The Anne Arundel County Police Department was set to begin flying a Drone as First Responder pilot on Wednesday, Nov. 11, from an automated dock near Evergreen Road and Waugh Chapel Way. The drone covers the Waugh Chapel Towne Centre, the Route 3 corridor and parts of Gambrills, Odenton and Crofton, and police say it launches only for active 911 calls, emergencies in progress, injury crashes and officer requests.
The Maryland department already posts its drone flights on a public log at least 30 days after each one, and DroneXL went through all 2,621 entries from July 2025 through Oct. 11, 2026. Eighteen of them, flown on the two days anti-Trump No Kings rallies took place in the county, are labeled as No Kings events, a protest or a public demonstration.
The department’s own drone page lists crowd management at public special events as an approved use. The same page says the program is not used to collect video “for the sole purpose of monitoring constitutionally protected activities.”…