Local & Community
Palm Desert Approves Regional Sheriff’s Information Center, Puts Drone Program On Hold
The Palm Desert City Council voted 4-1 Thursday to move forward with a new real-time information center for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. A decision on a regional police drone program will have to wait, however.
The center would be built inside the sheriff’s new dispatch facility at the Palm Desert Sheriff’s Station. According to a city staff report, it would include a large video wall and workstations where sheriff’s personnel could view live video, incident information, and maps in one place, helping coordinate deputies as they respond to calls.
The center would cost around $1.2 million, split equally among Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, and Indian Wells. Palm Desert’s share is about $400,000. The city will pay the full cost up front, and the other two cities will pay back their shares. Rancho Mirage and Indian Wells have already approved joining the project.
Council members voted unanimously to hold off on the second piece, a Drone as First Responder program. Under the program, deputies would remotely launch drones from docking stations to calls for service and emergencies, sending live aerial video back to the center. The city and the sheriff’s department plan to hold community meetings, both online and in person, before the council takes the program up again in January.
The cities chose Axon Enterprise for the drone program out of four companies that applied. The program would cost around $3.85 million over five years, though staff asked for permission to sign a contract of up to $4.5 million. The three cities haven’t decided yet how they would split the drone costs.
Under sheriff’s department policy, deputies can’t use the drones for random surveillance, harassment, or targeting people unfairly, and the drones can’t be armed. The city also plans to launch an online portal showing when and where the drones fly and what kinds of calls they respond to.
By: Harrison Bluto
November 13, 2026
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