Loading...For hours, bullets tore through the home, hitting neighboring houses and cars.Inside, a man wanted by police for allegedly killing his ex-girlfriend was holed up with his new girlfriend.As the SWAT team prepared to enter, Kevin Fennessy with the Ocean County Sheriff's Office tried something new first.
He sent in a tiny assistant: a small drone equipped with a camera.From a safe position outside, Fennessy slowly piloted the device through a blasted-in window, while he and other officers watched on a monitor.The video, viewed by NPR, showed hallway walls and furniture riddled with bullet holes.As it entered a back bedroom where the couple had holed up, footage showed the man's body on the floor.
He had killed himself.With the drone still hovering above the macabre scene, police deployed two flash bangs into the room.
The woman rushed out and surrendered.The incident, which happened about three years ago, sticks in Fennessy's mind when he considers the value of his department's drone program, which he heads."No one's hurt.Everyone's safe," Fennessy says.
"Forty-one times they shot out the house at us.But at the end of the day, we were able to clear the house." Chief Warrant Officer Kevin Fennessy lifts an Ocean County Sheriff's Office DJI Matrice 300 RTK drone out of the custom-built bed of a department SUV at Robert J.
Miller Airpark on Sept.4.
Albert Yee for NPR hide caption New Jersey's Ocean County Sheriff's Office is one of an estimated 6,000 law enforcement agencies across the country that now have drones, used for search and rescue, fire and traffic crash investigations, and tactical response, according to the Law Enforcement Drone Association.It's an organization that advises, trains and certifies police across the country on their drone programs.Ocean County's entire fleet is from DJI, a Chinese manufactur...