4
drone flights over Tampa that day.
1:52 am
first takeoff; the last was at 2:59 am.
20 min
median flight. Half were shorter.
Tampa police drones flew 4 times on Saturday 3 January 2026, the first at 1:52 am and the last at 2:59 am EST, by Tampa Police Department's published record.
One flight, takeoff to landingSensitive-purpose flight, as an area
Hour by hour
Takeoffs by hour, EST.
Why, in the agency's words
Flights, in order
4 flights. Those in the latest full month link to their own page; a flight with a sensitive stated purpose has no page of its own.
| Takeoff (EST) | Purpose | Airborne | Flight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1:52 am | Events | 19 min | a8902712 |
| 2:14 am | Events | 23 min | e1b6ca92 |
| 2:40 am | Events | 18 min | ca6c08d6 |
| 2:59 am | Events | 20 min | 1297bf90 |
How this page is made
- Every flight in the agency's published record is counted and listed; drawn paths are the whole flight, simplified to 10 m.
- The record's free-text description is never read into a page. A flight whose stated purpose names a domestic, sexual-assault, kidnapping, welfare, mental-health or juvenile matter is listed like any other but drawn as a generalised area, not a path.
- Operators are the agency's own accounts in the record, numbered within the agency in order of first flight; no name or address is read into a page.
- Purposes are the agency's own words, grouped into classes by a committed lookup table; unmatched values are "Other" and blank ones "Not stated".
- Times are converted to the agency's clock through the IANA zone database, never a fixed offset.
- A day is the agency's local calendar day of takeoff.
Corrections and questions: see the about page. See about this site for the sources and the publication rules.