A general order issued last month by Mayor Chris Beutler makes it clear Lincoln’s officers are not authorized to fly unmanned aerial vehicles, which in recent years have begun to grace the skies in places such as Arlington, Texas; Gadsden, Ala.; and Mesa County, Colo.

The ban on remote-controlled eyes in the sky is part of the department’s first comprehensive general order dealing specifically with officers’ ability to monitor and record. Many of the policies in the new order previously were addressed piecemeal under other rules. Department administrators updated those rules and gathered them into a single general order at the mayor’s request last year after police installed a couple cameras at the corner of 14th and O streets.

Authorities installed and tested the cameras, but turned them off after community members raised privacy concerns. It was then that Police Chief Jim Peschong and Public Safety Director Tom Casady announced it would be up to the mayor to decide whether the cameras would stay.

After a year of discussion, Beutler last month approved both the downtown cameras and the department’s new general order. Officers will not actively watch the cameras; instead, they only will check footage when a crime is suspected to have been recorded. Cameras will capture three days of footage, then loop and record over it. The cameras record only video, not audio.

A single sentence in the new policy addressing drones — which Beutler specifically requested — guarantees the mayor will not have to face a similar act-now-apologize-later situation on that issue.

Beutler called drones an emerging technology for police use and said city officials need a better understanding of their implication before law enforcement orders a few.

Peschong said drones do have potential as a police tool and could be used for tracking criminals, assessing chemical spills and evaluating large traffic crashes. But even if his department had approval to get one, the process for getting Federal Aviation Administration approval and training a crew to run a drone is long and involved.

The Federal Aviation Administration last year released a list of 81 entities licensed to fly drones in the United States in response to a Freedom of Information Act requested by the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. The list includes universities, law enforcement, forestry and fire protection districts, as well as other government agencies.

Amy Miller, the legal director for American Civil Liberties Union, said the new policies addressing recording technology are a positive step, but the ACLU still has concerns about potential abuse and violations of privacy.

“We still have a fundamental disagreement about whether installation of cameras is a good choice for Lincoln,” Miller said.

The new order also addresses another issue the ACLU has taken issue with: how long police can keep images captured by automated license plate readers. Lincoln has two car-mounted scanners that read license plates searching for stolen cars and vehicles actively being looked for by police. But they also scan the plates of law-abiding citizens.

“We have great concerns about this random surveillance of everybody,” Miller said. “If you know my car is parked outside of a mosque or an alcohol treatment center. You then know about my religion. You might know about my medical or mental health conditions.”

The new rule says those records will be deleted after 45 days. Previously, Lincoln police stored the images indefinitely, although Peschong said the data was never reviewed.

The new general order includes changes made recently to the Nebraska Secretary of State’s Records Retention and Disposition Schedule for municipal police, which dictates how long departments can keep recordings and records.

That schedule was updated in October for the first time since 1991, said Norfolk Police Chief Bill Mizner, vice president of the Nebraska Police Chiefs Association, which worked with the Secretary of State's Office on the new language.