Ohio Police Warn Drone Bill Could Ground Equipment, Undermine Response Capabilities

COLUMBUS, OH—A bill aimed at privacy protections that sailed through Ohio’s House of Representatives last year is now drawing fierce pushback in the Senate, especially from the first responders it pertains to.

Sponsored by Rep. Bernard Willis of Clark County, House Bill 251 aims to establish the first statewide legal framework for how and when law enforcement agencies can use unmanned aerial vehicles, often called drones. Departments currently operate under local policies or none at all, so the core provisions initially proposed drew little resistance: requiring police to obtain a warrant before using a drone to observe or enter a property, banning armed drones and logging all drone surveillance flights as public records.

The draft approved by the House, however, has sparked concerns since it differs substantively from the one introduced. A new exception was added to permit warrantless drone use “to operate in navigable airspace, in a physically nonintrusive manner, in order to observe what is otherwise visible to the naked eye.”

While Willis’s office described the amendment as a routine clarification of existing aviation standards, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sees it quite differently. The organization started opposing the bill over concerns that the amendment has now effectively swallowed the very protections the bill initially promised.

“Almost everything we do outside of our homes is visible to the naked eye,” Legislative Director Gary Daniels told the committee last week, referring to the caveat as “dream language for those intent on surveilling us.”

Mike Greenberg, an attorney for a national civil-liberties law firm called the Institute for Justice, testified in favor of HB 251 and praised it as a property rights initiative, but even he flagged the implications of changing the bill to let police drones operate in any navigable airspace.

“Our worry is that a court could interpret that to bless warrantless surveillance of any backyard so long as the drone stays hovering in the air over the backyard, so long as it doesn’t touch, say, a tree or a fence,” Greenberg said. “Our understanding is that it is meant to cover situations where a law enforcement drone is on a non-investigatory mission and incidentally captures suspicious information. In our view, clarifying that this exception applies only when the drone is not intending to surveil a particular private property would go a long way.”

The ACLU also noted that making all drone surveillance footage a public record would undermine the bill’s primary goal, since anyone who wishes to file a request would then have access to the recordings, flight data and other information.

The bill has been further modified in the Senate Armed Services, Veterans Affairs and Public Safety Committee, where it has had three hearings since March and remains under consideration. The most notable of those revisions bars Ohio’s public entities from purchasing, operating or using state funds on UAVs made by manufacturers from foreign adversary nations.

This provision has generated even more opposition since it would effectively ground most of the Chinese-made equipment Ohio’s police and fire departments currently rely on. In practice, it would mean no more DJI, which dominates the United States public safety drone market.

Committee Chair Terry Johnson of McDermott defended this update as it mirrors Senate Bill 180, a separate bill he sponsored to bar public entities from purchasing drones made by foreign adversaries. The response from Ohio’s first responder community, though, was near-unanimous opposition.

Sgt. Joshua Pickens of the Bellevue Police Department, who also serves as the Vice President of the Law Enforcement Drone Association’s Ohio Chapter, told the committee that American alternatives cost three to five times more than the widely used equipment from China. He added that fleet replacement for a single county could run $50,000 to $250,000 or more, with no funding program included in the bill. Lake County, he noted, was quoted $775,000 just for the first year of transition.

Patrolman Erik Joyce of the Fairview Park Police Department, an eight-year commercial drone operator, brought attention to Florida as a cautionary tale. When they implemented a similar ban in 2023, it grounded an estimated $200 million in publicly-owned equipment and provided only $25 million in replacement grants. The security analysis commissioned to justify the policy was never publicly released.

Joyce also pointed out that the bill’s exemption process — requiring written approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission or the Department of Homeland Security before buying or operating a restricted drone — has no actual mechanism behind it since none of those agencies has a process for issuing such approvals to local law enforcement.

Dallas Terrell, President of the Wayne County Fire Chiefs Association, called the foreign drone provision “a severe and immediate threat to public safety capabilities.” He explained that several fire departments in his region built their drone programs through grants and community fundraising rather than tax budgets.

“Many agencies simply do not possess the financial ability to replace entire drone fleets on short notice,” Terrell wrote. “Grounding these systems without replacement funding would immediately reduce operational readiness and remove critical life-saving tools from the hands of first responders across Ohio.”

Opponents largely acknowledged the national security concerns behind the restriction, with many sharing that they were already planning gradual transitions to domestic drones. Their objection was largely to the immediacy with which HB 251 would disrupt successful systems and the absence of any financial support to properly realize that shift.

Wooster Township Fire Department Captain and drone pilot Nate Yoder summed it up: “To suddenly prohibit the operation of these systems would not only waste significant grants and donated funds, but it would also immediately reduce the emergency response capabilities that our community has come to rely on.”

The debate in Columbus is part of a broader shift unfolding across Ohio.

Cleveland’s police department only launched its American-made Skydio X10 drones last year, after years of delays tied to disputes over surveillance restrictions and federal oversight. Developed through a lengthy public process, the city’s policy bans drone use at protests without probable cause and requires information about each drone flight to be posted publicly within 48 hours.

HB 251 would set comparable ground rules for every law enforcement agency in the state, but three rounds of Senate hearings have made clear that consensus is still a long way off.

In this recurring feature, cleveland.com offers readers an inside look at the debates, proposals and personalities that shape legislation in Ohio’s Statehouse committees. Some items may reflect hearings from recent months, as we review past sessions to surface noteworthy discussions and proposals.

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