Denver Police District 4 officers arrived within three minutes of a call reporting a burglary in progress at a business on South Jason Street on August 12, only to see two suspect vehicles fleeing the area as they pulled up. One vehicle was stopped near West Mississippi Avenue and South Inca Street, but three suspects bailed out and ran on foot, setting off a search that would end with two of them stuck on a rooftop and a fire department bucket truck called in to get them down.
That account comes from the Denver Police Department, which posted the details of the August 12 incident under the headline “Drones, Bucket Trucks and a Burglary, Oh My!” According to the department, officers set up a perimeter after the suspects scattered and requested help from the department's drone unit to locate them.
Aerial Search Pins Down Rooftop Hideout
The drone helped officers spot two of the three suspects hiding on a roof in the 1100 block of South Jason Street, per the department's account. Officers then took those two suspects into custody, while Denver Fire provided a bucket truck to help get personnel safely up to the roof. A third suspect was located below the roof, and officers said they used the drone's speaker system to issue commands to the suspects during the standoff.
All three suspects were arrested on investigation of burglary charges, the department said. The vehicle involved was impounded, and officers later found a firearm underneath it. Under Colorado's mandatory vehicle gun storage law, House Bill 24-1348, handguns left in unattended vehicles must be stored in a locked, hard-sided container out of view or in a locked trunk, a requirement in effect since January 1, 2025, according to a statement the Denver Police Department posted regarding firearm storage. As with any arrest, the suspects are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
What the Charges Could Mean
Under Colorado Revised Statutes § 18-4-203, knowingly breaking into a commercial structure with intent to commit a crime amounts to second-degree burglary, a Class 4 felony that can carry up to six years in state prison and fines as high as $500,000, according to Justia Law. That statute treats commercial burglaries more leniently than break-ins of residential dwellings, which carry harsher Class 3 felony penalties. It remains unclear which specific business on South Jason Street was targeted, and whether the Denver District Attorney's Office has filed formal charges against the three arrested individuals.
A Familiar Tactic for District 4
This was not the first time District 4 officers have leaned on aerial technology to track down a fleeing burglary suspect. On January 7, the same district deployed a thermal-camera drone to locate a commercial burglary suspect hiding in a marshy drainage basin near South Wadsworth Boulevard, the department noted in a Facebook post. District 4 covers 14 statistical neighborhoods across southwest Denver, including industrial and commercial corridors along South Jason Street in the Overland neighborhood near West Mississippi Avenue, bordering Englewood and Lakewood.
The rooftop search fits into Denver's broader Drone as First Responder program, which the department launched as a pilot in October 2025. In its first two months, the program responded to 215 emergency calls with drones arriving first on scene more than 80 percent of the time, according to CBS News. The department expanded its aerial capabilities with a $100,000 grant from the nonprofit Denver Police Foundation alongside pilot partnerships with private public-safety tech firms, as reported by the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle.
Drones Doing Double Duty Across the Department
DPD's drones have also proven useful indoors. During a South Decatur Street warrant service in May, Denver Metro SWAT and DPD Drone Operations used an interior drone whose rotor downdraft blew aside a curtain and revealed a hidden suspect, ending that raid without injuries, as previously reported by Hoodline. The department has used similar drone support in other multi-suspect operations, including a January arrest of five suspects in an armed robbery case.
The Jason Street arrests come as Denver's broader property crime numbers move in a different direction than District 4's violent crime figures. A midyear 2025 report by the Common Sense Institute found that overall burglaries and property crimes in Denver were trending downward even as aggravated assaults in District 4 rose 16 percent over the same period. Nationally, the shift toward drone-based policing has accelerated fast: Federal Aviation Administration records released in 2026 show more than 1,000 U.S. public safety agencies have obtained waivers for automated and beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone flights since the FAA streamlined its rules in April 2025, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Neighboring Douglas County has followed suit, approving a $22.8 million deal in July to build a countywide drone and license-plate-reader network.
