Two high-altitude surveillance planes the state bought for more than $15 million to help secure the Mexican border are regularly circling over San Antonio, according to records and interviews, but details about exactly what they’re doing are scarce.

The Swiss-built Pilatus aircraft are each equipped with more than $1 million in high-definition cameras, capable of capturing images night and day, clear enough that they can show the color of someone’s shirt from two miles overhead. Pilots are guided by powerful mapping software that can superimpose addresses and parcel data over the live video, which can be streamed in real-time by Department of Public Safety officials on the ground.

Public flight records show that after the border, San Antonio is the urban area most heavily circled by the two planes, which collectively spent time on at least 52 days so far this year flying above San Antonio neighborhoods, many of them on the East Side and West Side.

The San Antonio Police Department initially denied knowledge of the planes or using them in any joint surveillance operations with the state and thus said it had no records of why the planes would be flying over San Antonio. But on Friday an SAPD spokesman said there had been a misunderstanding, and that SAPD has been working regularly with the aircraft. SAPD Lt. Jesse Salame said the planes have helped search for suspects such as in the case of the 2016 shooting of SAPD Detective Benjamin Marconi, and also assist the city’s Violent Crimes Task Force. But the department didn’t provide any numbers on how many cases have been assisted by the planes, the result of the assistance or any other details.

For its part, DPS officials say one of the planes helped recently in an unspecified federal human trafficking case in San Antonio. DPS said the planes can be used to support local law enforcement in manhunts, locating missing persons, disaster reconnaissance, search and rescue, tracking vehicles during pursuits and more but, again, the agency would not provide any details, such as the number and type of cases it has assisted, what agencies requested that assistance and results of the flyovers.

Since the purchase, the planes’ activity has received little public scrutiny. But the aircraft — which can reach an altitude of 30,000 feet — are in the air roughly half the days in the year, flying at night, during the day and on weekends, according to public flight records.

This map displays where one of the two Department of Public Safety-owned planes flew between Jan. 1 and Oct. 29 of this year. Due to time zone differences, dates are approximate.

Source: FlightRadar24.com

Credit: Annie Millerbernd

This map displays where one of the two Department of Public Safety-owned planes flew between Jan. 1 and Oct. 29 of this year. Due to time zone differences, dates are approximate.

Source: FlightRadar24.com

Credit: Annie Millerbernd

While most missions are still tied to monitoring the border, the planes’ work has shifted since 2014 to include more criminal patrols, DPS records show.

Since January, the older Pilatus — based in San Antonio — has made trips to the Rio Grande Valley, but spent time during at least 40 days flying or circling above the Alamo City, according to public flight records. While the trips varied in length, from less than an hour to more than three, pilots focused on the Southeast Side of the city. As of mid-September, 18 out of 96 San Antonio homicides occurred in City Council District 3 on the Southeast Side, followed by 17 homicides in District 2 on the East Side.

On Thursday, the plane took off just after 9 p.m. Over two hours, it made more than 20 circles over downtown San Antonio.

The newer plane, based in Edinburg, spends more time at the border, where it is stationed. Still, that plane circled San Antonio on more than a dozen days this year, also focusing on the Southeast Side of the city and some on the West Side, near South Zarzamora and U.S. 90. Residents there have complained of rising crime and petitioned the city for a police storefront substation, but there’s no indication that the planes were brought in specifically to address their concerns.

Privacy concerns

In response to a question about privacy protections, Salame said, “When the plane is out looking, it’s probably narrowly tailored to a specific subject or a specific area. … I don’t think they are out randomly looking in people’s backyards and their swimming pools.”

DPS said the planes’ cameras aren’t always rolling.

“The camera is not immediately turned on simply because the aircraft is airborne,” the agency said in a statement. “There is a difference between the camera simply being activated, the camera recoding and the video footage being retained.”

DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said later that the planes’ imaging systems, which have thermal capabilities, only tape “significant events” that could be used as evidence or for training purposes.

While the video is public under the Texas Public Information Act, DPS has not fulfilled a San Antonio Express-News request for records related to the Pilatus planes. The agency’s legal department agreed to let the Express-News view some of the records in person, but never set a date for a viewing and has not responded to repeated requests over the past several weeks.

Privacy experts said the public should know about use of the technology, which is often deployed by police forces across the country without a warrant, a court order or notice to the local community, said Chris Calabrese, vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

“If a local community doesn't know that surveillance is happening, can we really be comfortable with that?” he said.

DPS wouldn’t say directly whether it gets warrants for any of the flights, but said the planes fly mostly in high altitudes, which is considered a public place.

“There is no expectation of privacy when the individual is in plain view of others in a public place,” Vinger said. “Also, the quality of the image-capturing equipment is not typically sufficient enough to identify a person’s face.”

Use of the planes over San Antonio wouldn’t require sign-off from the police chief or the City Council, Salame said.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg had no comment, a spokesman said.

Drones versus planes

DPS bought the first plane in 2012 and the second in 2016 with money that lawmakers approved for securing the border. While the aircraft frequently fly along the Rio Grande Valley, public flight records show they also spend time circling over cities hundreds of miles away, including San Antonio, Houston and Austin.

“Border crime does not stop at the border,” Vinger said. “It is routine for DPS to assist other agencies to combat criminal activity. Our aircraft will go where there threats and crime are located.”

Still, experts said a drone could do much of that work at a fraction of the cost.

“Putting a plane in the air to try to identify the next burglar or the next shoplifter, I really think that’s overkill,” said Alex del Carmen, executive director of the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Strategic Studies at Tarleton State University.

Vinger countered that drones and planes aren’t interchangeable.

“Their missions and capabilities are not comparable. There are also numerous limitations placed on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles by the FAA,” Vinger said.

The Pilatus PC-12 NG Spectre planes are two of more than 20 DPS aircraft. The two planes are among the most expensive, purchased for roughly $7.4 million and $8.1 million each.

It costs the department an average of $474 to fly the plane for one hour, including insurance and hanger expenses, according to 2016 fiscal year records. Fuel for one plane has cost the state more than $150,000 annually. The older Pilatus plane flew more than 600 hours over about 180 days last year, according to agency flight logs.

Salame said the city doesn’t pay for use of the plane, just as it wouldn’t pay for troopers who assist with local needs.

Some lawmakers questioned why the state is pumping millions of dollars into the two aircraft, while they said other needs such as public education and health care are being underfunded.

“This is a perfect example of why we need metrics on every dollar spent on border security,” said Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio. “That’s what the taxpayers deserve, because if they have therapeutic needs, or are in classrooms that are overcrowded, they deserve to know.”

But Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, who chairs the House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee, touted the benefits of the Pilatus planes. They can stay airborne for more than seven hours, far longer than any other aircraft in the DPS fleet, making them a versatile asset for crime-fighting or search and rescue, he said.

“They can be deployed anywhere,” King said. “But their primary function is to work human and drug trafficking near the border.”

Who knew what when

Initially, SAPD said it had no record of the plane and “does not conduct any type of joint surveillance utilizing Texas Department of Public Safety assets such as fixed-wing aircraft.”

But Salame said Friday that had been “bad information” and wasn’t properly verified before getting released. Often times, he said, details about the use of outside equipment is known only by those SAPD officials involved in the operation.

“There’s a number of things we use on a daily basis that are loaned to us by other agencies,” Salame said.

Tracking tail number N243TX during the last week of October Source: FlightRadar24.com

At a news conference last week, Police Chief William McManus said he didn’t know how long the planes have been flying for the task force.

The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office had initially denied coordinating with the planes, too. Thursday, a spokeswoman for the sheriff also said there had been a misunderstanding and the office has indeed used the aircraft. She declined to give more detail about what they do and directed all further questions to DPS, which said the Bexar County Sheriff’s office provides a tactical flight officer who rides on state aircraft during joint missions, including the Pilatus, Vinger said.

Other missions

Outside San Antonio, DPS said the planes flew during Hurricane Harvey as an “airborne command and control platform” directing other aircraft in the area, monitored the tops of buildings in Dallas when five city police officers were killed in 2016, helped track an airplane to Llano County where more than 200 pounds of marijuana were seized and assisted in “rescuing illegal immigrants in distress.”

Some state legislators were surprised to learn the plane has been assisting other law enforcement agencies hundreds of miles from the border.

“I think taxpayers deserve an authentic understanding of where their tax money is going,” said Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee.

One expert said the planes can be beneficial for traffic surveillance and search and rescue, because they can cover a wide area quickly.

“People will say, ‘is it worth the expense?’ All I can say is how much is one life worth?” said Tom Mijares, a criminal justice professor at Texas State University.

But others questioned whether the high-dollar planes are the best to use for those purposes. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, uses planes primarily for investigation as opposed to patrolling the border, said Victor Manjarrez Jr., who spent more than 20 years with the U.S. Border Patrol and now works at the University of Texas-El Paso.

“It just sounds like someone got nice-to-have equipment, instead of got-to-have,” he said.

Staff writer Emilie Eaton and data journalist Anne Millerbernd contributed to this report.

About the data: Data for this story was collected from FlightRadar24.com, a website that provides real-time flight information, between August and October 2017. FlightRadar24 uses multiple receivers to pick up the signal that aircraft transmit and then triangulates the aircraft’s position. At least four receivers have to pick up a signal for the aircraft's position to appear. There are circumstances in which a signal was not received in these data, but they are limited. Some data aren’t available on FlightRadar24.com and were provided directly to the Express-News. The planes' tail numbers are N219TX and N243TX.





amorris@express-news.net