Castle Rock police are exploring a first responder alternative that enforces the law from the skies.

Castle Rock Police Department Chief Jack Cauley on Thursday introduced the town’s newest form of enforcement and protection: drones as first responders.

Drones, Cauley said, are a form of enforcement that “help us keep our community safe.”

“People, innovation and community, all three together are important,” the police chief said at a press conference. “The innovation piece of it is something that we will continue to strive for and continue to develop and move forward, and we know that this technology is going to be a game changer for us.”

Drone flights can last up to 20 minutes. The biggest difference with first responder drones is they can be autonomously operated and sent to areas on command, without having to manually fly it.

Drone law enforcement technology uses include confirming emergency calls, fires, crashes, stolen vehicles, swatting calls, school threats, retail crime, domestic violence incidents, assaults, finding endangered persons and special event monitoring.

Castle Rock officers, who don’t require extensive training to operate drones, use the technology according to the reports they receive.

For example, Cauley showed on Thursday, a woman accidentally called 911 and didn’t respond to responding dispatch calls. A drone went to her area at a shopping center, where she was confirmed to be OK, according to Cauley.

“Now we can actually do this from our strategic response center, our real time crime center, and have that drone there in a very short time,” Cauley said.

The police chief said the three-year contract for its first responder drone program costs $200,000 a year.

“The whole idea of the drones as first responders,” Cauley said, “is to be the eyes for the police officers and make sure that they we can see what’s going on around them and that we can keep them safe.”

Castle Rock police can fly the drone at a maximum 400 feet off the ground. This, Cauley said, is the highest any first responder drone program can go out of those that exist in Colorado.

Police departments in Denver, Commerce City and Lakewood use first responder drones, a method first introduced over the summer.

“We are implementing this technology across the country,” Flock Safety Director of Drone as First Responder Strategy Keith Kauffman said on Thursday.

“We’re marrying it up with sensor systems like license plate readers and audible technology, pan, tilt, zoom cameras, any of the detection systems that we can now provide a response to,” he said.

Many metro Denver area departments use Flock camera license plate readers.

During the introduction, Castle Rock police Commander Todd Brown flew a drone over to Douglas County High School, showing the skyline and the historic Castle Rock rock.

Anyone can access live drone footage and previous flights of Castle Rock Police Department drone activity through the department’s transparency portal online. Every Flock drone flight is recorded.