Case Study: Renton Police Department achieves scalable drone operations and instant livestreaming with Axon Air (Axon)

How to Successfully Scale A Drone Program With Axon

Renton Police Department had rapidly expanded its drone program since 2015 but found its legacy platform unsustainable: crash‑scene processing that once took 2.5–8 hours had been reduced to about 90 minutes with drone photogrammetry, yet administrative tasks (single flight logs took 30+ minutes) and limited livestreaming (YouTube latency, HDMI‑only options) were creating scaling bottlenecks. To address these issues the department evaluated and selected Axon’s Axon Air platform.

Axon implemented Axon Air to automate flight logs, maintenance records and NOTAM filings, provide livestreaming from virtually any enterprise drone, send mission notifications, and standardize the piloting UI across the fleet while integrating with Axon Evidence. The result: Renton PD eliminated much of the manual admin burden, enabled real‑time situational awareness from any drone, simplified pilot training, and preserved the program’s rapid response benefits—quantifiably cutting average crash‑scene clearance to about 90 minutes (from up to eight hours) and removing 30‑minute manual flight‑log tasks.

Renton Police Department

Chad Karlewicz

Commander of the Special Operations Division