Officer Lee Medved and some of his trained colleagues are now the eyes in the sky for the Pueblo Police Department.

Since April 2018, the department has been using drones in the field to help with investigations, finding missing people and apprehending suspects.

Medved is one of seven officers who have been trained to operate the drones that have become beneficial in police investigations. Medved has been a drone pilot with the department from the inception of the program last April.

He and other officers had to go through rigorous studying and testing before being certified to use drones in official police business.

Medved said he had to apply to become a drone pilot for the department, go through an interview process about why he wanted to become a pilot, and then took classes that involved studying Federal Aviation Administration regulations pertaining to drone pilots. Those classes covered regulations involving airspace usage, different rules and regulations and restricted areas, among other things.

After that, Medved and the other pilots were pass a test before they could formally fly drones for the police department.

Medved said his interest in becoming a drone pilot for the department goes back to his 20s when he got a pilot's license.

"I didn't fly drones before this, but I am an FAA-licensed pilot," Medved said. "Growing up, I was into aviation a lot. My dad was a pilot and flight instructor, so that's how I learned, and it was kind of a natural interest for me to get into this."

Medved said he flew fixed-wing aircrafts such as Cessnas and Piper Cherokees.

The police department has three drones of various sizes in its arsenal and uses them for a variety of investigative purposes.

"As a recent example of when we used one, we had someone who was reported to have fallen in the Arkansas River. So to get an aerial perspective, we deployed a drone and were able to cover the area really quickly," Medved said.

They've also been used in traffic accident investigations to give police a different perspective of an accident and how vehicles crashed.

Finally, the drones are used to locate suspects who run from police.

"Anybody who takes off running, let's say into a field or river bottom that's going to put an officer at risk, we'd rather send something out there that has the capability of looking at a big area and coming down into a low area to look for that person," Medved said.

Following a recent robbery at Vitamin Cottage on Dillon Drive, a suspect ran into the nearby river bottom. With the use of a drone, police were able to clear that area quickly and locate groups of homeless camps to ask about the suspect's whereabouts.

In a separate situation, an officer spotted a man wanted on multiple warrants escape from a home, but a drone was able to help that officer locate the suspect hiding several blocks away. Once the drone spotted the suspect, police were able to move to the area in which he was hiding and apprehend him, Medved said.

The drones are fairly simple to use, according to Medved.

"They have enough technology in them that you can take off and let it hover and maneuver it wherever you want," he said. "It's almost like a PlayStation controller. We hook our phones up to it and it's run off an app you can use to look at the cameras from the drones. It provides all your air speed information, altitude information. And the larger drone has a traffic alert, so if you have a helicopter coming in the area, it will alert you to that."

The seven officers who are certified to fly drones for the department carry them with them while they're on duty.

Whenever a drone is needed, they're called to the scene.

The pilots also are on call on an as-needed basis for the department.

Medved said he's been called out to scenes at all hours of the day, and figures he's probably been the officer who has flown drones the most for the department so far.

"But it's fun and something I enjoy doing and helping out with," he said.

rseverance@chieftain.com

Twitter: RyanS_Chieftain