The San Francisco Police Commission unanimously accepted a nearly $9.4 million donation Wednesday night to expand the police department’s drone program and add 10 new drone take-off sites.
“This is by far the largest one-time donation I think we’ve ever considered,” said police commissioner Kevin Benedicto. The Board of Supervisors will vote on the gift later this month.
The money will go to the Real Time Investigation Center (RTIC), which was founded shortly after the passing of Proposition E in March 2024, allowing the SPFD to expand its use of technology for crime-detection and surveillance purposes. The RTIC has since increased the number of surveillance cameras and drones to monitor crimes, a program that has assisted in over 500 arrests according to the SFPD.
The donation was proposed last week by Ripple Labs, a San Francisco-based crypto company run by billionaire Chris Larsen, and the San Francisco Police Community Foundation, a nonprofit that Larsen founded in 2023. Larsen has been a long-time proponent of increasing the SFPD’s use of technology and donated $250,000 to the passing of Prop E.
Larsen’s prior donations via a nonprofit to install surveillance devices in San Francisco were compromised when SF SAFE purportedly misallocated his money. Former executive director Kyra Worthy is presently facing 34 felony charges.
Some $2 million of the latest donation will go toward paying for the lease of a 14,000-square-foot office space on Montgomery Street, formerly occupied by Ripple Labs. According to Chief Bill Scott, the money will cover a 16-month lease, allowing RTIC to relocate from its headquarters in the decrepit Hall of Justice until a permanent location is decided on.
The remaining $7.4 million of donated funds will go toward expanding the city’s Drones as First Responder Program. The money will come from Larsen’s San Francisco Police Community Foundation, which donated an additional $866,000 to support officer wellness and community engagement.
The city announced its Drones as First Responder program in October of last year. It allows trained officers to pilot drones around the city from the safety of RTIC headquarters. Up until now, drones have been kept in the back of police cruisers for on-site use.
Right now, these drones, which require FAA training to pilot, can only take off from two launch sites. But the SFPD told commissioners Wednesday that Larsen’s donation will add 10 take-off locations and introduce two new kinds of first-responder drones into their fleet.
“We’re going to be covering the entire city with drones,” said RTIC representative Captain Thomas MacGuire.
These new take-off locations, which have been mostly finalized, will be located primarily at San Francisco fire stations throughout the city. Scott said this arrangement will allow the drones to also support firefighters. “Whether we can provide them with thermal imaging of what the fire situation looks like, or help them find people that are in distress,” Scott said, “we intend to do everything that we can.”
“We’re going to be covering the entire city with drones.”
Why do I suddenly feel less safe?
Property fetishists, surveillance missionaries, and class warriors of the .01% rejoice at this news. Chris Larsen is a shining light for the materializing authoritarian techno-oligarchic kakistocracy.
Totally disgusting.
So if I get this correctly, Ripple is “donating” $2 mil to lease back unused office space from Ripple. Great tax break.
Can we also talk about how when SFPD deployed Flock license plate readers they neglected to say the data captured with them would be shared nationwide?
There are too few people smart enough to realize what is occurring here. 1984 ?Yes!!!! Big Brother is watching and soon we will have no rights and zero chance of getting it back.
Chaz – Yes
Rusty Hodge- Yes
Two beers – Yes
George O – YES!!
Malphas – Yes
Gloria- Yes
Self-dealing should probably be considered implicit where crypto brollionaires are involved…
Can we also talk about how the Oakland PD shared Flock data with ICE??
What about affordable housing? What about helping the unhoused to get off the street? What about funding more drug treatment beds?
Oh wait! SF’s current direction is arrest, harass, and displace people who are poor, all so the tech bros don’t have to lay eyes on people who cannot afford an 11 minute ride on Blue Origin. Tech bros should have a contemplative and calm space to pivot their mindset into a innovative, rocketship, disrupter space focusing on his altruistic impact on TAM before their hype session to get more suckers, I mean, investors into their Ponzi schemes.
Like the dope fiends are waiting in line to get into rehab. Beds are no good if they don’t want to use them. Just ask the foreign dope dealers that lurk outside if the centers…..no doubt the very same ones you want to keep here in the country. Thank yourselves.
Hate to tell you this but the “tech bros” are the people paying market rate for housing which generates the tax dollars for housing and treatment beds – oh, along with the Prop C tax money the Tech bros companies generate.
And you might review this Mission Local article about drug addicts that don’t want what you offer – treatment.
https://missionlocal.org/2025/06/s-f-drug-users-treatment-relationships-recovery/
You forgot to mention that they were the ones driving the housing prices up in the first place, pricing out hundreds of people out of the city. Hate to tell you that.
Totally.
The Market Rate is where its is because of tech, and greedy landlords wanting to cash in on this influx of people earning many times more than San Franciscans in other fields. The average annual compensation for tech workers in 2025 is approximately $185,425, according to Nucamp. The average annual compensation for non- tech workers is approximately $52,154 ( Zip recuiter). So what if they are paying market rate for housing. Lots of people earning much less are forced to pay this ridiculous market rate as well.
1984
It only feels dystopian because IT IS dystopian.
Billionaires hard at work: doing their business of- universal surveillance; criminalization of poverty (aka “crIme detection”); locking up the struggling, deporting the dispossessed. These are the great great grandchildren of the slave patrols. Our mayor just loves it. And the boot locking police commissioners lap it up.
Dare we have any more faith in San Francisco?
This exactly why billionaire charity is not the answer. Their priorities are not our priority. They sit on their hands while Lurie wants to take millions out of the budget to create housing (which btw is the answer to homelessness) to create more temporary solutions. They sit on their hands while services to the most vulnerable in this city is being cut. Income inequality at an all time high, while crime is at an all time low but this rich guy wants to give even more money to the cops to surveil all the people who will be falling through the cracks. We don’t need your charity rich folks, we need you to pay your damn taxes.
Here in SF (like in DC) we have the oligarchs setting policy. Why can’t we tax them and let our elected officials represent us?
Articles on this keep repeating the SFPD has made 500 arrests using its high tech surveillance (toys?) Really? I trust Mission Local to interrogate that figure. How many arrests does SFPD make in a year? By arrests, do they mean overnight holds til subjects dry out? How much of this goes to court? Just wondering.
It’s Chris Larsen’s police force now. How is that legal?
Because that’s the type of country we live in. The private sector has incrementally been given the reigns.
The police solicit donations by phone. Why would they refuse an unsolicited one from an upstanding citizen? I am against the surveillance, and I empathize with the homeless as I spent half of my life homeless. But the reality is that the vast majority of the homeless population in SF are not from SF. This is generally true for most of California. Since the 80s all of the Midwestern and southern states started bussing the homeless to California so they weren’t a local problem anymore. It was a common hustle for people to go to a church and ask for help for a bus ticket. Usually it was spent on drugs, but many eventually made the trip when they were essentially being ran out of town. So yeah, not cool to have a surveillance state. But you can’t blame tech bros for a problem that has been half a century in the making.
Just because Mr Ripple has the big bucks he gets to decide what flies over San Francisco? Birds are preferred in my skies. How about moving some of that money to the threatened Job Corps program based on Treasure Island?
This is why Lurie removed Max Carter Oberstone.
I’m glad to see the comments pushing back on this, it sounds like a cartoonishly bad idea where a billionaire benefits from influence, tax breaks and a maintenance contract and the people of SF see little to no improvement in real problems.
“Drones aided in 500 arrests” .. great, that’s not a real metric, did they actually help the crime rate go down?
Will they make the crime rate go down more than a $9m investment in rehab and drug treatment programs would have?
Sarah C. M. Payne, a professor at the United States Naval War College, has prescient words of wisdom to Tech Bros: “Do not create technology that will empower future authoritarian regimes.”
As voters, we need to consider how our sense of security today will compromise the reality of security for our grandchildren.
And about these drones, are you going to be spying on honest United States citizens. This can. Lead to abuse. All in the name of protecting U.S.CIZITENS. I am not happy about this.
Unreal, complete invasion of privacy. I mean even more so with all the other cameras that are in place. They should put that money to better use
You want Skynet? This is how Skynet starts.
“and introduce two new kinds of first-responder drones into their fleet. ”
The “incapacitator” a specialized drone designed to quell undesirables from well, anything. Uses appropriate force including lethal. Details on the other drone type will be forthcoming.
I hope I never have to visit San Francisco again. I certainly won’t be doing it on my own volition. Good people will leave the city for better places.
Must be lots of criminals and crime over there ,they must be fat and lazy too do thier jobs
Excellent news. Time to get after the dirt bike marauders and clean off our streets.
The program has already been so successful, that fact that someone donated enough to expand it citywide is perhaps the best news since they started forcing the homeless encampments to move.
The liberals are finally out of power in SF and the grown ups are in charge. Rejoice!
Toys for everyone!
I bet the “power people” at this week’s Bloomberg Tech Fair have been taking notice!
San Francisco is COMING BACK, and we’ll all know for sure when Waymos get permission to drive up and down Market Street!
Thanks for the reporting .
The drug dealers and addicts who pollute the public spaces with their self inflicted illegal activity better packup and get out of town.
Take your shit elsewhere .
Addicts better except whatever care they can get .
The dealers will be rounded and locked up.
We have had enough of the thugs , idiots vagrants and criminals entitlement.
They shoulf not be allowed to roam freely to destroy everyones safety and wellbeing
The truely mentally ill should be immediately rounded up as the law allows .
What civilized society or persons thinks a individual who cannot take care of themselves and is taking illegal poisons should be left alone ?
Those that do are sick and cruel.
Get this place cleaned up
Very tired of the daily enabling babysitting and room service
This lifestyle is not acceptable to be going on on public spaces .
People acting like rats running to poison ,
Inhumane and sick
Grow up
Give a man a fish
and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish
and you feed him for a lifetime.
Give a man an ocean
and you teach him that
he has the right to decide
who is worthy of eating or starving.
I second that, well said.
This is wonderful news. Thank You for your kindness and generosity Chris.
So you are saying you Like a surveillance state?