NYPD officers will have the authority to detect, track, and electronically disable unauthorized drones flying over the U.S. Open this year without needing federal agents on site to pull the trigger. It is the first time state or local law enforcement has been cleared to run independent drone mitigation operations at a major event anywhere in the country, according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
The tournament grounds in Flushing Meadows are drawing more than a million fans and hundreds of players, and the department has framed its counter-drone posture as central to keeping them safe, as reported by CBS News New York. Until this year, NYPD officers working major NYC events had to rely on embedded federal agents from agencies like the FBI or Secret Service to actually operate the jamming equipment, a dependency that Police1 notes shaped event security logistics for years. Now the department can run those operations on its own.
A New Law Behind the Shift
The legal foundation for the change is the SAFER SKIES Act, passed by Congress as part of the fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act in December 2025, according to DRONELIFE. The statute expanded counter-drone powers that had previously been limited to agencies like the Department of Defense and the Secret Service. Federal implementing guidelines that took effect on July 1 require any state or local agency exercising that authority to deploy federally certified officers, use equipment drawn from an FBI-approved list, coordinate with air traffic control, and report every operation, per PickDrones.
Those guardrails matter because certification is scarce. As of mid-August, only 61 law enforcement officers nationwide had completed the federal training required to deploy drone mitigation technology, the same PickDrones report found, a bottleneck that underscores just how specialized the NYPD's unit is within the broader national rollout.
Millions in New Equipment, and a Narrow Legal Trigger
The NYPD backed its new authority with a $6.5 million investment in counter-drone mitigation technology in mid-2026, including mobile vehicles built to detect, track, and electronically jam or take control of rogue aircraft, as detailed by CBS News. Tisch has pointed to the rapid weaponization of commercial drones in overseas conflicts as a driving motivation behind that spending. New York State separately received $17.2 million in federal grant funding in February to upgrade drone detection and tracking infrastructure across four public safety agencies — the NYPD, the Port Authority, the New York State Police, and the MTA — ahead of a slate of major 2026 public events, according to StateScoop.
Even with that authority and hardware in place, federal rules keep the trigger narrow. Local police can only take down drones that pose a confirmed credible threat to crowds, critical infrastructure, correctional facilities, or major events, and officers are prohibited from disabling aircraft simply for flying nearby, PickDrones reports — a limit designed to address concerns privacy advocates have raised about expanded local surveillance powers. Separately, the tournament grounds themselves sit inside an FAA stadium Temporary Flight Restriction under 14 CFR § 99.7, which bars unauthorized aircraft within three nautical miles and up to 3,000 feet from an hour before to an hour after events.
A Department Already Flying Thousands of Drones a Quarter
The NYPD's new enforcement role sits alongside its own status as one of the nation's most active municipal drone operators, having logged 2,595 drone deployments in the first quarter of 2026 alone for tactical support, search-and-rescue, and public safety monitoring, per DRONELIFE. That dual posture — flying thousands of its own missions while now also policing the airspace against outside drones — has been building for more than a year. Hoodline previously reported on the department's push for the new counter-drone authority and equipment ahead of this summer's public events, following an earlier effort in 2025 to secure federal sign-off for the powers now in use.
The rollout hasn't been without incident. Hoodline also reported in June that an NYPD drone briefly caught fire after crashing near a Brooklyn Bridge fan zone, a reminder that the department's expanding drone footprint carries its own operational risks even as it takes on a new enforcement role at Flushing Meadows.
