Sheriff's Office Drone

Just a short note to begin the New Year.

It looks like our Drone is going to become a reality. Thank you for all of the hard work put in by the Friends Of The Benton County Sheriff's Office, the organizations, clubs, nonprofits and the community. The work and dedication of these people are directly responsible for obtaining the donations which brought us very close to the purchase price. The County Commissioners have agreed to spend the remaining balance of $5000.00 which will allow us to order this life saving equipment.

Further the Sheriff, Deputy Snyder and I our obtaining our commercial unmanned aircraft licenses and should be ready to fly when we get delivery.

I am always a little surprised at people's perceptions and this is no exception. I know that some are concerned about using these drones for surveillance. I had a gentleman approach me at one of our fundraisers and said that he didn't want the Sheriff's Office to have a Drone as he liked to sunbath nude in his back yard. I told him that my belief was that even if we did fly over while he was so occupied we would certainly only do it once.

Seriously we will have policies in place to prevent those type of uses and I believe our citizens will be very pleased with the use of and success of our Drone Operations.

To close, I hope that many will see how much support the community has for their Sheriff's Office. Many private donations from individuals, businesses, groups, clubs, nonprofits, as well as support from the County Commission were needed to make a drone available to the Sheriff's Office. This was a large undertaking that took more than a year but we finally got it done. Having been involved in much of the fund raising I want to thank all of you again that helped make this project possible and for our needs in the future.                 

Sergeant Storm Walker