SFPD paid Flock Safety $1.2 million for a drone response system

San Francisco police paid Flock Safety $1,228,000 for a drone-as-first-responder package, according to city payment records released through MuckRock. The purchase does not appear in San Francisco's surveillance technology inventory.

The invoice lists four items: Flock Aerodome DFR M350 plus dock, Flock Aerodome DFR radar, an ATLAS 350 drone dock, and Flock911. It is one of three Flock invoices in the release, which together total $3,963,000. The other two cover license plate readers and the recurring subscription that goes with them.

Each line item does a specific job, and together they describe a complete automated installation rather than a drone an officer carries in a patrol car. The ATLAS 350 matches the naming of the Hextronics Atlas, a rooftop enclosure that stores eight batteries and swaps them robotically so the aircraft can keep flying without anyone climbing to the roof. The radar provides airspace awareness, which is the hardware that lets an agency fly beyond visual line of sight without a spotter on the ground. Flock911 ingests live 911 call audio and sends a drone to the caller's coordinates before a dispatcher has finished entering the call. Flock's own product materials describe license plate reader hits as another launch trigger, which matters in a city that already operates roughly 400 Flock cameras through the same real-time crime center.

Reading the dates

The invoice carries a date of March 22, 2024, which is seven months before Flock acquired Aerodome in October 2024. The purchase order numbers in the release also do not ascend with their dates. Both suggest the date column reflects when the city encumbered the money rather than when Flock billed for the equipment. We are working to confirm that with the Controller's Office and would not treat the March 2024 date as the transaction date in the meantime.

About the aircraft

The invoice does not name a manufacturer. It says M350. At the time of the purchase, Flock's DFR systems were built on the DJI Matrice 350 RTK, and a Texas police department running the same product described its DFR aircraft to DroneLife in July 2025 as a DJI Matrice 350. Flock did not announce Alpha, its first American-built NDAA-compliant drone, until October 2025. On that basis the aircraft appears to be a DJI Matrice 350 RTK, though we have not confirmed it and are seeking documentation that identifies the airframe directly.

If it is, the supply chain is worth understanding. DJI was added to the FCC's Covered List on December 23, 2025, after no federal agency completed the security review that the FY25 NDAA required. That restricts new imports and equipment approvals. Aircraft already in the country remain legal to fly. Nobody has alleged a violation here, and we are not alleging one. The observation is narrower: a company that has marketed American-made drones since late 2024 appears to have sold San Francisco a Chinese-manufactured airframe, and the city's records do not make that visible on their face.

Where Prop E fits

San Francisco voters passed Proposition E in March 2024. Among other changes, it amended Administrative Code Chapter 19B to let the police department, and only the police department, acquire and pilot a new surveillance technology for up to a year before the Board of Supervisors approves a use policy. That provision is the reason SFPD can buy equipment like this without a prior vote.

The relevant question is what happened after the purchase. COIT's Biannual Surveillance Technology Inventory Report published March 2, 2026 lists drones under Public Works, the Department of Technology, the Fire Department, the Port, the Public Utilities Commission, and Recreation and Park. The police department does not appear under that category. The single SFPD technology listed in the Prop E pilot section is Video Analytics with AI. This is against a program that grew from six aircraft to 98 and logged more than 1,400 flights between May 2024 and March 2026, according to SFPD's annual report and Chronicle reporting.

We have not located a surveillance technology policy or pilot filing covering Flock's DFR system. That is a statement about what we have found so far and nothing more. A filing may exist in a docket, an amendment, or a report we have not reached yet, and the inventory is a snapshot that lags the record it describes. We are continuing to work through COIT agendas, Board of Supervisors files, and SFPD's own 19B page, and we will update this entry as that research develops.

Source: City and County of San Francisco payment records, released via MuckRock.