Here's a number no one in most states can tell you: exactly how many times their police departments flew surveillance drones last year, why, and what it cost. In Minnesota, I can tell you, because Minnesota did something rare and smart. It wrote a surveillance law that produces public receipts.
After the Flock license-plate scandal in this series — where the transparency law was the thing that exposed the abuse — I want to hold up the drone law as the version done right, and then show you the gap that even a good law is starting to leave open.
A law built on sunlight
Minnesota's law-enforcement drone statute (Minn. Stat. § 626.19) sits not in the aviation code but in the criminal-procedure and privacy chapter — because it's about surveillance, not flying. Its structure is genuinely good:
- A warrant is the default for using a drone to gather information.
- Weapons are banned. Facial recognition is banned without a warrant. Surveilling a protest is banned without a warrant.
- Data must be destroyed within 7 days unless it's evidence.
- Every use gets a documented, unique case number.
- Before an agency can even buy a drone, it has to hold public comment and publish a written policy.
- And the heart of it: every agency must report every warrantless flight to the state each year — the purpose and the cost — and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension compiles it and publishes it, agency by agency.
That last piece is why this article can exist. It's the model for how surveillance should be governed: not banned reflexively, but forced into the open where the public can watch.
What the receipts show
Because the reports are public, here's the actual picture, and I'll give it to you straight in both directions.
Drone use is growing fast. Minnesota agencies operating drones went from 99 in 2023 to 119 in 2024 to 135 in 2025. Reported warrantless flights climbed from 4,326 to 6,603 to 9,080 — up 38 to 50 percent a year. Spending peaked near $2 million and has come down to about $1.3 million.
Now the honest part, because the standard of this series demands it: the overwhelming majority of those flights are exactly the uses most people would want. Every number reported is expressly a flight where a warrant wasn't required — and the categories are dominated by emergencies, search-and-rescue, crash reconstruction, and training. A drone finding a lost child in the woods or mapping a fatal crash is a good use of the technology, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Minnesota's drones are not, today, mostly spying on people.
The gap even a good law is starting to leave
Here's what the receipts also show, and where I'd focus. There were 9,080 warrantless flights and effectively a handful of warrants. The "warrant is the default" rule is technically true, but in practice the eleven statutory exceptions do virtually all the work — the warrant is the exception, not the rule. That's tolerable when the exceptions really are emergencies. It becomes a problem the moment routine aerial patrol can be squeezed into an "emergency" or "reasonable suspicion" box, one call at a time.
And that moment is arriving. The fastest-growing use of police drones nationally is "Drone as First Responder" — programs that launch a drone to every 911 call, so a camera is overhead within a minute or two of any report. Here's the convergence Minnesotans should see coming: Flock — the same company behind the license-plate cameras in this series — now sells these drones. Its "Drone as First Responder" product launches on 911 calls, claims an 86-second response, and carries a camera that can read a license plate from 2,000 feet, wired into the same license-plate-and-gunshot surveillance stack. A drone to every call, integrated with the plate-reader network, is a different animal from a drone that finds a lost hiker — and it can be flown entirely within the "emergency" and "reasonable suspicion" exceptions, call by call, without ever tripping the warrant requirement.
The courts have flagged where this heads. When Baltimore ran a plane that photographed the whole city continuously, a federal appeals court struck it down as an unconstitutional search — persistent aerial surveillance of everyone is different in kind from watching one suspect. A drone over every 911 call, every day, is that same question wearing new rotors.
What we can do
Keep the model — it's a national example. The reporting requirement is exactly right and should be defended and copied. Most states are flying drones in the dark; Minnesota isn't. Start from pride in that.
Define "emergency" before it swallows the warrant rule. The statute's exceptions were written for genuine emergencies. Tighten the definitions so that "reasonable suspicion" and "emergency" can't be stretched to cover routine, launch-on-every-call patrol.
Make Drone-as-First-Responder its own disclosed category. If a Minnesota department wants to fly a drone to every 911 call, that should require its own public policy, its own community comment, and its own line in the annual report — not get folded silently into "emergency" flights.
And make the BCA total it up by purpose. Right now the report lists reason codes but doesn't sum them, so no one can say precisely what share of 9,080 flights was search-and-rescue versus surveillance. A one-line change to how the report is compiled would let Minnesotans watch the trend that matters most.
The lesson here is the hopeful one in this whole series: Minnesota knows how to govern surveillance in the open. The drone law is proof. Now apply that same sunlight to the license-plate cameras, the data brokers, and the drone-to-every-call future before it arrives — because the company selling all three is already at the door.
First the facts. Then the fix.
Sources
Minnesota's law-enforcement unmanned-aerial-vehicle statute, Minn. Stat. § 626.19, verified verbatim against raw text at revisor.mn.gov (enacted 2020 ch. 82; amended 2025 ch. 35, art. 5, effective July 1, 2025): the warrant default (subd. 2); the eleven authorized-use exceptions (subd. 3); the prohibitions on weapons, warrantless facial recognition, and warrantless protest surveillance (subd. 4); documentation with a unique case number (subd. 5); the 7-day data-destruction requirement (subd. 6(c)); the suppression remedy (subd. 7) and civil cause of action (subd. 8); the public-comment and published-policy requirements before purchase (subds. 9–10); and the annual public-reporting mandate under which agencies report warrantless uses and cost to the Commissioner of Public Safety and the BCA compiles and publishes an agency-by-agency report (subd. 12). Reporting figures from the BCA's compiled annual UAV reports: agencies operating drones rose from 99 (2023) to 119 (2024) to 135 (2025); reported warrantless uses rose from 4,326 to 6,603 to 9,080; spending peaked near $1.97 million (2024) and fell to about $1.31 million (2025); every reported figure is expressly a use for which a warrant was not required. The Flock "Drone as First Responder" product (formerly Aerodome, whose site now redirects to Flock Safety), including the launch-on-911-call model, the claimed 86-second response, and the plate-reading capability. Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, 2 F.4th 330 (4th Cir. 2021) (en banc), striking down persistent aerial surveillance under the Fourth Amendment.
The BCA reports list per-reason codes but do not sum them, so no precise per-purpose percentage is stated; the judicial-branch warrant report, the Flock-Aerodome acquisition date, and national Drone-as-First-Responder program counts were not confirmed this pass. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.