BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Bellingham’s police force is expanding its use of drones to improve emergency responses.

Police Chief Rebecca Mertzig presented the department’s new “Drone as First Responder” program to the Bellingham City Council on Monday, Oct. 5.

The program – which is fully funded through 2028 by a roughly $475,000 state grant – can send a drone to the location of a 911 call within two minutes of the report.

Drone operators will decide whether to deploy a drone at their own discretion based on the information they hear from the dispatch center.

Mertzig says people don’t always report accurate information during a 911 call, so the drone will allow police to determine the appropriate response for each call.

“Seeing the call, we might want to send an Alternative Response Team, we might want to send our fire department or EMTs, or perhaps police are not needed at all,” Mertzig said in a video introducing the program. “If, for example, we got a report of somebody with a weapon and the drone responded first to that scene and saw that there was no weapon, that would deescalate our response.”

There will be three drone operation base sites throughout the city, including at the police station, public works building and Bellis Fair mall.

BPD says the new drone system will build on its existing Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) program, which began in 2019. UAS also uses drones, but is limited to use in the field rather than to assess an event before any officers arrive.

In addition to aiding police responses, BPD says the drones can be used by the fire department to assess fires, along with the parks and public works departments for broader uses.

BPD will also have a public dashboard on its website allowing people to track each drone and see what its purpose is.