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The Irvine Police Department’s Drone as First Responder program ended a Walmart shoplifting case the same way it ends most calls these days, with the suspect on the ground and an aircraft watching from above.
Officers arrested Guillermo Hazael Martinez Diaz, 26, on June 24 after a DFR drone tracked him from the store to a pickup truck bed where he tried to hide. The bust looks small. The system behind it is not. Irvine spent two million dollars building the center that sent the drone, and stops like this are how the city justifies that ticket every week.
A shoplifting call became a DFR demonstration
Martinez Diaz walked into a Walmart in Irvine, California with a shopping cart and walked out trying to keep the contents, according to the police report. The department’s Real Time Crime Center pushed a drone the moment the call came in, and the aircraft picked him up as he fled the store on foot.
He climbed into the bed of a pickup truck and dropped flat, betting that ground officers would not spot him. The drone watched the whole move. The Real Time Crime Center relayed coordinates to the officers walking the lot, and they arrived at the right truck with no guessing and no perimeter sweep…