VIDEO: Law Enforcement Use Drone Technology For Search And Rescue

CALHOUN COUNTY, Miss.(WCBI)- If you were driving through Calhoun County this morning and saw a strange flying object, not to worry.

Calhoun County Operation Search and Rescue partnered with the Sheriff’s Department Saturday to help with some new equipment training.

“The drone can see what we as a group can not see from the ground,” said Emergency Management Direct Randy Skinner.

For the Calhoun County Search and Rescue Team locating, stabilizing and removing lost people is their main goal. Calhoun County Emergency Management Director Randy Skinner says it’s technology like this that makes it easier and safer to get the job done.

“We could put the drone in the air and get a better scope of what the accident scene looks like and if there were any hazardous chemicals or anything that could possibly be spilled before we put someone’s life in danger going to investigate,”said Skinner.

The D.J.I. Phantom 3 Professional Drone is equip with all O.S.A.R. needs to save a life.

” Well it gives us the capability to cover a larger area, of course, it streams live video, we can record it, and take pictures. It has about a 2 and a half to 3 mile range and it will go up to 400 feet in the air. So we can cover much larger area much quicker with the camera. For the O.S.A.R. team, that is,”said Calhoun County Sheriff Greg Pollan.

O.S.A.R. is already utilizing the technology and Pollan says law enforcement agencies aren’t far behind.

“We’re going to incorporate that into the actual law enforcement side of this also. In the very near future we will be adding a flir camera which infrared gives off a heat signature that will becoming in the next month or so,”said Pollan.

Saturday’s event covered a variety of skills like navigation and team work, which Becky Kellum says is keeping them sharp for the real thing.

“We had coordinates that we had to go through but it was just a search and rescue,”said Calhoun County O.S.A.R. Secretary Becky Kellum.

We have three members out here that we have a drone now going over to find them. We will get coordinates on the drone in the air and find our subjects.

Skinner says their job is to preserve life but the done allows them to do so much more.

“When the team first started out instead of your standard search and rescue team we wanted to implement more of an evidence protection side to our search and rescue team. So we work directly with law enforcement. We don’t just go and find victims that are lost. We may be doing evidence recovery, or things like that, so we focus on every tool that we can use,”said Skinner.

Calhoun Search and Rescue holds training three times a year. Sheriff Pollan recently received his drone operation licence.