More cities and towns deployed drones to spot illegal fireworks during the Fourth of July celebrations commemorating America’s 250th anniversary—leading to a $100,000 fine in one instance and coming as part of a broader national trend of first responders turning to drone surveillance.

Police and fire departments have described using both increased drone surveillance and steep fines to deter people from shooting off illegal fireworks, with many departments publicizing their drone videos on social media and warning that their drones will be watching in the future. Incidents involving illegal fireworks have led to costly fires , injuries, and even multiple deaths each year, along with creating local air and noise pollution for residential neighborhoods.

This year, the $100,000 fine for illegal fireworks came from the Sacramento Fire Department in Northern California deploying its own drones for the first time on the Fourth of July, according to CBS News Sacramento . Sacramento Fire Captain Justin Sylvia described the fire department’s drones as being capable of recording scenes in high-resolution video to help investigators identify the house or closest location using Google Maps.

Such drone capabilities allowed the fire department to count the fireworks being fired from a gathering near a home in the Del Paso Heights neighborhood of Sacramento, according to the TV news station KCRA 3 . The drone also showed a U-Haul trailer containing fireworks catching fire at one point, although the people at the gathering managed to put it out.

The resulting $100,000 fine came from counting the number of fireworks and possibly other factors. Sacramento County assigns fines for illegal fireworks starting at $1,000 per device and as high as $10,000 per device used near sensitive areas such as schools or parks. But felony criminal charges punishable by imprisonment are also possible if illegal fireworks cause a fire that leads to property damage or bodily injury.

The Sacramento Fire Department issued 70 citations on July 4, totaling $300,000 in fines. But the department was also looking to assign additional citations on July 2 and July 3. Sylvia told KCRA 3 that the department had previously issued a $1 million fine to a single individual in 2025.

In Central California, the Salinas Fire Department posted a promotional sizzle reel to Instagram featuring drone footage of various illegal fireworks activities and warning that it expected to issue nearly 100 citations from the Fourth of July weekend. The department first began training a dozen of its firefighters to become certified drone pilots in 2022, Monterey County Now reported.

The trend of first responders deploying drones has accelerated significantly since 2025, when the US Federal Aviation Administration reworked its regulations to enable faster approvals of waivers enabling police and fire departments to fly drones beyond the operator’s visual line of sight.

Sacramento Fire’s drones crack down on illegal fireworks.

Unleash the drone sizzle reels

Several police departments in Southern California also deployed drone teams for the first time in 2026 to identify the locations of illegal fireworks activity. The Anaheim Police Department used drones to help issue 40 citations and confiscate 2,500 pounds of illegal fireworks, according to The Orange County Register.

The newspaper also confirmed that the Santa Ana Police Department deployed drones for the first time this year. The drones assisted the department in issuing 107 citations—though the citations were issued to property owners at addresses where illegal fireworks activity took place rather than to specific perpetrators.

The Santa Ana Police Department further claimed that its drone operators assisted in the seizure of nearly 1,300 pounds of illegal fireworks in a promotional reel posted to social media, which played the “Bad Boys” music of the American TV show Cops as the soundtrack.

Meanwhile, the La Habra Police Department posted a less flashy video to Facebook showing a drone video of a person lighting a firework in the middle of a residential street. It described its drone unit as helping with the issuance of “numerous citations” and leading to arrests in some cases for fireworks violations.

The Riverside Police Department has attributed its increase in citations for illegal fireworks to having deployed drones starting in 2025, according to the Los Angeles Times . The newspaper also listed other California cities such as Downey, Artesia, Brea, San Bernardino, Stanton, Chino, Hemet, and San Jose as deploying drones over the Fourth of July holiday.

California cities may be the most aggressive in using drones to hunt down illegal fireworks so far, but there are examples elsewhere. This year, the Lewisville Police Department in Texas shared footage with CBS News of its drone responding to 19 fireworks incidents on July 4, and reported several instances in which people firing off fireworks decided to stop and clear out once the drone arrived.

Washington state’s Renton Police Department also posted drone video from this past Fourth of July weekend and has deployed drones for the past three years to spot people setting off illegal fireworks in the suburb of Seattle, according to MyNorthwest .

This all fits a broader trend of “drone as first responder” programs growing across the United States, as tech companies pitch law enforcement on drones equipped with a variety of surveillance capabilities. More than 1,800 police departments and sheriff’s offices have operated drones in the United States, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Atlas of Surveillance database. Such drones “should require clear policies around retention, audits, and use, including when the cameras shouldn’t be recording,” according to Beryl Lipton , a senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Incidentally, some US communities used drones on America’s 250th anniversary for a very different purpose—supplementing or even replacing official fireworks displays with drone swarms that put on coordinated and colorful shows in the sky. Such displays are both cleaner and quieter than fireworks, while significantly lowering the risk of starting fires in dry summer conditions.

Jeremy Hsu is a reporter exploring a wide range of topics across deep tech and AI. He has previously written for New Scientist, Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Wired, Undark Magazine and MIT Tech Review, among many other publications, about topics such as deepfakes, data centers, drones, battery tech, robotics, and GPS jamming. He also has a Master of Arts in Journalism from NYU, and a bachelor's degree from University of Pennsylvania in History and Sociology of Science, with a minor in English.

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