- Published:
- Friday 6 March 2026 at 2:00 pm
| Members of the RPAS Unit, from left: Sgt Trav Draper, Melody Lau, Sen Sgt Al Nisbet and Sen Const Brad Hopwood. |
Police in Pakenham converge on a neighbourhood after receiving a report of a man fleeing from a Mercedes Benz stolen in an aggravated burglary.
As they near the area, the officers and the suspect spot one another.
The man starts jumping fences and running through the yards of residential properties, successfully shaking the police.
Nearby, Southern Metro Region Division 3’s (SD3) highly-experienced drone pilots Leading Senior Constable Daniel Green and Senior Constable Nick Woodson are flying a drone for overwatch at an unrelated search warrant.
As soon as they hear the live aggravated burglary job come over the radio, they’re on their way to the scene.
“We pulled up in this court bowl, put the drone up and straight away, within 20 seconds, we found the male hiding on a nearby roof,” Sen Const Woodson said.
“It was fantastic. We launched and within seconds we had already found him.”
The suspect was still at the last address police had spotted him but he was lying flat on the roof.
In full view of the drone’s camera.
| A person of interest lies prone on a rooftop, but can't escape the watchful eye of a Victoria Police drone. |
“He was completely oblivious to the drone,” Ldg Sen Const Green said.
“He thought he had done well to hide from line of sight, but he had absolutely no idea we were looking straight at him.”
The suspect then jumped back on to the ground, leapt over a fence to another property and hid behind a carport.
Sen Const Woodson directed units to the suspect’s location and, as they converged on him, he tried to run, only to be tackled to the ground and placed under arrest.
The suspect was wanted in relation to many other aggravated burglaries and other serious offending.
“Not only had the drone helped with catching a high-risk offender, but it also revealed a potential pattern of behaviour in his offending,” Sen Const Woodson said.
“This was a good piece of intel for us because, from here on in, any time a member runs this offender in our system and checks his dossier, they can see that he evades police by hiding on roofs.”
Thousands of flights
It was one in a long and rapidly-increasing list of successful jobs for Victoria Police’s drone pilots spread throughout the state.
Since Victoria Police started using drones in August 2019, those pilots have now racked up more than 15,000 drone jobs.
That milestone has been reached earlier than other police jurisdictions across Australia, despite Victoria Police being the last to begin using drones operationally.
Coordinated by the Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) Unit, which is part of the Air Wing, there are more than 140 pilots operating more than 130 drones in both regional and specialist areas.Senior Sergeant Alistair Nisbet, who leads the RPAS Unit, said the use of the drones had rocketed in the past couple of years.
“Originally, we were doing about 400 flights a year, and we thought that felt busy back then,” Sen Sgt Nisbet said.
“But now we’re doing about 400 every month, so 10 times the amount we used to do.”
Many of those can be chalked up to the SD3 drone pilots.
In one month alone, Ldg Sen Const Green and Sen Const Woodson flew 130 jobs, which works out to be an average of more than four drone jobs per day.
Expanding horizons
Sen Sgt Nisbet said the way Victoria Police uses drones has evolved over the few short years.
“Originally our bread-and-butter work was the more planned work like overwatch risk assessment and safety for the planning of search warrants,” he said.
“Festivals and planned protests were also common, but now we’re seeing a lot more unplanned uses, like the processing of crime scenes, missing persons, collision scenes and, of course, catching crooks.”
Sen Sgt Nisbet said that when police across the state started seeing footage of successful arrests made possible, and made safe, by the use of the drone, it led to an explosion in demand.
“We’ve now got some places that value the drone so highly that they won’t do a search warrant or knock on a crook’s door without having a drone up above,” he said.
“We’ve even started noticing that police are taking things slower and more safely when someone does a runner, because they know the drone is tracking the offender and they don’t need to put themselves at risk by jumping over fences and chasing them through backyards.
“They can just let the crook wear themselves out, while the drone unit calmly conveys their movements by radio, and then everyone can just walk up to them with the handcuffs and say, ‘Hey, are you finished now, mate?’”
Drones are also a force multiplier, saving time and resources.
Using a drone to easily track and catch fleeing offenders means fewer police risk time off work due to chase-related injuries, and detectives don’t need to spend valuable time down the track to find the offender.
Future uses
The sky is the limit when it comes to the impact drones can have on policing, especially with new drone and camera technology being released all the time.
Lidar sensor technology can detect disturbed earth and therefore help find burial sites in murder and missing persons cases, while tactical units are exploring the use of small drones to fly inside buildings for situational awareness in critical incidents.
One such use was in support of the Special Operation Group’s search for Desmond Freeman following the shooting killing of two police officers in Porepunkah last year.
The RPAS Unit used small drones in that manhunt to search buildings and cave systems in the area.
“We’re seeing some really creative use of drone technology,” Sen Sgt Nisbet said.
“Sergeant Arran Ferguson is one of our drone pilots who once was looking for an autistic, nonverbal child missing at Carrum Downs.
“The boy was hiding so Arran used the drone’s speakers to play the boy’s favourite song Hotel California and a recorded message for him.
“They played that and the boy came out, which was a brilliant result and yet another great example of how we can use the drones.”
To find out more about Victoria Police's Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) Unit visit Specialist roles and areas for police officers.
Editorial and photography Jesse Wray-McCann
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