By Kent Jackson
Standard-Speaker, Hazleton, Pa.
HAZLETON, Pa. — Let’s say a 911 caller reports a big fight is starting at Altmiller Playground.
Before a call taker logs the details and dispatches police, officers start listening to the call from their vehicles.
Atop City Hall, a drone takes flight toward the playground, which it reaches first and streams video of the fight that officers can see while en route.
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That’s the type of response city police anticipate after they integrate drones and data analysis with cameras, gunshot detectors and license plate readers already in use through agreements with Flock Safety.
“The goal is to bring the technology to make the city safer through faster investigations,” Jamie Hudson, a director at Flock, said Thursday at the Hazleton Police Station.
Police Chief Brian Schoonmaker said the license plate readers, cameras and gunshot detectors that the city already pays for through agreements with Flock are working. License plate readers, for example have reduced car thefts and made locating vehicles that are stolen easier.
“It’s probably saved us hours in overtime, going door to door, begging people for information,” Schoonmacker said.
Jamie Hudson, Flock Safety director, talks about the drones and new cameras during a news conference at Hazleton Police station as Hazleton Police Chief Brain Schoonmaker looks on on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. John Haeger / Staff Photographer)
On Tuesday after a murder occurred at 2:17 a.m. in Freeland, one of Hazleton’s Flock cameras spotted a white Honda sedan matching a car that had left the scene of the shooting. It was heading south on Stockton Mountain Road, a probable cause affidavit filed in the case said. The license plate number allowed state police to look up the owner’s address, where address troopers watching the parked car from 8 a.m. until they saw the owner outside and arrested him at 3:20 p.m.
Adding drones allows officers to view a scene before they arrive.
In the hypothetical example of a fight at Altmiller Playground, let’s say the drone’s video shows no one is at the playground, but if a crowd gathered nearby at the Castle, Hazleton Elementary/Middle School, police will drive there instead.
Hudson, who spent 31 years in law enforcement before joining Flock, said police in Chula Vista, California pioneered the use of drones as first responders. He gave an example of a drone responding after a motorist calls 911 and reports that a man in front of a store might have been holding a gun. If the video from the drone shows the man is holding a hammer, not a gun, police might not even send an officer, which can save lives and allow police to make more efficient use of their time.
The innovations that Flock will bring to Hazleton will include other time-savers such as consolidating data. Police have records such as traffic citations, dispatch logs, vehicle registrations and arrest records that they now have to search one at a time.
Flock’s system allows police to search all the records at once.
Using time efficiently is especially important because Hazleton police are shorthanded. About 40 officers are duty but Schoomaker said he can’t find qualified applicants to hire 10 more officers that the budget allows for.
For the drones, data integration and replacing fixed cameras with cameras that pan, tilt and zoom at some locations along with existing services, Hazleton will pay $4.5 million during the next 10 years. That compares with approximately $200,000 a year that the city pays now.
Hazleton is among the first eight police forces to purchase all these services from Flock, Hudson said. San Francisco unveiled its system on Wednesday. Allentown and Harrisburg are in early in the process.
Flock arranges for the city to start using the services all at once while spreading out payments, Hudson said.
Schoonmaker said the price is locked in for the decade.
Hazleton became interested in cameras and license plate readers four years ago after 15-year-old Hector Padilla died after being struck by a vehicle while riding his bicycle on South Poplar Street, an incident that the chief called terrible and that took months to solve without readily available video.
Now Hazleton police also are inviting businesses that have surveillance cameras to consider sharing their feeds, which could be merged with the Flock system. Schoonmaker said new industrial buildings under construction might consider sharing feeds to protect against theft at the work sites. But the cameras also might spot traffic and other activity in the vicinity.
Generally police only want access to video recorded outside buildings because using video from inside can violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches. Churches or other buildings that are empty much of the time might want to submit interior video, which they can do if a waiver is signed and signs notify the public that they are being recorded inside, Hudson said.
The growth of camera networks such as Flock or Ring doorbell cameras has raised concerns of national surveillance. Flock lets each police department decide with whom it will share footage, which is deleted after 30 days, Hudson said.
The city won’t be using cameras that automatically issue citations, a technology used to enforce speed limits at work zones on major highways, intersections fitted with cameras to detect when cars pass through red lights and cameras that record cars passing Hazleton Area School District buses when children are boarding or disembarking.
Flock is working with Axon Enterprises, the company that makes body cameras worn by Hazleton police, to incorporate images form those cameras into the system, Hudson said.
He showed videos that drones had taken from other municipalities.
In one segment, a car that police are following drove across a grassy highway divider and stopped. When the driver got out and started running, the drone followed him into a park where he slipped twice on a path and passed a jogger before police appeared running behind him.
In another scene a drone dispatched to a fire sent video showing a shed, not house, ablaze so firefighters pared back their response.
Schoonmaker said Hazleton police already have drones that they use to locate missing people and help firefighters and police in other municipalities.
From Flock, the city will obtain drones designed as first responders. Flock will help train pilots who can operate drones using cell phones from anywhere. If the signals directing the drones get severed, the drones are programmed to return to the base at City Hall like homing pigeons.
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