On April 16, the New Orleans City Council voted to approve a $250,000 expansion of the NOPD’s drone program, which passed in a 4-3 vote. Councilmembers Eugene Green, Jason Hughes, Freddie King III, and JP Morrell voted in favor, while councilmembers Lesli Harris, Aimee McCarron, and Matthew Willard voted in opposition. The funding will specifically expand the NOPD’s existing drone program to include a remotely-operated, rapid-response French Quarter drone. During the meeting, Councilmember King limited the time for public comment to 10 minutes, allowing six people to speak. Of the six speakers, three supported the expansion. However, of 13 speaker cards uploaded to the New Orleans City Council website, only one was in favor of the expansion. The comment cards were also not uploaded in full, as all but one of the names of people who spoke before the Council are not among the cards online. The Council also published a series of emails they received regarding the measure—all of which opposed the expansion in funding.
Ten years ago, the journal Surveillance & Society published an article, “New ‘Foucauldian Boomerangs’: Drones and Urban Surveillance,” placing the then-nascent deployment of drones by police forces into the “imperial boomerang” framework. “Imperial boomerang” is a theory originally put forth in 1950 by Martiniquan poet and politician Aimé Césaire, who posited that fascism grew out of European nations’ brutal practices of colonialism. In short, what the empire practices upon its victims abroad, it will eventually use to oppress the population in the homeland.
Incidentally, the manufacturer for the Quarter’s drone is none other than Skydio, a California-based company that sells drones to the Israeli army to help carry out its genocide in Gaza. The company touts its drones as “dual-use,” marketing to military and non-military customers. Members of Eye On Surveillance, a local watchdog group, have highlighted the drone’s potential for misuse, including the potential for ICE to use the footage.
The expansion of police surveillance technology relies on a series of questionable assumptions to justify its use and expense. It assumes that the cost is the best way to spend public dollars to improve public safety, that police will not abuse the technology and surveil recreationally, that police departments will not violate boundaries around the use of facial recognition technology (in fact, the NOPD has repeatedly used live facial recognition technology despite a City ordinance limiting police use of facial recognition, resulting in what the ACLU calls “nightmarish levels of surveillance”), and that expanding powers of police control, rather than firm limits and oversight, are what will enable communities to flourish.
The following is a selection of the comments submitted before the council, as well as via email. They have been edited for clarity and length.
I work and spend a lot of time in the French Quarter. I do not believe that we need drone surveillance in the French Quarter. The French Quarter is already highly surveilled.1Cameron P.
I was at the last meeting, and I know that the French Quarter Management District is reporting that there was no opposition, which isn’t true. I was there. I’m vehemently opposed to this. I live on the third floor. Part of what drew me to living above street level was that people cannot look in my windows whenever they want. Drones are incredibly noisy. I personally find the sound of them actively pretty traumatizing. I was a high school student in Manhattan on September 11th. I watched the World Trade Center fall, I lived through the militarization of Manhattan afterwards. It didn’t accomplish anything except traumatizing people. I agree, foot patrol could be good. I am friends with my neighbors, and that makes me feel extremely safe. I just want to say that during business hours, there’s so many people in the Quarter who can’t show up to this, but every single neighbor I’ve spoken to is totally against this. They [drones] are war weapons and they are racist technology.2Jess P.
This whole process feels very undemocratic to me. The fact that you’re limiting the comments for 10 minutes is a part of the lack of democratic transparency and process here that we’ve been advocating for on multiple levels of City governance. As folks have mentioned, the French Quarter is highly surveilled as is. We don’t need another drone under the pretense of cost savings to be able to do what we should be [doing instead]: providing for residents through proactive deterrence of crime, which is more education, more investments in food and housing. The fact that… the zero threshold on how low these drones can go shows that they only go so high, but they can go as low as they want. The French Quarter has narrow corridors, which means that you can’t see everything. There are trees or other ways in which you can’t see them, so those [drones] will be going down, invading people’s public privacy, recording the entire time, and it’s just a total breach of our privacy. I bike through the Quarter a lot. I’m already uncomfortable going through there. I don’t want to see more technology going to [tech] CEOs for them to be able to use this technology and pocket the money and be able to basically increase the surveillance of the city is for me disgusting, but the fact that we’ve restricted this to only 10 minutes to be able to have public comment is also a part of just a huge, huge abuse of power.3Chris L.
I grew up in NOLA and just moved back but might leave cuz of stuff like this.4Somi M., MD (written on speaker card)
The Quarter already has one hundred cameras operated by the NOPD. If there is a blind spot, add a few more cameras. What will that 740K program for one single extra camera bring us? This represents the salary of 10 NOPD officers, or 15 EMTs. Hiring more respondents is the real force multiplier. Think about it: the drone needs to fly to the location. Looking at the live feed of a camera is instant. What are we solving for here? Adding one more flying camera to the NOPD toolbox is not gonna make a difference, except as an expensive line on the City budget. Is our priority to fall for fads and gizmos?5Antoine C. (via email)
Police drones are dangerous surveillance tech that are known for their use in human rights violations in war and their military grade invasive features such as thermal sensors and live high-definition feeds. Drones have already been documented being used to enact violence on immigrants and surveil protestors. Furthermore, police drones and dangerous surveillance tech are a terrible investment for a city that is already amidst a budget deficit. I don’t want New Orleans to be locked into an expansive program that will divert resources and attention from real community safety solutions. According to the 2025 Police Violence report, “Police deployed drones or robots against at least 37 people who they subsequently killed in 2025″—creating a dangerous association between drone deployment and killings on behalf of the state.6Camila S. (excerpted from Eye On Surveillance petition via email)
illustration by Sadie Wiese
