The Fulton County Jail has been many things over the years: overcrowded, federally scrutinized, the subject of a consent decree, and home to one of the more infamous booking photos in recent American history.
Now it’s also the site of the country’s first Drone-as-First-Responder program specifically deployed to stop contraband from entering a correctional facility by air, as Rough Draft Atlanta reported.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office launched the system on March 19 in partnership with Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based public safety technology company, and the Sheriff’s Office Foundation.
The drone sits in an automated dock on the jail roof, ready to reach anywhere within a four-mile radius in an average response time of 85 seconds. Nobody calls it, nobody assigns it, and nobody needs to be on the roof to launch it. It just goes.
Why a Jail Needs a Drone Program
Before dismissing this as security theater, consider the number the Sheriff’s Office released alongside the announcement: in more than six months of 2024, there were nearly 300 unauthorized drone flights over the Fulton County Jail on Rice Street…