LEWISTON — Technology was the hot topic Thursday afternoon when police and city officials gathered at the public library to talk about public safety.

Police Chief Carly Conley described how a first-responder drone could radically change the way police respond to emergencies.

She told the group of two dozen how AI-enabled cameras around the city are already doing their part to help police solve crimes — including three shootings, three stolen cars and a kidnapping so far.

For an hour, Conley and City Administrator Bryan Kaenrath discussed these plans and others as part of a Great Falls Forum presentation focused on pubic safety.

The noon presentation was the first of two public meetings held by Kaenrath and Conley on Thursday. A second “listening session” was held in the afternoon at IFKA Community Services on Lisbon Street.

Kaenrath and Conley are new in their positions, and each has made firm promises to be more transparent and open with the public.

“We want to engage,” Conley told the group. “We want this to be a partnership with the community, and Lewiston as a community needs to have all the same goals in mind. We all need to work collaboratively to get there.”

Kaenrath stressed that economic development is a priority for his administration. But to grow as a city, he said, the people who live here need to feel safe and secure.

“I think in order to really make major strides in economic development and improving the city’s image,” he said, “it starts with public safety.”

Conley described in great detail how the Police Department functions. She talked of plans for using police substations around the city and for incentivizing a program where her officers will meet regularly with the public.

She discussed what the department does to recruit police officers and how it manages to keep new hires.

But maintaining a full police force is always a challenge — the Lewiston force may be down by 12 officers by the end of summer — so the chief and city leaders will take all the help they can get from technology.

Enter the Skydio X10, an autonomous drone that soon may become kind of a souped-up police officer on the force.

The autonomous drone can get to an emergency or a crime scene in seconds. It can provide live aerial intelligence to police on the ground so that responding officers will have better information when they arrive.

It all sounds like something H.G. Wells might have created in a work of fiction, but Conley was quick to ease worries.

“They call this a ‘drone first responder,'” the chief said. “It doesn’t replace an officer. You’re not going to have a drone show up at your house when you call for help.”

Rather, the Skydio X10 will be parked at the police station and connected to the dispatch center where it will monitor priority calls.

“So if something comes in — a shooting or some other kind of serious call — it will automatically fly to that location,” Conley said.

She refers to the Skydio X10 as a kind of “eye in the sky”; one that will transmit crucial information to police officers on their way to an emergency.

“It’s an excellent tool,” the chief said.

The drone could also be used for monitoring areas of the city identified as problem zones.

Then there is Flock Safety: an array of cameras already set up around the city. The cameras are able to capture license plates, which police said has already been useful by helping them to identify a suspect’s car after a recent shooting.

Those cameras, Conley said, will focus on violent crime investigations, vehicle-related offenses and officer and victim safety.

The cameras, she said, have already yielded investigative outcomes, including a child kidnapping that was resolved with the help of information gleaned from camera images.

With so many cameras and AI-enabled gizmos at work within the city, some in the audience raised concerns about public privacy.

Conley stressed that information from the cameras is accessible only by police and only information specific to a particular investigation is used.

The Lewiston Police Department, Conley said, has an internal policy on public privacy that anyone can review.

The forum attracted roughly two dozen people. When it was over, Kaenrath and Conley went back to work for a few hours before the 5:30 p.m. “Listening Session” across the street.

Kaenrath was named city administrator in early 2025. Some of his earliest public forms focused on what the public wanted to see in a new Lewiston police chief, before Conley was tapped for the role at the end of the year.

Several in the audience Thursday commended the pair for keeping their early promises. Kaenrath and Conley have appeared together at several public meetings and more are planned.

Mayor Carl Sheline, for one, believes this is a winning formula.

“Community outreach and engagement is how we’re going to increase public safety here in Lewiston,” Sheline said, “and I appreciate Chief Conley’s fresh focus on those efforts.”