Could drones become UNC-Chapel Hill’s crime-fighting tool?

Vice Chancellor for Communications and Marketing Dean Stoyer, left, and Trustee Marty Kotis talk during a recess in the UNC Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026, at The Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill.

Travis Long

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Could autonomous, rapid-deployment drones help stop and solve crime on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus?

For university trustee Marty Kotis, a commercial real estate investor and developer, the answer to that question is a resounding yes.

“You want to be able to get eyes on the situation as quickly as possible,” Kotis told The News & Observer. “A rapid-response drone that can be autonomously deployed out could see what’s going on, which can help the police get to solving a problem.”

Kotis said this kind of drone technology could have helped UNC Police respond to two racially motivated incidents that shook campus this semester: the intimidation of Black students at a ‘Love Island’ watch party and the harassment of Taiwanese students on a campus tour. University leaders still don’t know the identity of the people who directed racialized gestures and noises toward the touring students, a gap that trustees have previously condemned.

Kotis’ idea is that a drone could arrive on the scene before police are able to get there to avoid any holes in footage and capture as much of the crime as possible.

“They can do that now without a person actually deploying it. They’ve got autonomous ones that can actually just pop up,” Kotis said. “They’re ready to go, they’re charged, and they pop up and get out there quickly. And that would be a much faster response time.”

As for what that kind of technology could cost, Kotis said that “drone technology is a lot cheaper now.”

“The autonomous drones are a little bit more expensive,” he said, “but not anything prohibitive at all.”

Kotis said UNC’s police chief Brian James is already looking into the possibility of drone response on campus.

Student body president Devin Duncan questions how realistic Kotis’ vision is — but said he appreciates the trustee’s commitment to campus safety. Duncan wonders what campus reaction to these drones would be like, given existing student resistance to the Flock cameras on UNC’s campus.

“There’s a side of technology allows us to ensure safety, and then there’s a side where I’m being surveilled,” Duncan told The N&O. “As they consider introducing any new technology on campus, I hope that they do it in partnership with the students of this university to ensure that the technology actually does strike the balance — and doesn’t make someone feel like that they’re being surveilled everywhere that they go.”

Approximately 6,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide use drones in some way, according to UNC criminal law professor Jeff Welty. He said there’s a “a lot of enthusiasm in the law enforcement community right now for using drones as first responders.”

“There are use cases in which drones may be extremely helpful to officers, such as establishing the location of an armed and dangerous suspect before officers arrive on scene,” Welty told The N&O in an email. “In other cases, drones may not add enough value to justify the perception of constant surveillance that they can create. Agencies that adopt this technology should carefully consider the circumstances under which drones will and won’t be deployed.”

One issue involves what the drone may incidentally capture on its way to the crime scene, Welty explained.

“State law prohibits government entities from using drones for ‘surveillance,’ subject to some exceptions,” he wrote. “Courts have not yet weighed in on what that means — for example, whether having a drone fly over a residence on the way to a crime scene amounts to surveillance of the residence.”

Chancellor Lee Roberts declined to comment on the possibility of autonomous drones on campus.

“We appreciate the Board of Trustee’s dialogue and ongoing commitment to safety,” a university spokesperson told The N&O in an email. “The safety of our campus community is our top priority. Technologies and resources like a real time information center or cameras are one tool among many that we will continue to evaluate to enhance safety on our campus.”