Under His Eye
Drone Surveillance in Portland, OR
← Police Accountability DashboardThe Portland Police Bureau introduced drone surveillance with legal guardrails — warrants, consent, defined exceptions. The data shows those limits have been normalized away. This is the "skies" component of "Under His Eye: Surveillance in Our Streets and Skies," a Just Tech Fellowship project.
Key Findings
Warrantless Flights
78.2%
of operational flights are warrantlessOf 1,345 non-training flights: 1,052 classified Exigent (warrantless/no consent), 143 with a Search Warrant, 39 with Signed Consent.
Growth, 2023–2025
7.5×
increase in total flights in two years134 total flights in 2023. 1,008 in 2025. Warrantless flights grew from 56 to 597 in the same period — faster than total flight growth.
Annual Drone Deployments, 2023–2026
⚠️ Dark bars show all PPB drone deployments; lighter bars show Exigent (warrantless, no consent) flights drawn from the baseline up. The dark portion above is non-warrantless. *2026 is partial (January–May).
Geographic Concentration: Hazelwood
Hazelwood — a predominantly Black and immigrant neighborhood in east Portland — accounts for 21% of all warrantless drone flights across the city.
60×
growth in warrantless flights over Hazelwood in two yearswarrantless flights per year over Hazelwood
Powellhurst-Gilbert and Centennial — adjacent neighborhoods with similar demographics — also appear disproportionately in the traffic stop data. The geography of surveillance maps onto the geography of race.
Top Warrantless Triggers
27.4% of warrantless flights — 288 of 1,052 — were dispatched for calls with no confirmed crime. "Suspicious" alone, the most discretionary category on the books, is the single largest trigger.
- Suspicious (no crime, no victim) 151 flights
- Other soft calls (Unwanted Person, Area Check, Person Contact) ~94 flights
- Traffic stop 70 flights
- Welfare check / Behavioral health 43 flights
- All other call types ~694 flights
⚠️ "Other soft calls" count is derived: 288 total soft/subjective − 151 Suspicious − 43 Welfare/BH. Counts for individual subcategories (Unwanted Person, Area Check, Person Contact) are not separately published in this dataset.
Drones on Traffic Stops
70
warrantless flights triggered by traffic stopsConcentrated in Hazelwood, Powellhurst-Gilbert, and Centennial. Traffic stops are among the most racially disparate police encounters in the U.S. These 70 deployments added aerial surveillance — without a warrant, without consent — to that existing disparity.
Surveillance of People in Crisis
43
warrantless flights to welfare checks and behavioral health callsPeople experiencing a mental health crisis — who have not committed any crime — surveilled from the air without a warrant and without their consent. No published threshold exists requiring PPB to justify drone deployment for a wellness call.
2025: The New Baseline
49/mo
average warrantless flights per month throughout 2025Every month of 2025 saw between 38 and 60 warrantless drone flights — never below 38. 597 total for the year. This is not a program responding to exceptional circumstances. It is warrantless aerial surveillance as operational routine.
💬 No public review mechanism or warrant rate benchmark exists in Portland's current UAS policy framework.
Relevant Organizations
Legal & Policy
- ACLU of Oregon Surveillance and privacy rights advocacy in Oregon
- EFF — Drone Surveillance Electronic Frontier Foundation: policy analysis and advocacy on police drone use
Community
- Portland Copwatch Community-based police accountability organization
- Don't Shoot Portland Community organization focused on police accountability and gun violence reduction
- Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for justice and police reform, rooted in north and northeast Portland
Related Data
Data & Methodology
Primary Source
Definitions
- Exigent — PPB's self-reported classification for flights without a search warrant or signed consent, under an urgency exception. This is the broadest and most discretionary legal basis.
- Operational — excludes flights labeled UAS Training (442 of 1,787 total).
- Soft/subjective categories — call types with no confirmed criminal act: Suspicious, Unwanted Person, Area/Premise Check, Person Contact, Welfare Check, Behavioral Health.
Limitations
- 13.9% of neighborhood data is missing. GPS coordinates are 96.2% complete.
- Final Call Category reflects case-close categorization and may differ from initial dispatch reason.
- Exigent classification is self-reported by PPB; no independent review mechanism exists in this dataset.
- Hazelwood 2024 figure not separately published; only 2023 (2 flights) and 2025 (121 flights) are confirmed from the findings.
- 2026 data is partial (January–May).