LAFAYETTE — Tippecanoe County Sheriff Barry Richard told the Journal & Courier Tuesday that he is poised to spend $18,000 on a drone helicopter for the sheriff's office.
By Friday, however, Richard revised his statement, saying, “That’s depending on what equipment we end up with and the training costs.
“Eighteen thousand dollars is not what I would quote as a price," he said. "I’m just saying right now it’s more than $10,000, less than $20,000. I feel comfortable saying that.”
By comparison, Greenfield Police Department in 2014 purchased a drone — a DGI Phantom I model — for $650 and a GoPro camera to attach to the drone for $400, said Lt. J.D. Fortner. He also said Greenfield police registered the drone with FAA and he and the police chief learned to fly it themselves. The department also adopted a general order for its operations, Fortner said.
Asked Friday about his earlier "ballpark estimate" of $18,000, Richard said, “That’s not a firm price that I’m telling you right now because I’ve not seen the actual quote. ... Lt. (Terry) Ruley was concerned that once you put together the drone, the cameras, the features in it, the training component of it — all of that — that’s when he told me it could be upward of tens of thousands of dollars. So we don’t know exactly yet.”
Richard said he doesn't have the information to compare Greenfield's drone to what his office is looking at, but he's seeking a top-of-the-line drone.
“I know it’s capable of doing the infrared imaging and so forth," Richard said. "I want it to be a very high-quality product to give us a strong resource tool to do the jobs we need and be able to use it in multiple incidents to better serve the community.
“That’s why obviously it’s a little bit more expensive than what I hoped.”