In Ensenada, a Mexican city about two hours south of Tijuana, a new crime fighter has taken to the skies. It’s not a bird, or a plane, or Superman. It’s a drone. And over a few months on patrol, it’s had quite the impact. The city’s police department claims the solitary DJI Inspire 1 Quadcopter led to more than 500 arrests and a 10 percent drop in overall crime rates, with a 30 percent drop in home robberies.

It’s the latest example of drones slowly finding their place in civilian life, like soldiers returning from war, seeking to apply their skills to life in a country not entirely comfortable with what they were up to overseas. Unmanned aerial vehicles may have gotten their start with the military, flying recon missions in Vietnam and dropping bombs over Afghanistan. Their use is still causing concern and debate: Earlier this month, Google pledged not to renew a Department of Defense contract for Project Maven, where it was developing AI to interpret drone surveillance video, when 4,500 employees signed a petition against it.

But in Ensenada, the police present their use of the drone as an unmitigated success. “It’s helped with reducing response times and also catching people when they do something illegal,” says Jesus Ramos Avendaño, CTO of the Ensenada police force.

LEARN MORE The WIRED Guide to Drones

Over four months, Avendaño’s department flew an average of 25 missions a day (more than 1,600 total), deciding where to fly based on 911 call volumes. Operating from a local control room, the police used software developed by California-based Cape, which automates much of the flying process, including takeoffs and landings. Any authorized officer can grab a feed of the video streaming off the drone, from their desk or while out in the field.

Cape CEO Chris Rittler says fewer than a dozen quadcopter-style drones could give a city like Ensenada, population 522,000, complete coverage. “The most common use case is in response to an emergency call, when the drone can be redirected from a flight it’s already on,” he says. The aircraft can reach a location before officers get there by road and give them eyes on what’s going on.

That sort of rapid response is a big deal in police work. “Thieves have a clock in their head, from when they break a window to when the police arrive,” Rittler says. “What the drone has done is dramatically decrease that time window.”

“Thieves have a clock in their head, from when they break a window, to when the police arrive. What the drone has done is dramatically decrease that time window.” Cape

Although drones aren’t regularly used for police surveillance in the US on the scale of Ensenada yet, over the past few years, they have proven their usefulness in plenty of ways. Drone builder DJI says that on one day in May, public safety drones saved four lives: UK police found a missing person, semiconscious and just a few feet from a steep cliff, using a drone with a thermal imaging camera. A fire department in Indiana dropped a life vest to a drowning criminal suspect, who had fled into a pond. And public safety officials in Central Texas dropped life vests to a mother and her 15-year-old daughter, who got caught in a rising river. In the past year, drones have helped scout areas of Houston flooded by Hurricane Harvey and restrung electrical cables in Puerto Rico downed by Hurricane Maria.