UK National Police Chief Councils (NPCC) drones and flight safety

The Independent Office for Police Conduct spokesperson has confirmed via email to sUAS News that the following incident occurred.

We can confirm we are independently investigating an incident where a child was hurt by a drone which crashed while being flown by Kent Police.

It happened on 2 August 2025 when officers were responding to reports of a disturbance on the Isle of Sheppey.

A drone was launched, hit an overhead cable and fell to the ground, hitting the child and seriously injuring their hand.

As part of the on-going investigation we have served a misconduct notice on a special inspector. The serving of a notice does not necessarily mean disciplinary proceedings will follow.

Ian Hudson has been trying his very best via FOIA to get to the heart of this matter but to no avail. We knew it had happened but nobody would admit it. If he had not written to The Independent Office for Police Conduct we would still be in the dark.

At sUAS News we are worried about police drone incident reporting. It seems the AAIB still don’t know about this incident. It should and valueable lessons to be learnt should have been promulgated to the wider community.

This leads me to where my concern lies, the NPCC are operating their drones as State aircraft, lets google what that means:-

In the UK, “State aircraft” refers to any aircraft used for military, customs, or police purposes, as defined by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The CAA is the UK’s independent aviation regulator, and while it normally regulates civil aviation, State aircraft operate under special agreements and are permitted to operate contrary to some standard civil rules, though they must still be handled safely by air traffic control.

The National Police Air Service (NPAS) also operate as State Aircraft but there is a big difference. They obviously use trained, often very experienced ex military aviators. Pilots and crew folks that have grown up around aviation safety assurance systems (SAS).

We cannot be certain that there is an aviation just culture within NPCC drone operations, they don’t need to follow the same rules, an incident in 2023 to me points towards that. An officer crashed a drone, that in itself is really grist for the mill, part of the job. The issue to me is that he covered up his actions.

Former Leicestershire Police officer, Kenneth Fricker, was found guilty of gross misconduct after he crashed a force drone during deployment and subsequently lied to colleagues three separate times to cover up the damage. The misconduct hearing, chaired by Chief Constable Rob Nixon, ruled that the sustained dishonesty was a “fundamental breach of honesty and integrity” and concluded that Mr Fricker would have been dismissed without notice had he remained employed by the force.

Mr Fricker, who was attached to the Drone Team, crashed the device (Drone 20) on October 14th while performing low-level manoeuvres at the scene of a serious traffic collision on the M6 at Catthorpe. The crash resulted in specific damage, including a broken propeller, a cracked VPS/IR Sensor bar, and issues with the antenna module and RTK module base. Crucially, as a police officer deployed with the drone team, he was obligated to report any collisions or crashes in compliance with force policy and Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) regulations.

Instead of reporting the incident, Mr Fricker provided colleagues with multiple false accounts of how the damage occurred. Initially, he claimed he had only broken a propeller blade by catching it on a police van while sliding the tray back into its compartment, stating he had replaced it. The following day, the account shifted, stating the damage was caused by dropping the drone while carrying it to the van. Later that same day, he told another officer he had dropped it while getting it out of the van. Furthermore, the drone’s footage was deleted, which the hearing ruled “on the balance of probabilities” demonstrated “intent to cover up the original incident”.

Chief Constable Rob Nixon stated that the former PC’s actions “undermined the relationship and trust with his colleagues and compromised the integrity of records”. The dishonesty also posed a significant safety risk, as it “placed a fellow drone pilot in a situation where they may [have needed] to deploy a drone with undisclosed damage”.

Was Mr Fricker afraid to come forward? Why did he feel the need to ruin 20 years of service?

Another clue that there are not real aviators around are the experimental drone in a box, drones as a first responder (DFR) trials recently concluded in London and Coventry with perhaps a total of 11 sites to run concurrently. These were BVLOS trials over built up areas and happening within a Temporary Danger Area, excluding other drone fliers and meaning some had to cancel commercial operations that had been booked.

We reached out to the NPCC unit doing these trials but to date they have not commented on their operations.

So this points to a lack of understanding of airspace and other airspace users.

It is my opinion that the temporary danger areas were put in place by the CAA because they had to. They would not have been entirely certain what the police were up to and had to protect other airspace users.

I have always been convinced that police drone operations should be under the wing of the NPAS unit, they know aviation, they know weather, they know caution.

To me the NPCC are trying to get low cost air cover and are being convinced by vendors who want to sell them gear.

I have stated in many quarters that I believe Drones as First Responders (DFR) will fail as a concept. I give it 5 years. There will be drones that work, but those are not the ones they are looking for.

Let’s bring this right back to the beginning, a police officer with the drone in plain sight flew it up an into power lines. The UK general public is expected to accept drones of a similar size being flown over their heads by police officers that can’t see the drone.