The policy is the city’s first comprehensive set of guidelines for police drone operations. Voters approved drone use in active criminal investigations and pursuits in 2024. The commission’s vote establishes rules for where drones can fly, how footage is retained and who may receive it, but the policy must still be reviewed by the police union and sent to the Board of Supervisors for approval.

The rules permit drones only for “legitimate law enforcement purposes” and prohibit general surveillance. They also bar monitoring people solely because of their race, gender, religion or sexual orientation, and prohibit using drones strictly to monitor protests or other constitutionally protected activities.

Operators may not record inside a residence or a covered yard that cannot be seen from ground level without a warrant. Drone footage may generally be retained for 30 days. If a captain or higher-ranking officer approves retention for an open criminal investigation, it may be kept for up to two years. A captain must approve officers’ access to recordings, and the department’s legal office must approve sharing footage with other law enforcement agencies.

The policy directs drone operations to account for civil rights and reasonable expectations of privacy, and to avoid recording or transmitting images of places where people expect privacy. It allows drones to be sent to locations where officers are not physically present.

Civil liberties groups and San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju contend that the restrictions leave too much discretion to officers. Raju warned that broad justifications such as crowd control, traffic monitoring or officer safety could be used to deploy drones near protests, even when there is no specific incident requiring aerial support. That could allow police to record participants or track who attends and leaves an event, he argued in a letter to the commission.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the public defender’s office and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have also raised concerns about how footage is collected, stored, shared and potentially connected with other police technologies. The EFF pointed to policies used by other agencies that require operators to switch off recording while traveling to an incident; San Francisco’s rules do not include that requirement.

Commissioner Kevin Benedicto cast the lone dissenting vote among the six members, saying the amended policy did not adequately address concerns raised by community organizations and the public. Commission President C. Don Clay defended the process, saying the proposal had been available for public feedback for months and describing the rules as an initial framework that the commission could amend if needed.

The Police Department said it considered feedback from civil liberties groups and residents and revised the policy to ban mass surveillance, limit monitoring of constitutionally protected activities and require warrants for recording inside homes. The debate comes amid growing scrutiny of police surveillance technology and questions about how drone use is monitored and disclosed.