Happy birthday, Enumclaw police drones.

The Enumclaw Police Department’s drone program turned one last March, and said it has been a success not just for the Enumclaw community, but other nearby law enforcement departments.

The department started with seven drones in March 2024, costing the department roughly $35,000 — but it was paid for by the EPD’s drug seizure fund.

The fleet currently consists of nine drones.

Seven are “quick deploy” drones, described as medium in size with a camera that takes both photos and records video, perfect for gathering information about a car crash, covering parades, filming the demolition of the old Chevy Paulson building last August, and following officers chasing an inebriated elf last Christmas.

The department also has one drone designed to fly inside homes in order to locate suspects or contact dangerous individuals like a suicidal individual with a weapon.

Finally is a large and powerful drone that can fly in inclement weather, has a 9.3 mile range, more than 40 minutes of flight time, a max horizontal speed of more than 75 feet per second (or 51 miles an hour), spotlights, speaker system, and numerous cameras (including thermal).

Six EPD officers and staff are trained to fly drones; this is the only drone program between Black Diamond and Sumner. While there are obvious law enforcement uses for these drones, they also have rescue capabilities.

Silver alerts are one example; several years ago, an elderly woman got injured and lost in a nearby wooded area. She was found alive a day later, but the thermal drones would have been able to find her within minutes, the department said.

SOME STATS

How effective this drone program has been in solid numbers is difficult to pin down, EPD Records Specialist Sarah Taylor said in an email interview.

There were 71 drone deployments between March 2024 and 2025.

While Sarah said it “wouldn’t be possible to quantify exactly how many cases were solved by the drones… our auto theft incidents in 2024 were less than half of what we experienced in 2023. We believe our drones did contribute to that decrease.”

Auto thefts declined from 67 reported in 2024 to 28.

The EPD reported a successful operation in Black Diamond last month in arresting an auto theft suspect in heavy woods.

“With so much rugged landscape in this region, our drones are an excellent tool to help locate suspects and also in providing an extra set of eyes on our officers to ensure their safety,” the EPD posted on its Facebook page.

During another incident in August 2024, drones were able to find three juvenile auto theft suspects hiding on a rooftop.

Other deployments included incidents of burglary, missing persons, trespasses, illegal camping, alarm calls, and traffic hazards. Taylor estimated between 10% and 20% of all deployments were traffic-related.

“In these instances, drones can save our officers a great deal of time in locating suspects. Again, that is impossible to truly quantify, but locating suspects can oftentimes take hours of searching on foot, and sometimes even days of trying to locate a suspect,” Taylor continued. “Our drone technology, such as thermal imaging, can decrease this time significantly.”

The EPD has not been utilized for any rescues as of yet.

About 15% of drone deployments assist other local agencies.

Three auto theft juvenile suspects attempted to hide from officers on a roof last August. However, the Enumclaw Police Department’s thermal-imaging drones were able to spot them. Photo courtesy Enumclaw Police Department