concerning. Um, if when we did our research, we found out that in Chula Vista, they have a program where their docking station was right above a hospital. Which means it was recording everyone coming in and out of a hospital. Um, possible HIPAA violations in the French Quarter. Could this be on top of a pharmacy, a bar, a gay bar? Um, whoever is going to be around these docking stations is going to be subject to surveillance every time these are deployed. And so what we are asking you guys to consider actually, before we jump to our recommendations, I forgot we're going to start this slide. Um, we do have some stuff again for you guys to just consider and to ask for. Yes. Uh, to start with costs. We understand that the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation is, um, putting in funding, um, for the drones themselves. Um, this is concerning for us because it obfuscates actually where the money is coming from and whose interests are behind it. But this does not take into account that there will be police officers that are going to have to report, man, supervise the use of these drones. This is going to be coming from the people of New Orleans and our tax money. Um, we also want to bring up the fact that the battery life for these drones are around 2 to 3 years. They will have to be replaced. Uh, so these are costs that are not being taken into consideration and amidst a budget deficit. Um, we have seen in our research that in other cities there have been drone crashes that caused fires, which is, I'm a survivor of a fire myself in the city, is a huge issue.

Um, who is going to have the footage? Is this going to be part of, um, Axon or these third parties, um, that share the data with other agencies as well? Who will have access to review? We saw a big case in San Francisco of drone footage being leaked, uh, which is, um, incredibly concerning, um, regarding privacy. Um, and also we really want to, we really want to bring up the fact that there's no way that someone can report if a police drone is right outside their window. We've already had people come to ION Surveillance and say, I saw a drone. I don't know if it was a police. I don't know if it was someone else. Uh, we need a mechanism for reporting, um, these sightings and to be able to compare with flight logs. Um, questions of when the camera is facing down, when is footage being collected and of what? And to end with my comments is we need an actual public process for this whole program. As I said, this information was not available until we requested it and it took us a month. It took us, us learning how the public records request process works. Uh, people don't know, general public does not know how to do this. Um, we didn't even have all this information available. Um, when this was being introduced at first, we did not have any information available when the policy change occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred. We need a public process that indeed is democratic. And we would add to that as well just to speak specifically to the constitutional concerns to put on the record. We have case law, Carpenter v. United States, that you cannot have prolonged surveillance or tracking of a person without a warrant. And additionally, any uses of these drones that sort of circumvent any other potential warrant requirements would be extremely problematic and we don't know in these first responders when and how a drone may or may not be looking into homes, if it's in the French Quarter looking into private courtyards where people may or may not be doing anything, and this policy language alone is insufficient because it also, and we'll get to this, doesn't talk about when and how this data is stored, used, or anything that would follow that. And so I do think again, we still have a lot that we would ask to see added to the policy that we know Council Vice President Willard did propose earlier, but all of this current policy still causes serious questions and concerns. Again, in 2024, the last piece of this was the data reporting policy. We had something that was moderately robust and called for an accountability and effectiveness and demographic information being collected. The 2026 policy, again, this is prior to Council Member Willard's ordinance, gutted all of that and did not just like remove it. It is entirely gone and gutted. And so they were ignoring the data requirements that they did have in 2024. There was no internal quarterly review made available. There was no public facing dashboard made available. There was no annual report. And again, as of July 1st, they just said that the data could be accessible, not provided, and that there is potentially a public facing dashboard unless there is an operational security or privacy concern, which I cannot imagine with an NOPD force that was unwilling to fill out the paperwork the first time on that policy, that they would not very conveniently find plenty of opportunities to say that there's an operational concern about when and how these drones are flying. So again, we know that there was an ordinance that addresses some of these concerns. But again, we do have to acknowledge that we don't know where these drones are flying and whether they're still over policing specific communities and targeting specific populations within our city. And we do not know where these drones are actually going. Even when we know their takeoff point, if they can fly 35 miles an hour for 40 minutes, they could go anywhere within the bounds of Orleans Parish and back to their docking station. And so what we are still waiting for and what we have to acknowledge again is that we don't currently have training documents for any of the pilots or flights associated with this. We've also specifically requested drone footage. We want to know when is the camera facing down? When is it facing forward? What is it seeing? We haven't received that yet. We do acknowledge it's been received by the city on our due date has been pushed back due to staffing concerns and an inability to respond to all public records requests. And then we've also requested and O. P. D. Has advised and I believe it was under the draft policy that potentially they're using some form of manual data entry. And we requested those records as well to see if there's anything potentially on paper that they did not provide as part of ion surveillance's initial request. We have also requested the planned location for the drone docking stations. This is especially concerning. Um, if when we did our research, we found out that in Chula Vista, they have a program where their docking station was right above a hospital. Which means it was recording everyone coming in and out of a hospital. Um, possible HIPAA violations in the French Quarter. Could this be on top of a pharmacy, a bar, a gay bar? Um, whoever is going to be around these docking stations is going to be subject to surveillance every time these are deployed. And so what we are asking you guys to consider actually, before we jump to our recommendations, I forgot we're going to start this slide. Um, we do have some stuff again for you guys to just consider and to ask for. Yes. Uh, to start with costs. We understand that the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation is, um, putting in funding, um, for the drones themselves. Um, this is concerning for us because it obfuscates actually where the money is coming from and whose interests are behind it.

But this does not take into account that there will be police officers that are going to have to report, man, supervise the use of these drones. This is going to be coming from the people of New Orleans and our tax money. Um, we also want to bring up the fact that the battery life for these drones are around 2 to 3 years. They will have to be replaced. Uh, so these are costs that are not being taken into consideration and amidst a budget deficit. Um, we have seen in our research that in other cities there have been drone crashes that caused fires, which is, I'm a survivor of a fire myself in the city, is a huge issue. Um, who is going to have the footage? Is this going to be part of, um, Axon or these third parties, um, that share the data with other agencies as well? Who will have access to review? We saw a big case in San Francisco of drone footage being leaked, uh, which is, um, incredibly concerning, um, regarding privacy. Um, and also we really want to, we really want to bring up the fact that there's no way that someone can report if a police drone is right outside their window. We've already had people come to ION Surveillance and say, I saw a drone. I don't know if it was a police. I don't know if it was someone else. Uh, we need a mechanism for reporting, um, these sightings and to be able to compare with flight logs. Um, questions of when the camera is facing down, when is footage being collected and of what? And to end with my comments is we need an actual public process for this whole program. As I said, this information was not available until we requested it and it took us a month. It took us, us learning how the public records request process works. Uh, people don't know, general public does not know how to do this. Um, we didn't even have all this information available. Um, when this was being introduced at first, we did not have any information available when the policy change occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred. We need a public process that indeed is democratic. And we would add to that as well just to speak specifically to the constitutional concerns to put on the record. We have case law, Carpenter v. United States, that you cannot have prolonged surveillance or tracking of a person without a warrant. And additionally, any uses of these drones that sort of circumvent any other potential warrant requirements would be extremely problematic and we don't know in these first responders when and how a drone may or may not be looking into homes, if it's in the French Quarter looking into private courtyards where people may or may not be doing anything, and this policy language alone is insufficient because it also, and we'll get to this, doesn't talk about when and how this data is stored, used, or anything that would follow that. And so I do think again, we still have a lot that we would ask to see added to the policy that we know Council Vice President Willard did propose earlier, but all of this current policy still causes serious questions and concerns. Again, in 2024, the last piece of this was the data reporting policy. We had something that was moderately robust and called for an accountability and effectiveness and demographic information being collected. The 2026 policy, again, this is prior to Council Member Willard's ordinance, gutted all of that and did not just like remove it. It is entirely gone and gutted. And so they were ignoring the data requirements that they did have in 2024. There was no internal quarterly review made available. There was no public facing dashboard made available. There was no annual report. And again, as of July 1st, they just said that the data could be accessible, not provided, and that there is potentially a public facing dashboard unless there is an operational security or privacy concern, which I cannot imagine with an NOPD force that was unwilling to fill out the paperwork the first time on that policy, that they would not very conveniently find plenty of opportunities to say that there's an operational concern about when and how these drones are flying. So again, we know that there was an ordinance that addresses some of these concerns. But again, we do have to acknowledge that we don't know where these drones are flying and whether they're still over policing specific communities and targeting specific populations within our city. And we do not know where these drones are actually going. Even when we know their takeoff point, if they can fly 35 miles an hour for 40 minutes, they could go anywhere within the bounds of Orleans Parish and back to their docking station. And so what we are still waiting for and what we have to acknowledge again is that we don't currently have training documents for any of the pilots or flights associated with this. We've also specifically requested drone footage. We want to know when is the camera facing down? When is it facing forward? What is it seeing? We haven't received that yet. We do acknowledge it's been received by the city on our due date has been pushed back due to staffing concerns and an inability to respond to all public records requests. And then we've also requested and O. P. D. Has advised and I believe it was under the draft policy that potentially they're using some form of manual data entry. And we requested those records as well to see if there's anything potentially on paper that they did not provide as part of ion surveillance's initial request. We have also requested the planned location for the drone docking stations. This is especially concerning. Um, if when we did our research, we found out that in Chula Vista, they have a program where their docking station was right above a hospital. Which means it was recording everyone coming in and out of a hospital. Um, possible HIPAA violations in the French Quarter.

Could this be on top of a pharmacy, a bar, a gay bar? Um, whoever is going to be around these docking stations is going to be subject to surveillance every time these are deployed. And so what we are asking you guys to consider actually, before we jump to our recommendations, I forgot we're going to start this slide. Um, we do have some stuff again for you guys to just consider and to ask for. Yes. Uh, to start with costs. We understand that the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation is, um, putting in funding, um, for the drones themselves. Um, this is concerning for us because it obfuscates actually where the money is coming from and whose interests are behind it. But this does not take into account that there will be police officers that are going to have to report, man, supervise the use of these drones. This is going to be coming from the people of New Orleans and our tax money. Um, we also want to bring up the fact that the battery life for these drones are around 2 to 3 years. They will have to be replaced. Uh, so these are costs that are not being taken into consideration and amidst a budget deficit. Um, we have seen in our research that in other cities there have been drone crashes that caused fires, which is, I'm a survivor of a fire myself in the city, is a huge issue. Um, who is going to have the footage? Is this going to be part of, um, Axon or these third parties, um, that share the data with other agencies as well? Who will have access to review? We saw a big case in San Francisco of drone footage being leaked, uh, which is, um, incredibly concerning, um, regarding privacy. Um, and also we really want to, we really want to bring up the fact that there's no way that someone can report if a police drone is right outside their window. We've already had people come to ION Surveillance and say, I saw a drone. I don't know if it was a police. I don't know if it was someone else. Uh, we need a mechanism for reporting, um, these sightings and to be able to compare with flight logs. Um, questions of when the camera is facing down, when is footage being collected and of what? And to end with my comments is we need an actual public process for this whole program. As I said, this information was not available until we requested it and it took us a month. It took us, us learning how the public records request process works. Uh, people don't know, general public does not know how to do this. Um, we didn't even have all this information available. Um, when this was being introduced at first, we did not have any information available when the policy change occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred. We need a public process that indeed is democratic. And we would add to that as well just to speak specifically to the constitutional concerns to put on the record. We have case law, Carpenter v. United States, that you cannot have prolonged surveillance or tracking of a person without a warrant. And additionally, any uses of these drones that sort of circumvent any other potential warrant requirements would be extremely problematic and we don't know in these first responders when and how a drone may or may not be looking into homes, if it's in the French Quarter looking into private courtyards where people may or may not be doing anything, and this policy language alone is insufficient because it also, and we'll get to this, doesn't talk about when and how this data is stored, used, or anything that would follow that. And so I do think again, we still have a lot that we would ask to see added to the policy that we know Council Vice President Willard did propose earlier, but all of this current policy still causes serious questions and concerns. Again, in 2024, the last piece of this was the data reporting policy. We had something that was moderately robust and called for an accountability and effectiveness and demographic information being collected. The 2026 policy, again, this is prior to Council Member Willard's ordinance, gutted all of that and did not just like remove it. It is entirely gone and gutted. And so they were ignoring the data requirements that they did have in 2024. There was no internal quarterly review made available. There was no public facing dashboard made available. There was no annual report. And again, as of July 1st, they just said that the data could be accessible, not provided, and that there is potentially a public facing dashboard unless there is an operational security or privacy concern, which I cannot imagine with an NOPD force that was unwilling to fill out the paperwork the first time on that policy, that they would not very conveniently find plenty of opportunities to say that there's an operational concern about when and how these drones are flying. So again, we know that there was an ordinance that addresses some of these concerns. But again, we do have to acknowledge that we don't know where these drones are flying and whether they're still over policing specific communities and targeting specific populations within our city. And we do not know where these drones are actually going. Even when we know their takeoff point, if they can fly 35 miles an hour for 40 minutes, they could go anywhere within the bounds of Orleans Parish and back to their docking station. And so what we are still waiting for and what we have to acknowledge again is that we don't currently have training documents for any of the pilots or flights associated with this. We've also specifically requested drone footage. We want to know when is the camera facing down? When is it facing forward? What is it seeing? We haven't received that yet. We do acknowledge it's been received by the city on our due date has been pushed back due to staffing concerns and an inability to respond to all public records requests. And then we've also requested and O. P. D. Has advised and I believe it was under the draft policy that potentially they're using some form of manual data entry.

And we requested those records as well to see if there's anything potentially on paper that they did not provide as part of ion surveillance's initial request. We have also requested the planned location for the drone docking stations. This is especially concerning. Um, if when we did our research, we found out that in Chula Vista, they have a program where their docking station was right above a hospital. Which means it was recording everyone coming in and out of a hospital. Um, possible HIPAA violations in the French Quarter. Could this be on top of a pharmacy, a bar, a gay bar? Um, whoever is going to be around these docking stations is going to be subject to surveillance every time these are deployed. And so what we are asking you guys to consider actually, before we jump to our recommendations, I forgot we're going to start this slide. Um, we do have some stuff again for you guys to just consider and to ask for. Yes. Uh, to start with costs. We understand that the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation is, um, putting in funding, um, for the drones themselves. Um, this is concerning for us because it obfuscates actually where the money is coming from and whose interests are behind it. But this does not take into account that there will be police officers that are going to have to report, man, supervise the use of these drones. This is going to be coming from the people of New Orleans and our tax money. Um, we also want to bring up the fact that the battery life for these drones are around 2 to 3 years. They will have to be replaced. Uh, so these are costs that are not being taken into consideration and amidst a budget deficit. Um, we have seen in our research that in other cities there have been drone crashes that caused fires, which is, I'm a survivor of a fire myself in the city, is a huge issue. Um, who is going to have the footage? Is this going to be part of, um, Axon or these third parties, um, that share the data with other agencies as well? Who will have access to review? We saw a big case in San Francisco of drone footage being leaked, uh, which is, um, incredibly concerning, um, regarding privacy. Um, and also we really want to, we really want to bring up the fact that there's no way that someone can report if a police drone is right outside their window. We've already had people come to ION Surveillance and say, I saw a drone. I don't know if it was a police. I don't know if it was someone else. Uh, we need a mechanism for reporting, um, these sightings and to be able to compare with flight logs. Um, questions of when the camera is facing down, when is footage being collected and of what? And to end with my comments is we need an actual public process for this whole program. As I said, this information was not available until we requested it and it took us a month. It took us, us learning how the public records request process works. Uh, people don't know, general public does not know how to do this. Um, we didn't even have all this information available. Um, when this was being introduced at first, we did not have any information available when the policy change occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred. We need a public process that indeed is democratic. And we would add to that as well just to speak specifically to the constitutional concerns to put on the record. We have case law, Carpenter v. United States, that you cannot have prolonged surveillance or tracking of a person without a warrant. And additionally, any uses of these drones that sort of circumvent any other potential warrant requirements would be extremely problematic and we don't know in these first responders when and how a drone may or may not be looking into homes, if it's in the French Quarter looking into private courtyards where people may or may not be doing anything, and this policy language alone is insufficient because it also, and we'll get to this, doesn't talk about when and how this data is stored, used, or anything that would follow that. And so I do think again, we still have a lot that we would ask to see added to the policy that we know Council Vice President Willard did propose earlier, but all of this current policy still causes serious questions and concerns. Again, in 2024, the last piece of this was the data reporting policy. We had something that was moderately robust and called for an accountability and effectiveness and demographic information being collected. The 2026 policy, again, this is prior to Council Member Willard's ordinance, gutted all of that and did not just like remove it. It is entirely gone and gutted. And so they were ignoring the data requirements that they did have in 2024. There was no internal quarterly review made available. There was no public facing dashboard made available. There was no annual report. And again, as of July 1st, they just said that the data could be accessible, not provided, and that there is potentially a public facing dashboard unless there is an operational security or privacy concern, which I cannot imagine with an NOPD force that was unwilling to fill out the paperwork the first time on that policy, that they would not very conveniently find plenty of opportunities to say that there's an operational concern about when and how these drones are flying. So again, we know that there was an ordinance that addresses some of these concerns. But again, we do have to acknowledge that we don't know where these drones are flying and whether they're still over policing specific communities and targeting specific populations within our city. And we do not know where these drones are actually going. Even when we know their takeoff point, if they can fly 35 miles an hour for 40 minutes, they could go anywhere within the bounds of Orleans Parish and back to their docking station.

And so what we are still waiting for and what we have to acknowledge again is that we don't currently have training documents for any of the pilots or flights associated with this. We've also specifically requested drone footage. We want to know when is the camera facing down? When is it facing forward? What is it seeing? We haven't received that yet. We do acknowledge it's been received by the city on our due date has been pushed back due to staffing concerns and an inability to respond to all public records requests. And then we've also requested and O. P. D. Has advised and I believe it was under the draft policy that potentially they're using some form of manual data entry. And we requested those records as well to see if there's anything potentially on paper that they did not provide as part of ion surveillance's initial request. We have also requested the planned location for the drone docking stations. This is especially concerning. Um, if when we did our research, we found out that in Chula Vista, they have a program where their docking station was right above a hospital. Which means it was recording everyone coming in and out of a hospital. Um, possible HIPAA violations in the French Quarter. Could this be on top of a pharmacy, a bar, a gay bar? Um, whoever is going to be around these docking stations is going to be subject to surveillance every time these are deployed. And so what we are asking you guys to consider actually, before we jump to our recommendations, I forgot we're going to start this slide. Um, we do have some stuff again for you guys to just consider and to ask for. Yes. Uh, to start with costs. We understand that the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation is, um, putting in funding, um, for the drones themselves. Um, this is concerning for us because it obfuscates actually where the money is coming from and whose interests are behind it. But this does not take into account that there will be police officers that are going to have to report, man, supervise the use of these drones. This is going to be coming from the people of New Orleans and our tax money. Um, we also want to bring up the fact that the battery life for these drones are around 2 to 3 years. They will have to be replaced. Uh, so these are costs that are not being taken into consideration and amidst a budget deficit. Um, we have seen in our research that in other cities there have been drone crashes that caused fires, which is, I'm a survivor of a fire myself in the city, is a huge issue. Um, who is going to have the footage? Is this going to be part of, um, Axon or these third parties, um, that share the data with other agencies as well? Who will have access to review? We saw a big case in San Francisco of drone footage being leaked, uh, which is, um, incredibly concerning, um, regarding privacy. Um, and also we really want to, we really want to bring up the fact that there's no way that someone can report if a police drone is right outside their window. We've already had people come to ION Surveillance and say, I saw a drone. I don't know if it was a police. I don't know if it was someone else. Uh, we need a mechanism for reporting, um, these sightings and to be able to compare with flight logs. Um, questions of when the camera is facing down, when is footage being collected and of what? And to end with my comments is we need an actual public process for this whole program. As I said, this information was not available until we requested it and it took us a month. It took us, us learning how the public records request process works. Uh, people don't know, general public does not know how to do this. Um, we didn't even have all this information available. Um, when this was being introduced at first, we did not have any information available when the policy change occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred. We need a public process that indeed is democratic. And we would add to that as well just to speak specifically to the constitutional concerns to put on the record. We have case law, Carpenter v. United States, that you cannot have prolonged surveillance or tracking of a person without a warrant. And additionally, any uses of these drones that sort of circumvent any other potential warrant requirements would be extremely problematic and we don't know in these first responders when and how a drone may or may not be looking into homes, if it's in the French Quarter looking into private courtyards where people may or may not be doing anything, and this policy language alone is insufficient because it also, and we'll get to this, doesn't talk about when and how this data is stored, used, or anything that would follow that. And so I do think again, we still have a lot that we would ask to see added to the policy that we know Council Vice President Willard did propose earlier, but all of this current policy still causes serious questions and concerns. Again, in 2024, the last piece of this was the data reporting policy. We had something that was moderately robust and called for an accountability and effectiveness and demographic information being collected. The 2026 policy, again, this is prior to Council Member Willard's ordinance, gutted all of that and did not just like remove it. It is entirely gone and gutted. And so they were ignoring the data requirements that they did have in 2024. There was no internal quarterly review made available. There was no public facing dashboard made available. There was no annual report. And again, as of July 1st, they just said that the data could be accessible, not provided, and that there is potentially a public facing dashboard unless there is an operational security or privacy concern, which I cannot imagine with an NOPD force that was unwilling to fill out the paperwork the first time on that policy, that they would not very conveniently find plenty of opportunities to say that there's an operational concern about when and how these drones are flying.

So again, we know that there was an ordinance that addresses some of these concerns. But again, we do have to acknowledge that we don't know where these drones are flying and whether they're still over policing specific communities and targeting specific populations within our city. And we do not know where these drones are actually going. Even when we know their takeoff point, if they can fly 35 miles an hour for 40 minutes, they could go anywhere within the bounds of Orleans Parish and back to their docking station. And so what we are still waiting for and what we have to acknowledge again is that we don't currently have training documents for any of the pilots or flights associated with this. We've also specifically requested drone footage. We want to know when is the camera facing down? When is it facing forward? What is it seeing? We haven't received that yet. We do acknowledge it's been received by the city on our due date has been pushed back due to staffing concerns and an inability to respond to all public records requests. And then we've also requested and O. P. D. Has advised and I believe it was under the draft policy that potentially they're using some form of manual data entry. And we requested those records as well to see if there's anything potentially on paper that they did not provide as part of ion surveillance's initial request. We have also requested the planned location for the drone docking stations. This is especially concerning. Um, if when we did our research, we found out that in Chula Vista, they have a program where their docking station was right above a hospital. Which means it was recording everyone coming in and out of a hospital. Um, possible HIPAA violations in the French Quarter. Could this be on top of a pharmacy, a bar, a gay bar? Um, whoever is going to be around these docking stations is going to be subject to surveillance every time these are deployed. And so what we are asking you guys to consider actually, before we jump to our recommendations, I forgot we're going to start this slide. Um, we do have some stuff again for you guys to just consider and to ask for. Yes. Uh, to start with costs. We understand that the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation is, um, putting in funding, um, for the drones themselves. Um, this is concerning for us because it obfuscates actually where the money is coming from and whose interests are behind it. But this does not take into account that there will be police officers that are going to have to report, man, supervise the use of these drones. This is going to be coming from the people of New Orleans and our tax money. Um, we also want to bring up the fact that the battery life for these drones are around 2 to 3 years. They will have to be replaced. Uh, so these are costs that are not being taken into consideration and amidst a budget deficit. Um, we have seen in our research that in other cities there have been drone crashes that caused fires, which is, I'm a survivor of a fire myself in the city, is a huge issue. Um, who is going to have the footage? Is this going to be part of, um, Axon or these third parties, um, that share the data with other agencies as well? Who will have access to review? We saw a big case in San Francisco of drone footage being leaked, uh, which is, um, incredibly concerning, um, regarding privacy. Um, and also we really want to, we really want to bring up the fact that there's no way that someone can report if a police drone is right outside their window. We've already had people come to ION Surveillance and say, I saw a drone. I don't know if it was a police. I don't know if it was someone else. Uh, we need a mechanism for reporting, um, these sightings and to be able to compare with flight logs. Um, questions of when the camera is facing down, when is footage being collected and of what? And to end with my comments is we need an actual public process for this whole program. As I said, this information was not available until we requested it and it took us a month. It took us, us learning how the public records request process works. Uh, people don't know, general public does not know how to do this. Um, we didn't even have all this information available. Um, when this was being introduced at first, we did not have any information available when the policy change occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred. We need a public process that indeed is democratic. And we would add to that as well just to speak specifically to the constitutional concerns to put on the record. We have case law, Carpenter v. United States, that you cannot have prolonged surveillance or tracking of a person without a warrant. And additionally, any uses of these drones that sort of circumvent any other potential warrant requirements would be extremely problematic and we don't know in these first responders when and how a drone may or may not be looking into homes, if it's in the French Quarter looking into private courtyards where people may or may not be doing anything, and this policy language alone is insufficient because it also, and we'll get to this, doesn't talk about when and how this data is stored, used, or anything that would follow that. And so I do think again, we still have a lot that we would ask to see added to the policy that we know Council Vice President Willard did propose earlier, but all of this current policy still causes serious questions and concerns. Again, in 2024, the last piece of this was the data reporting policy. We had something that was moderately robust and called for an accountability and effectiveness and demographic information being collected. The 2026 policy, again, this is prior to Council Member Willard's ordinance, gutted all of that and did not just like remove it. It is entirely gone and gutted. And so they were ignoring the data requirements that they did have in 2024. There was no internal quarterly review made available.

There was no public facing dashboard made available. There was no annual report. And again, as of July 1st, they just said that the data could be accessible, not provided, and that there is potentially a public facing dashboard unless there is an operational security or privacy concern, which I cannot imagine with an NOPD force that was unwilling to fill out the paperwork the first time on that policy, that they would not very conveniently find plenty of opportunities to say that there's an operational concern about when and how these drones are flying. So again, we know that there was an ordinance that addresses some of these concerns. But again, we do have to acknowledge that we don't know where these drones are flying and whether they're still over policing specific communities and targeting specific populations within our city. And we do not know where these drones are actually going. Even when we know their takeoff point, if they can fly 35 miles an hour for 40 minutes, they could go anywhere within the bounds of Orleans Parish and back to their docking station. And so what we are still waiting for and what we have to acknowledge again is that we don't currently have training documents for any of the pilots or flights associated with this. We've also specifically requested drone footage. We want to know when is the camera facing down? When is it facing forward? What is it seeing? We haven't received that yet. We do acknowledge it's been received by the city on our due date has been pushed back due to staffing concerns and an inability to respond to all public records requests. And then we've also requested and O. P. D. Has advised and I believe it was under the draft policy that potentially they're using some form of manual data entry. And we requested those records as well to see if there's anything potentially on paper that they did not provide as part of ion surveillance's initial request. We have also requested the planned location for the drone docking stations. This is especially concerning. Um, if when we did our research, we found out that in Chula Vista, they have a program where their docking station was right above a hospital. Which means it was recording everyone coming in and out of a hospital. Um, possible HIPAA violations in the French Quarter. Could this be on top of a pharmacy, a bar, a gay bar? Um, whoever is going to be around these docking stations is going to be subject to surveillance every time these are deployed. And so what we are asking you guys to consider actually, before we jump to our recommendations, I forgot we're going to start this slide. Um, we do have some stuff again for you guys to just consider and to ask for. Yes. Uh, to start with costs. We understand that the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation is, um, putting in funding, um, for the drones themselves. Um, this is concerning for us because it obfuscates actually where the money is coming from and whose interests are behind it. But this does not take into account that there will be police officers that are going to have to report, man, supervise the use of these drones. This is going to be coming from the people of New Orleans and our tax money. Um, we also want to bring up the fact that the battery life for these drones are around 2 to 3 years. They will have to be replaced. Uh, so these are costs that are not being taken into consideration and amidst a budget deficit. Um, we have seen in our research that in other cities there have been drone crashes that caused fires, which is, I'm a survivor of a fire myself in the city, is a huge issue. Um, who is going to have the footage? Is this going to be part of, um, Axon or these third parties, um, that share the data with other agencies as well? Who will have access to review? We saw a big case in San Francisco of drone footage being leaked, uh, which is, um, incredibly concerning, um, regarding privacy. Um, and also we really want to, we really want to bring up the fact that there's no way that someone can report if a police drone is right outside their window. We've already had people come to ION Surveillance and say, I saw a drone. I don't know if it was a police. I don't know if it was someone else. Uh, we need a mechanism for reporting, um, these sightings and to be able to compare with flight logs. Um, questions of when the camera is facing down, when is footage being collected and of what? And to end with my comments is we need an actual public process for this whole program. As I said, this information was not available until we requested it and it took us a month. It took us, us learning how the public records request process works. Uh, people don't know, general public does not know how to do this. Um, we didn't even have all this information available. Um, when this was being introduced at first, we did not have any information available when the policy change occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred. We need a public process that indeed is democratic. And we would add to that as well just to speak specifically to the constitutional concerns to put on the record. We have case law, Carpenter v. United States, that you cannot have prolonged surveillance or tracking of a person without a warrant. And additionally, any uses of these drones that sort of circumvent any other potential warrant requirements would be extremely problematic and we don't know in these first responders when and how a drone may or may not be looking into homes, if it's in the French Quarter looking into private courtyards where people may or may not be doing anything, and this policy language alone is insufficient because it also, and we'll get to this, doesn't talk about when and how this data is stored, used, or anything that would follow that.

And so I do think again, we still have a lot that we would ask to see added to the policy that we know Council Vice President Willard did propose earlier, but all of this current policy still causes serious questions and concerns. Again, in 2024, the last piece of this was the data reporting policy. We had something that was moderately robust and called for an accountability and effectiveness and demographic information being collected. The 2026 policy, again, this is prior to Council Member Willard's ordinance, gutted all of that and did not just like remove it. It is entirely gone and gutted. And so they were ignoring the data requirements that they did have in 2024. There was no internal quarterly review made available. There was no public facing dashboard made available. There was no annual report. And again, as of July 1st, they just said that the data could be accessible, not provided, and that there is potentially a public facing dashboard unless there is an operational security or privacy concern, which I cannot imagine with an NOPD force that was unwilling to fill out the paperwork the first time on that policy, that they would not very conveniently find plenty of opportunities to say that there's an operational concern about when and how these drones are flying. So again, we know that there was an ordinance that addresses some of these concerns. But again, we do have to acknowledge that we don't know where these drones are flying and whether they're still over policing specific communities and targeting specific populations within our city. And we do not know where these drones are actually going. Even when we know their takeoff point, if they can fly 35 miles an hour for 40 minutes, they could go anywhere within the bounds of Orleans Parish and back to their docking station. And so what we are still waiting for and what we have to acknowledge again is that we don't currently have training documents for any of the pilots or flights associated with this. We've also specifically requested drone footage. We want to know when is the camera facing down? When is it facing forward? What is it seeing? We haven't received that yet. We do acknowledge it's been received by the city on our due date has been pushed back due to staffing concerns and an inability to respond to all public records requests. And then we've also requested and O. P. D. Has advised and I believe it was under the draft policy that potentially they're using some form of manual data entry. And we requested those records as well to see if there's anything potentially on paper that they did not provide as part of ion surveillance's initial request. We have also requested the planned location for the drone docking stations. This is especially concerning. Um, if when we did our research, we found out that in Chula Vista, they have a program where their docking station was right above a hospital. Which means it was recording everyone coming in and out of a hospital. Um, possible HIPAA violations in the French Quarter. Could this be on top of a pharmacy, a bar, a gay bar? Um, whoever is going to be around these docking stations is going to be subject to surveillance every time these are deployed. And so what we are asking you guys to consider actually, before we jump to our recommendations, I forgot we're going to start this slide. Um, we do have some stuff again for you guys to just consider and to ask for. Yes. Uh, to start with costs. We understand that the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation is, um, putting in funding, um, for the drones themselves. Um, this is concerning for us because it obfuscates actually where the money is coming from and whose interests are behind it. But this does not take into account that there will be police officers that are going to have to report, man, supervise the use of these drones. This is going to be coming from the people of New Orleans and our tax money. Um, we also want to bring up the fact that the battery life for these drones are around 2 to 3 years. They will have to be replaced. Uh, so these are costs that are not being taken into consideration and amidst a budget deficit. Um, we have seen in our research that in other cities there have been drone crashes that caused fires, which is, I'm a survivor of a fire myself in the city, is a huge issue. Um, who is going to have the footage? Is this going to be part of, um, Axon or these third parties, um, that share the data with other agencies as well? Who will have access to review? We saw a big case in San Francisco of drone footage being leaked, uh, which is, um, incredibly concerning, um, regarding privacy. Um, and also we really want to, we really want to bring up the fact that there's no way that someone can report if a police drone is right outside their window. We've already had people come to ION Surveillance and say, I saw a drone. I don't know if it was a police. I don't know if it was someone else. Uh, we need a mechanism for reporting, um, these sightings and to be able to compare with flight logs. Um, questions of when the camera is facing down, when is footage being collected and of what? And to end with my comments is we need an actual public process for this whole program. As I said, this information was not available until we requested it and it took us a month. It took us, us learning how the public records request process works. Uh, people don't know, general public does not know how to do this. Um, we didn't even have all this information available. Um, when this was being introduced at first, we did not have any information available when the policy change occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred. We need a public process that indeed is democratic. And we would add to that as well just to speak specifically to the constitutional concerns to put on the record. We have case law, Carpenter v. United States, that you cannot have prolonged surveillance or tracking of a person without a warrant.

And additionally, any uses of these drones that sort of circumvent any other potential warrant requirements would be extremely problematic and we don't know in these first responders when and how a drone may or may not be looking into homes, if it's in the French Quarter looking into private courtyards where people may or may not be doing anything, and this policy language alone is insufficient because it also, and we'll get to this, doesn't talk about when and how this data is stored, used, or anything that would follow that. And so I do think again, we still have a lot that we would ask to see added to the policy that we know Council Vice President Willard did propose earlier, but all of this current policy still causes serious questions and concerns. Again, in 2024, the last piece of this was the data reporting policy. We had something that was moderately robust and called for an accountability and effectiveness and demographic information being collected. The 2026 policy, again, this is prior to Council Member Willard's ordinance, gutted all of that and did not just like remove it. It is entirely gone and gutted. And so they were ignoring the data requirements that they did have in 2024. There was no internal quarterly review made available. There was no public facing dashboard made available. There was no annual report. And again, as of July 1st, they just said that the data could be accessible, not provided, and that there is potentially a public facing dashboard unless there is an operational security or privacy concern, which I cannot imagine with an NOPD force that was unwilling to fill out the paperwork the first time on that policy, that they would not very conveniently find plenty of opportunities to say that there's an operational concern about when and how these drones are flying. So again, we know that there was an ordinance that addresses some of these concerns. But again, we do have to acknowledge that we don't know where these drones are flying and whether they're still over policing specific communities and targeting specific populations within our city. And we do not know where these drones are actually going. Even when we know their takeoff point, if they can fly 35 miles an hour for 40 minutes, they could go anywhere within the bounds of Orleans Parish and back to their docking station. And so what we are still waiting for and what we have to acknowledge again is that we don't currently have training documents for any of the pilots or flights associated with this. We've also specifically requested drone footage. We want to know when is the camera facing down? When is it facing forward? What is it seeing? We haven't received that yet. We do acknowledge it's been received by the city on our due date has been pushed back due to staffing concerns and an inability to respond to all public records requests. And then we've also requested and O. P. D. Has advised and I believe it was under the draft policy that potentially they're using some form of manual data entry. And we requested those records as well to see if there's anything potentially on paper that they did not provide as part of ion surveillance's initial request. We have also requested the planned location for the drone docking stations. This is especially concerning. Um, if when we did our research, we found out that in Chula Vista, they have a program where their docking station was right above a hospital. Which means it was recording everyone coming in and out of a hospital. Um, possible HIPAA violations in the French Quarter. Could this be on top of a pharmacy, a bar, a gay bar? Um, whoever is going to be around these docking stations is going to be subject to surveillance every time these are deployed. And so what we are asking you guys to consider actually, before we jump to our recommendations, I forgot we're going to start this slide. Um, we do have some stuff again for you guys to just consider and to ask for. Yes. Uh, to start with costs. We understand that the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation is, um, putting in funding, um, for the drones themselves. Um, this is concerning for us because it obfuscates actually where the money is coming from and whose interests are behind it. But this does not take into account that there will be police officers that are going to have to report, man, supervise the use of these drones. This is going to be coming from the people of New Orleans and our tax money. Um, we also want to bring up the fact that the battery life for these drones are around 2 to 3 years. They will have to be replaced. Uh, so these are costs that are not being taken into consideration and amidst a budget deficit. Um, we have seen in our research that in other cities there have been drone crashes that caused fires, which is, I'm a survivor of a fire myself in the city, is a huge issue. Um, who is going to have the footage? Is this going to be part of, um, Axon or these third parties, um, that share the data with other agencies as well? Who will have access to review? We saw a big case in San Francisco of drone footage being leaked, uh, which is, um, incredibly concerning, um, regarding privacy. Um, and also we really want to, we really want to bring up the fact that there's no way that someone can report if a police drone is right outside their window. We've already had people come to ION Surveillance and say, I saw a drone. I don't know if it was a police. I don't know if it was someone else. Uh, we need a mechanism for reporting, um, these sightings and to be able to compare with flight logs. Um, questions of when the camera is facing down, when is footage being collected and of what? And to end with my comments is we need an actual public process for this whole program. As I said, this information was not available until we requested it and it took us a month. It took us, us learning how the public records request process works.

Uh, people don't know, general public does not know how to do this. Um, we didn't even have all this information available. Um, when this was being introduced at first, we did not have any information available when the policy change occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred. We need a public process that indeed is democratic. And we would add to that as well just to speak specifically to the constitutional concerns to put on the record. We have case law, Carpenter v. United States, that you cannot have prolonged surveillance or tracking of a person without a warrant. And additionally, any uses of these drones that sort of circumvent any other potential warrant requirements would be extremely problematic and we don't know in these first responders when and how a drone may or may not be looking into homes, if it's in the French Quarter looking into private courtyards where people may or may not be doing anything, and this policy language alone is insufficient because it also, and we'll get to this, doesn't talk about when and how this data is stored, used, or anything that would follow that. And so I do think again, we still have a lot that we would ask to see added to the policy that we know Council Vice President Willard did propose earlier, but all of this current policy still causes serious questions and concerns. Again, in 2024, the last piece of this was the data reporting policy. We had something that was moderately robust and called for an accountability and effectiveness and demographic information being collected. The 2026 policy, again, this is prior to Council Member Willard's ordinance, gutted all of that and did not just like remove it. It is entirely gone and gutted. And so they were ignoring the data requirements that they did have in 2024. There was no internal quarterly review made available. There was no public facing dashboard made available. There was no annual report. And again, as of July 1st, they just said that the data could be accessible, not provided, and that there is potentially a public facing dashboard unless there is an operational security or privacy concern, which I cannot imagine with an NOPD force that was unwilling to fill out the paperwork the first time on that policy, that they would not very conveniently find plenty of opportunities to say that there's an operational concern about when and how these drones are flying. So again, we know that there was an ordinance that addresses some of these concerns. But again, we do have to acknowledge that we don't know where these drones are flying and whether they're still over policing specific communities and targeting specific populations within our city. And we do not know where these drones are actually going. Even when we know their takeoff point, if they can fly 35 miles an hour for 40 minutes, they could go anywhere within the bounds of Orleans Parish and back to their docking station. And so what we are still waiting for and what we have to acknowledge again is that we don't currently have training documents for any of the pilots or flights associated with this. We've also specifically requested drone footage. We want to know when is the camera facing down? When is it facing forward? What is it seeing? We haven't received that yet. We do acknowledge it's been received by the city on our due date has been pushed back due to staffing concerns and an inability to respond to all public records requests. And then we've also requested and O. P. D. Has advised and I believe it was under the draft policy that potentially they're using some form of manual data entry. And we requested those records as well to see if there's anything potentially on paper that they did not provide as part of ion surveillance's initial request. We have also requested the planned location for the drone docking stations. This is especially concerning. Um, if when we did our research, we found out that in Chula Vista, they have a program where their docking station was right above a hospital. Which means it was recording everyone coming in and out of a hospital. Um, possible HIPAA violations in the French Quarter. Could this be on top of a pharmacy, a bar, a gay bar? Um, whoever is going to be around these docking stations is going to be subject to surveillance every time these are deployed. And so what we are asking you guys to consider actually, before we jump to our recommendations, I forgot we're going to start this slide. Um, we do have some stuff again for you guys to just consider and to ask for. Yes. Uh, to start with costs. We understand that the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation is, um, putting in funding, um, for the drones themselves. Um, this is concerning for us because it obfuscates actually where the money is coming from and whose interests are behind it. But this does not take into account that there will be police officers that are going to have to report, man, supervise the use of these drones. This is going to be coming from the people of New Orleans and our tax money. Um, we also want to bring up the fact that the battery life for these drones are around 2 to 3 years. They will have to be replaced. Uh, so these are costs that are not being taken into consideration and amidst a budget deficit. Um, we have seen in our research that in other cities there have been drone crashes that caused fires, which is, I'm a survivor of a fire myself in the city, is a huge issue. Um, who is going to have the footage? Is this going to be part of, um, Axon or these third parties, um, that share the data with other agencies as well? Who will have access to review? We saw a big case in San Francisco of drone footage being leaked, uh, which is, uh, incredibly concerning, uh, regarding privacy. Um, and also we really want to, we really want to bring up the fact that there's no way that someone can report if a police drone is right outside their window. We've already had people come to ION Surveillance and say, I saw a drone.

I don't know if it was a police. I don't know if it was someone else. Uh, we need a mechanism for reporting, um, these sightings and to be able to compare with flight logs. Um, questions of when the camera is facing down, when is footage being collected and of what? And to end with my comments is we need an actual public process for this whole program...

Criminal Justice Committee.

Summary

Executive overview of the meeting

Key themes

Item 1. Crime trends and National Guard departure plan — What was presented

Actions/staffing/operational measures

Unresolved issues

Item 2. Mardi Gras expenditures vs city receipts; fee discussions — What was presented

Discussion outcomes

Unresolved issues

Item 3. Contracts and approvals (Item five) — Leeds Online amendment (Council Bill 57, Amendment 3)

MOU with state for statewide rapid response search team for endangered persons and critical incidents

Item 4. Drone policy discussion and public accountability (ACLU presentation) — What was presented

Unresolved issues (as documented)

Overall status

Overall status, gaps, and cross-cutting themes

Unresolved, ongoing items across excerpts

Speaker references and notable names (as clearly identified in the material)

Unresolved issues and next steps (high-level)

Transcript

Item 3: Metropolitan Crime Commission/NOPD – National Guard Deployment Overview

Item 3 (cont.): NOPD Presentation – Plan for Post-Guard Transition

Item 4: Carnival Gap Fee Amendment – Presentation and Discussion

Item 5: Contracts for Approval per Council Bill 57

Item 6: ACLU of Louisiana — Eye on Surveillance