JCF trains drone pilots in MoBay to boost crime-fighting
Published:Tuesday | January 27, 2026 | 12:10 AMAshley Anguin/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) recently rolled out a three-day drone pilot training programme in Montego Bay, St James, to expand surveillance operations and boost its crime-fighting capacity across the island.
The programme was done in collaboration with Dervon McKellop, coach of the national drone soccer team and the director of the Drones in Schools programme. It featured 16 JCF officers from various operational units.
Senior Superintendent of Police Eron Samuels, the police commander for St James, said it will give the police a bird’s-eye view in conducting surveillance and will be an effective tool in both deterrence and solving crime.
“It’s not something that we’re going to hide. We’re going to have the drones visible up and around and watching over, or giving overwatch, whilst the police officers move around,” said Samuels.
The training, which took place at the Cornwall College Chapel between January 6 and 8, was well received by the officers, who got a comprehensive insight into how the use of drone technology can enhance their ability to manage operations and boost monitoring during routine policing.
According to Samuels, part of the plan going forward is to train as many police officers as possible to be drone pilots, so that divisions like St James can have enough local pilots capable of operating drones for policing tasks.
“We are going to be utilising some drone technology to multiply the effect of the police within the [Montego Bay] township. We’ll be using it in traffic-enforcement activities, traffic-management activities, and it will also be used as an extra patrol within the space,” he said.
The training covered areas such as drone safety, responsible operations, airspace awareness, regulatory compliance, re-flight planning, risk assessment, hands-on flight operations, and mission execution.
McKellop said the initiative aims to enhance safety, extend night-time activities, and leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies to enhance police patrol.
“It will help people to feel a sense of safety. One of the ways to do this is to use drones as a force multiplier to be able to patrol areas. Even though you might have 100 police on the ground, they just can’t patrol everywhere, because they just don’t have the capabilities and can’t be everywhere,” said McKellop.
“With a drone as an eye in the sky, we’re actually utilising artificial intelligence and other small technologies to recognise and intercept things that the police wouldn’t normally see on the ground unless they had a good vantage point,” added McKellop.
Both Samuels and McKellop believe the training programme was quite effective, especially with traffic management.
“It greatly helped to ease the flow of traffic that morning, and it caught a lot of the offenders who were trying to elude the police. It helped to keep people in line, rather than creating extra lines, and the traffic flowed a whole lot easier,” explained Samuels.
On the morning in question, between the hours of 7:30 and 9:00, the JCF issued more than 20 tickets for traffic infractions, seized five motor vehicles and one motorbike, and arrested one person.
“The team did a field operation [on] one of the mornings, and the results from that was re-zoning. Overall, the technology is really boosting the overall ability for the police to do more with less,” said McKellop.