Full Notification

Our Dispatch center gets over 100,000 calls every year. There are times the calls cause the hair on the back of your neck to stand up. This was one of those calls.

Last week, a frantic mother dialed 911 and said her son wanted to kill himself. He was in his room with a gun. The family could hear him manipulating the gun as we told them to quickly evacuate the house. It was past midnight when the call came in and every available officer came to the area to help out…including two negotiators assigned to patrol.

They were able to use a P.A. system to call out to the man who was going through a crisis. Then, they heard four rapid gunshots. The officers safely got behind cover of an armored car, since they didn’t know if the man shot towards officers, at himself, or somewhere else. They continued to use the P.A. system with no success.

It was a difficult situation. We wanted to help him immediately but sending officers into a home with a potentially armed man could be very dangerous.

So, we called our friends at the Alameda County Sheriff Office and asked if their Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Team could help us out. They responded right away and used their drones to safely approach the home. Unfortunately, we still couldn’t see the distressed man through the windows so our team in front of the house made a stealthy approach to the front door and opened it just enough for two pocket drones and a robot to enter inside. Our command post was set up blocks away but even from there we could watch through the drone video feed of the team moving to the front of the house and were able to give them any warning of possible danger during their approach.

The smaller drones and robot began to remotely look in every room until we eventually found the man sleeping in his bed. Fortunately, he was not injured, and we were able to communicate with him to come outside.

Just the peaceful resolution we were looking for!

Thank you to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office and their UAV team. We especially want to thank the deputies who were called in from home to come and assist us with their drones. We also want to thank our community members in the Rotary St. / Myrtle St. area for their understanding during this incident and we apologize for any inconveniences it may have caused.