Eight attempted break-ins in a single month have put the small Stark County village of Brewster, Ohio on edge, and police there have responded by sending a drone with a thermal camera into the night sky to try to catch whoever is responsible. The suspect has targeted seven homes and one business, pushing on windows and pulling at doors while residents slept, but has not succeeded in getting inside any of them.
According to News 5 Cleveland, 83-year-old Brewster resident Larry Gilkerson filed a police report after a suspicious incident outside his home around 3 a.m. the prior week. Gilkerson believes someone may have tried to open a rear window at his house, and he said a floodlight startled the suspected prowler, who then knocked over a bird feeder on the way out. Similar incidents have happened to other Brewster neighbors, and residents say they are concerned about the pattern.
A homeowner's doorbell camera captured an image of a person wearing dark pants and a light-colored hoodie, the outlet reports, though the suspect remains unidentified. Residents have reported that no one has been hurt so far, but police are not treating the situation lightly. Brewster officer Mitchell King said police fear the prowler could physically harm a resident if the pattern continues, per the same report.
Nightly Drone Patrols With Thermal Imaging
In response, the Brewster Police Department began flying its department drone on nightly patrols, using the aircraft's thermal imaging capabilities to search for the suspect from the air. King said the department is using the drone as a tool to help protect residents and solve the break-ins, and officers plan to keep flying it at night as they work to identify and apprehend the person responsible.
The aerial approach is legally straightforward under current federal rules. Federal Aviation Administration regulations under 14 CFR § 107.29 allow public safety drone pilots to fly at night without an FAA waiver, as long as the aircraft carries anti-collision lighting visible for at least three statute miles, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. That framework has let small departments like Brewster's launch night aerial patrols without the delays a formal waiver process would otherwise require.
There are constitutional limits on how far that thermal technology can be pointed, however. Under the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Kyllo v. United States, police use of thermal imaging to examine heat signatures inside a private home counts as a search requiring a warrant under the Fourth Amendment, though thermal imaging used in public airspace to spot people in open outdoor yards does not violate that restriction, according to Oyez.
What the Suspect Could Face if Caught
The legal stakes for whoever is behind the attempts are significant. Under Ohio law, an attempt to gain unauthorized entry into an occupied home with intent to commit theft or another criminal offense is charged as attempted burglary under Ohio’s attempt statute, typically one degree below the completed offense, per Ohio law. By contrast, simply entering private property without permission, without penetrating an occupied structure, is classified as criminal trespass under Ohio Revised Code § 2911.21, a fourth-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail and fines up to $250, according to the Ohio Revised Code.
For now, investigators are leaning on residents as much as technology. Officers have urged Brewster homeowners to lock their doors and windows, review their home security footage, and report any suspicious activity to police as the nightly drone flights continue.
A Tiny Village Unused to This Kind of Trouble
Brewster is a compact village in southwestern Stark County spanning just 2.27 square miles, with a population of 2,113 recorded in the 2020 U.S. Census, according to Wikipedia. The village grew up as a railroad boomtown and has served as the corporate headquarters and shop facilities for the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway since 1910, where crews once built steam locomotives and still service freight cars today.
Overall crime across Stark County averages 35.26 incidents per 1,000 residents annually, with crime levels higher in urban centers like Canton, per CrimeGrade.org. That backdrop helps explain why eight targeted overnight break-in attempts in a village of roughly 2,100 people has prompted such an aggressive response, including aerial patrols that the department has rarely needed before. Brewster's drone has flown once before for an unusual reason: in August 2022, police borrowed an aerial drone from a neighboring municipality during a multi-day search for an escaped wallaby roaming through the village.
Brewster students attend schools in the Fairless Local School District, including Fairless High School, which serves roughly 327 rural Stark County students, with more than 40% qualifying for free or reduced lunch, according to the Fairless High School Hub. For families in that close-knit district, the overnight prowling has added a new layer of unease to an otherwise quiet corner of the county. King said police simply want residents to feel safe and protected while the search for the suspect continues.
