Philly Suburbs' Police Drones: Upper Darby and Bensalem Cite Results While Lower Merion Requests $375,000

In June, Upper Darby police were chasing a car thief from Maryland and called off the pursuit. They kept watching him anyway, from 400 feet up. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, a police drone tracked the man after the ground chase ended. David Graham was arrested with a stolen Nissan Maxima and charged with receiving stolen property and fleeing police. The case is still pending.

The Inquirer's Oct. 20 story uses that arrest to open a wider look at suburban Philadelphia departments that use drones as "first responders." These are aircraft sent to a call before officers arrive, or alongside them. The paper's headline says the technology is getting "cheaper and easier to use." The story gives only one dollar figure, and it doesn't fit that description neatly.

Three departments, three stages

The departments in the story are at different points with the technology.

Upper Darby runs the most established program. Superintendent Tim Bernhardt told the Inquirer that drones are a de-escalation tool, because officers can keep track of a suspect without a high-speed chase. In July he made the same argument to 6abc: "It's absolutely changed the game for us." That station described two June arrests. On June 25, a drone tracked a 16-year-old robbery suspect at 69th Street. On June 30, a drone followed a reported stolen 2016 Nissan Maxima.

Bensalem began flying drones in 2024. William McVey, the township's Director of Public Safety, gave the Inquirer two numbers: retail theft down 29% since the drones started, and a closure rate on retail cases that has jumped to 75%.

Lower Merion hasn't started a program yet. In September its police department asked the township for $375,000 for a "first responder" drone program. The drone would launch automatically for certain 911 calls, such as burglaries and missing-person reports.

Whose hardware?

The Inquirer story doesn't name a drone manufacturer. DroneXL filled in part of that gap the same day, citing the vendor's own material. Skydio's case study shows that Upper Darby's aircraft is a Skydio X10 that launches from a Skydio dock on the roof of police headquarters.

Skydio's page on the program treats the drone as one part of a larger setup. Upper Darby launched a crime intelligence center and a Drone as First Responder program at the same time, with the X10 and dock sending live video to officers on their way to a call. Skydio's examples are tracking a robbery suspect who changed clothes, finding a stolen vehicle so unmarked cars could move in, and watching a street takeover over a holiday weekend. Those are the vendor's descriptions in a marketing video, not independent evaluations.

DroneXL also cited 6abc's July reporting: Upper Darby has eight drones and more than 20 fixed cameras at intersections. Police credited that combination with 15 arrests at a July 4 street takeover. So the department's results come from a network of drones, fixed cameras and a staffed intelligence center, not from one aircraft.

Bensalem's hardware is less clear. When DroneXL covered that program in May 2024, the aircraft 6abc filmed was a DJI enterprise drone. DroneXL also says a screen in the Inquirer's photo of Bensalem's command center reads "SkydioX10," and that Bensalem has not said publicly what it replaced or when.

What the numbers show, and what they don't

Bensalem's figures are the most concrete performance claims in the story. They still need context that the reporting doesn't give:

Baseline. The Inquirer says the closure rate on retail cases "jumped" to 75%, but the earlier rate isn't given. Without it, readers can't tell whether this is a large gain or a small one.
Attribution. A 29% drop in retail theft since 2024 is a before-and-after comparison. The sources don't say whether Bensalem accounted for other factors, such as staffing, retailer security changes or regional trends, or whether the comparison is drones versus no drones.
Which cases. The Inquirer ties the 75% to retail cases. It does not say whether that covers only cases where a drone flew, or all retail cases in the township.

Upper Darby's evidence comes as individual cases: the Maxima, the 69th Street robbery and the July 4 takeover. These are real arrests, and the de-escalation argument has some substance, since ending a vehicle chase while still watching the car removes a known source of crashes. But a list of successes is not a rate. Neither the Inquirer nor 6abc reports how many drone flights Upper Darby has launched or how many led nowhere.

The cost question

The headline says drones are becoming cheaper. The only price in the Inquirer story is Lower Merion's request. DroneXL describes it as $375,000 over five years for a program built around a single docked drone. That works out to about $75,000 a year, before counting staff time to monitor the feed and respond.

DroneXL adds a vendor price point the Inquirer lacks: Skydio's February 2025 price list for a cooperative contract puts the X10 Dock Bundle, one dock plus one thermal-equipped X10, at $50,547 list, with dock maintenance at $9,900 a year. DroneXL notes the only support for "cheaper" in the story is one paraphrased sentence from a police-tactics scholar.

That doesn't contradict the Inquirer's framing. Hardware can get cheaper while a full first-responder program, with its dock, software and multi-year contract, stays expensive. But "cheaper" means little without something to compare against, and none of the reporting gives Upper Darby's or Bensalem's actual costs. Upper Darby runs eight drones, at least one docked X10, 20-plus intersection cameras and an intelligence center. The sources don't give what the department paid for any of it.

That gap matters most to Lower Merion. Its residents are being asked to fund a program, and the nearest examples have published results but not their own costs.

Why It Matters

Drone-as-first-responder programs are moving from large city departments to suburban townships, and these three show how it tends to happen. One department installs docked hardware and pairs it with fixed cameras and a central monitoring room. It reports a few arrests that make the case well. Neighboring departments then request funding based on that example. Lower Merion's $375,000 request is where this becomes a budget decision, and it raises the usual questions: how often the drone will fly, what it will cost per call, and what results would justify renewing after five years.

The vendor question matters too. Upper Darby flies a Skydio X10, which DroneXL calls an American drone, and Bensalem's original aircraft was a DJI enterprise model. As more townships buy docked, auto-launching systems tied to 911 dispatch, they will have to weigh hardware choice, recurring cost and how they measure results. The Inquirer story shows that departments are buying in. It leaves out most of the cost and performance data that taxpayers would need to judge whether the purchases are worth it.