MANSFIELD — It helped Mansfield police find a juvenile driver hiding behind a garage/shed after a vehicle pursuit turned into a foot chase.
It helped Mansfield firefighters arriving at the scene of an apartment building fire.
It helped locate two missing 9-year-old girls who had wandered away from an event at Arlin Field.
“It” is an autonomous drone dispatched by 911 dispatchers from the Municipal Building that helps serve as a “first responder” for the city’s police and fire departments.
In 2025, the city tested the technology developed by a company based in Houston, Texas, to get drones quickly over crime and emergency scenes ay a cost of $50,000.
Safety-Services Director Keith Porch told City Council on Tuesday evening that Mansfield will pay the same amount for a second year of service with Paladin, a company founded in 2018 that offers “drone as first responder” technology not based on line-of-sight controls.
Flying at 200 feet at a programmed speed of 30 miles an hour, the drone provides real-time visual information to police and fire personnel — even before they arrive on an emergency scene anywhere within a three-mile radius of the Municipal Building.
Once the mission is complete, the drone returns to its box and automatically begins to recharge for missions that can last 30 to 40 minutes on battery power.
Did the technology work as advertised?
“Yes,” Porch said after the meeting.
The price tag includes equipment and software costs, as well as an extended warranty that covers batteries and other incidentals, he said.
The city’s former police chief, Porch believes in technology as a “force multiplier” when it comes to first responders, employing ShotSpotter gunfire detection systems and Flock license-plate reader cameras during his tenure in charge of the MPD.
The city’s safety forces have used traditional drone technology since the fall of 2017 and has eight members of the MPD as licensed pilots across all three shifts. Porch presented a report Tuesday night on all aspects of drone work prepared by Lt. Dan Rhinehart.
But 2025 was the first year with the DFR technology as Mansfield became one of the first cities in Ohio to deploy it.
“The DFR program represents a major advancement in public safety technology for Mansfield and sets a new standard for integrated emergency response throughout the region,” Rhinehart said.
According to Rhinehart’s report, the autonomous drone had 424 flights in 2025 and flew a total of 930.6 miles.
“I think ultimately the biggest the success story is that drone getting to the scene and providing overwatch and crucial information,” Porch said. “There have been many benefits from the (DFR) technology.”
He told council the city will continue to “tweak” the system.
“We want to improve the quality of the drone (response time), especially as it relates to fire scenes … getting it there before the fire trucks get there,” he said.
He said dispatchers taking 911 calls enter notes into the computer and then must make rapid decisions on whether the call meets the parameters of a DFR response.
“By the time they’re toning out stations, the trucks are on the way. So sometimes the trucks are ‘leaping’ the drone. We want to make sure to try to hurry that process to get that drone there so then we can then call off (fire) trucks that we don’t need there,” Porch said.
The drone carries two cameras — one optical, one thermal — and its service radius will provide coverage for most of the city.
It is built with simplicity in mind, according to Divyaditya Shrivastava, founder and CEO of Paladin.
“A live feed is all it is doing,” he said in an article published in 2021 in GovTech.com.
“It makes a world of difference. Without an overhead view there is only so much information you can give a first responder.”
A Paladin drone has three basic commands: take off, stop/pause and return to home base.
Navigation is done via trained first responder professionals working for the particular public agency, with drones being directed by digital maps and by dropping pins onto those maps.
Here are some of the other 2025 DFR highlights Rhinehart noted in his report:
— Dispatchers sent the drone to a call and captured footage of a female pepper spraying another female in the face who had “approached her in an aggressive manner.”
— The drone was dispatched to a residence where officers were checking for a felonious assault suspect. The drone captured the beginning and end of a foot pursuit in which the suspect taken into custody without incident.
— The drone was sent as overwatch on an arrest warrant check. “The drone footage captured an officer forced to dispatch a large pitbull dog after attempts to retreat due to the dog’s aggressive behavior.”
— The drone was dispatched for a breaking-and-entering in progress. Officers located subjects running and the drone captured the arrest.
