An NYPD surveillance drone malfunctioned, crashed, and caught fire in Brooklyn Bridge Park just steps from the FIFA World Cup Fan Zone in DUMBO on June 30, according to the Brooklyn Eagle. No one was injured.
The drone went down just after 9:40 p.m. at 1 Water St., near Emily Warren Roebling Plaza, south of the Fan Zone’s main entrance. A match between Panama and Croatia had ended about an hour earlier, but the Fan Zone, with World Cup entertainment, food, and retail, stayed open and unaffected through its normal 10 p.m. closing time, the Eagle reported.
NYPD told the Eagle that officers were operating the drone above the park when it “had a malfunction and fell from an elevated position,” causing the lithium-ion battery to catch fire. FDNY received an alert that the battery was “smoking” and dispatched one fire engine, one ladder truck, and a hazmat unit. The fire did not spread. FDNY closed the incident at 10:26 p.m.
Members of NYPD’s Technical Assistance Response Unit, which operates the department’s roughly 100 drones, recovered a piece of the downed drone afterward and loaded it into an SUV. The cause had not been determined as of the Eagle’s reporting.
Skydio, which manufactured the drone, said it found no evidence of a safety malfunction. “We are aware of the incident involving an NYPD drone and are working closely with the NYPD to understand what occurred,” a Skydio spokesperson told the Eagle. “We have analyzed available flight logs and have found no evidence of a safety malfunction that could have caused the incident.” The company said it would continue to support NYPD’s review and share updates as it progresses.
This is the second NYPD Skydio drone to catch fire. On May 12, 2025, a Skydio X10 drone used by the 71st Precinct in Crown Heights caught fire after landing on a precinct rooftop. Skydio CEO Adam Bry said on LinkedIn after that incident that the root cause was “battery connector wear,” and that the company had since developed a telemetry signature to detect early warning signs of the problem, monitoring its X10 fleet and contacting customers whose units show excessive wear.
The June 30 crash involved one of the Skydio X10 drones used in NYPD’s Drone as First Responder program, which former Mayor Eric Adams launched in November 2024. Lithium-ion batteries are hazardous in drone crashes. Mechanical damage can cause the battery’s internal separator to fail, triggering a self-fueling reaction called thermal runaway, according to the Underwriter Labs Research Institute, as the Eagle noted.
NYPD drones were used 2,595 times in the first three months of 2026, according to the city’s mandatory quarterly drone report cited by the Eagle. Brooklyn led all five boroughs with 1,246 operations during that period, followed by the Bronx with 1,011. The most common reason for Brooklyn deployments was the Drone as First Responder program itself, responding to 911 calls, ShotSpotter alerts, and crimes in progress.
The department has also invested $6.5 million in counter-drone technology to protect major events including the FIFA World Cup. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, in her State of the NYPD 2026 address in May, said drones rank among the department’s top security concerns. “If there is one threat that keeps me up at night, it is drones,” she said, citing the ease with which commercial drones can be adapted into weapons. FEMA has awarded $250 million in counter-drone grants to all 11 FIFA World Cup host states and the National Capital Region, with another $250 million available to states and territories in fiscal year 2027, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Featured image: Photo: Mary Frost/Brooklyn Eagle
