Anne Arundel County police start a Drone as First Responder pilot at Waugh Chapel

The Anne Arundel County Police Department in Maryland was due to start a Drone as First Responder pilot on 11 November, flying from an automated dock near Evergreen Road and Waugh Chapel Way, DroneXL reports. Police say it will fly only to active 911 calls, emergencies under way, crashes with injuries and when officers request it.

The dock uses Skydio drone technology, according to Eye on Annapolis. Police said the cameras face the horizon while the drone flies to and from a call, and that its footage is handled under the rules for body-worn camera evidence.

DroneXL went through all 2,621 entries in the department's public flight log from July 2025 to 11 October 2026. It found that 1,304 were training, testing or practice, and that 18 flights on the two days of anti-Trump No Kings rallies in the county were labelled as No Kings events, a protest or a public demonstration.

The department's drone policy allows flights for crowd management at public events, but says the programme is not used just to watch constitutionally protected activity. The entries do not say what the drones were watching or whether video was kept.