Kent County Sheriff's Office Integrates Body Cameras with Skydio Drone Fleet — One Button Launches the Nearest Aircraft

The Kent County Sheriff's Office in Michigan has integrated officers' body cameras with its drone fleet. When an officer presses a button on their camera, the nearest rooftop docking station automatically deploys a Skydio X10 drone directly to the officer's location.

The department currently operates three rooftop drone stations across West Michigan — in Cutlerville, Comstock Park, and Grand Rapids. Program lead Roon said drones arrive on scene before officers in approximately 90% of incidents.

One Button on the Vest, One Drone in the Air

The new capability links every officer's body camera to Kent County's drone docking network. A single button press sends an alert to the county's Real Time Intelligence Center and simultaneously instructs the nearest rooftop station to dispatch a drone to the officer's GPS location.

"It notifies the person in the center to immediately pull up that body camera and see what's happening," Roon said, describing the intelligence hub that monitors and controls the fleet. The same alert directs the closest docked drone to take off and fly straight to the officer.

Once airborne, the X10 has a typical operational radius of about 3 miles (4.8 km) and a top speed of 45 mph (72 km/h). Skydio states the drone can be airborne within as little as 20 seconds of receiving an alert from the dock, meaning it frequently arrives on scene while backup units are still several blocks away.

Kent County has equipped its officers with Axon body cameras since a 2020 procurement contract worth $2.2 million, according to WWMT. The mechanism Roon described aligns with a partnership announced by Axon and Skydio in June 2024: a double-press of the Axon Body 4 camera tags the officer's location and dispatches the nearest available drone.

The Sheriff's Office has not disclosed the specific technology vendors behind the new feature.

What stands out is how dramatically the system compresses decision-making time. In a conventional Drone as First Responder (DFR) deployment, a launch must be authorized by an operator reviewing the situation at a console. In Kent County's model, the officer in the field is the trigger — the only remaining human review occurs in the seconds between the button press and liftoff.

Skydio X10: Thermal Imaging and Autonomous Night Flight

The aircraft performing these missions is the Skydio X10, a U.S.-manufactured autonomous drone built in San Mateo, California. It carries a Teledyne FLIR Boson+ thermal camera (640×512 resolution) and a 48-megapixel zoom camera, both part of the VT300-Z sensor suite.

The thermal sensor detects heat rather than light, allowing concealed suspects or missing persons to appear as bright silhouettes against a dark background. The zoom camera lets operators visually confirm the identity of a heat signature before committing resources.

Skydio's NightSense accessory gives the X10 obstacle-avoidance capability in complete darkness, enabling the drone to fly low over trees and rooftop lines at night without retreating to an operationally ineffective safe altitude. Under optimal conditions, the drone offers up to 40 minutes of flight time per charge.

Two Cases That Made Kent County a Believer

Kent County's catalog of drone deployments continues to grow — including a suspect who surrendered because he knew he couldn't outrun the drone overhead, and a burglar found hiding submerged in the Grand River, visible only as a small white dot on a thermal camera feed.

According to WWMT, in October of last year, officers responding to a domestic violence call in Kentwood deployed a drone that located a suspect walking on Division Street, leading to an arrest. The suspect's own reaction became the department's most effective endorsement: "I'm not dumb enough — I see a drone above me, how are you going to run away from that?"

"In a way, you can almost look at it as a de-escalation tool," Roon said. "We've been able to de-escalate situations where people have voluntarily given up."

On April 7 of this year, a 39-year-old man wanted on felony assault charges drove his car into a pond near Celebration Cinema in Kentwood during a pursuit, then climbed out of the sinking vehicle with his hands raised. According to WWMT, the drone had already located the vehicle before the chase began; local media reported that officers recovered multiple firearms and methamphetamine from inside the car.

The thermal imaging case Roon cites most often dates to October 2021. A man who had stolen catalytic converters in Comstock Park jumped into the Grand River to hide, submerging his body with only his head above water. On the drone's thermal feed, that head appeared as a small white dot. WZZM 13 covered the arrest at the time.

Kent County's Shift from DJI to Skydio

Three years ago, this corner of Michigan was DJI territory. DroneXL reported in August 2023 that the Grand Rapids Police Department purchased eight DJI drones — six Mavic Enterprise models and two Matrice 30Ts — for approximately $100,000, while the Kent County Sheriff's Office had also equipped itself with DJI aircraft.

Today, the county's frontline drones are U.S.-made Skydios sitting on rooftop docks — a transition that mirrors trends elsewhere in Michigan. Dearborn launched the state's first citywide DFR program in February, and Warren established a Skydio X10 fleet across six fixed stations in March.

Kent County's expansion is not finished. The office plans to add four more X10s between Plainfield and Cutlerville before the end of the year, bringing the total number of docking stations from three to seven.

DroneXL's Take

The real story here is the button, not the drone itself. Last week this column covered California residents pushing back against a police drone program; days later came a story about the same aircraft guiding a disoriented elderly man out of a Florida forest at 3 a.m.

Kent County embodies both narratives: a tool that protects officers at their most vulnerable moments, and a system that compresses the dispatch decision from a console conversation to a vest button.

This trajectory has no reverse gear. The benefits these drones deliver outweigh the concerns, and every flight generates an audit trail — a point the county has been careful to emphasize when explaining its intelligence center to the public. The train has already left the station.

The technology is winning over more police departments every week. Kent County alone plans to grow from three docking stations to seven before January. Suspects have already figured out what that means. Policy debates are still catching up.

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