TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) – The Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office announced plans for a new drone initiative at the Safe Streets meeting on Wednesday.

“The last couple of years we’ve seen a pretty significant increase in vehicle burglaries vehicle thefts and thefts from vehicles,” Deputy Shayna Anderson said.

Their office has used drones before for mapping crime scenes search and rescue efforts, but now it will help them decrease crime.

“We are going to start using them in order to decrease some of the criminal activity that we’re seeing,” Anderson said. “We’ll be flying these drones over public roadways and public pathways during peak criminal activity times based off crime data that we have in the neighborhoods that we’re seeing a lot of this activity happening.”

The office will hold three public engagement meetings for citizens to ask questions and address concerns they might have.

These meetings will be on August 12 at 6:00 p.m. at Seaman High School in the choir room, August 19 at Shawnee Heights High School in the auditorium and August 20 at Washburn Rural Middle School in the library.