In military operations, the USA relies on drones to gather photographic and video intelligence knowing that if the drone is targeted for destruction, suffers malfunctions, or fails in service, that no military personnel will be lost with the drone. This means that there are massive advantages to deploying drones out in the field, especially with the drones' ability to gather intelligence 24/7 without sacrificing or endangering soldiers in the line of duty. Not too surprisingly, devices that can gather intelligence and monitor activities, are strongly desired for police and other law enforcement agencies to which the usage of drones by these departments are currently in process and/or have already occurred.
Another big factor favoring the increasing usage of drones now and in the future, is that the more sales, and the more buying activity by the general public as well as governmental agencies, means, that not only will the pricing of drones have a downward trajectory, but the features and capabilities of the drones will get more and more sophisticated, with greater reliability and effectiveness.
As it stands today, many police departments like to avail themselves of analytics, in order to make valid crime predictions and to interdict crime, by virtue of seeing patterns in certain neighborhoods at certain times, and consequently being able to devote more resources to those areas to combat crime or civil unrest before matters get out of hand. While there is something to be said about having patrol cars, feet on the ground, and so forth, the fact of the matter is, police patrols cannot be everywhere at every time, so that having a drone street patrol systematically monitoring public streets, public parks, and public places, could and should be a valuable tool for law enforcement agencies.
When it comes to drones and their recording or streaming of video and still photography, the public has a reasonable right to know, what is being recorded, analyzed, and evaluated, to which as a matter of course, law enforcement and citizen support groups should work together, meaning that, for drone recordings, that vetted citizens, should be able to view what the police are viewing in real time. If, on the other hand, citizens are knocked out of the loop and aren't allowed to work in conjunction with law enforcement agencies, from a viewing perspective of drones recording public activities in public spaces, than, unfortunately law enforcement has been essentially handed carte blanche the ability to be "big brother" with no citizen feedback or input, to which, the upshot, is that the public space, will fast become, a venue to which there is no respite from the police eye in the sky.
Properly used, drones can be a very valid aid for the public safety, as, for instance, the recording of a crash scene from the air, monitoring natural disasters, recording crime scenes information, traffic and crowd flow, and as a better way to provide security and information gathering because the viewpoint of a drone gives a perspective that cannot be achieved at ground level and at a much lower cost point than a manned helicopter. On the other hand, what the general public doesn't really need or want, is more hi-technology tracking and recording of their every move in public, which is why drone usage should be carefully monitored by a citizen watch group so that the privacy of individuals will not be subsumed by lawful authorities who feel that they are not answerable to the public that they ostensibly serve.