A 19 year old tried to outrun a Laredo police car late on a Friday night. He did not know a drone was flying over him the whole time.
Police say Jose Ivan Osorio would not pull over for a traffic stop. It happened around 11 p.m. on Aug. 28. Osorio was driving a silver Nissan Frontier pickup, police say. He took off instead of stopping.
That is where this stops being a normal chase.
The Laredo Police Department has a Drone Operations Unit. Officers put a drone in the air. The drone stayed on the silver truck as it moved across town. Osorio drove to a house in south Laredo. Officers were waiting when he got there.
Police arrested him at the house. Someone else was riding in the truck. Officers let that person go with no charge.
Osorio is charged with evading arrest with a motor vehicle. In Texas that is a third degree felony. It can mean 2 to 10 years in prison. He is also charged with reckless driving. That is a Class B misdemeanor. It can mean up to 180 days in county jail.
He is accused, not guilty. A court decides the rest.
The drone is the part worth watching.
Laredo police showed the program to the city in July 2025. Officers trained on the drones for six months first. Then they flew them for two more months before the public saw them.
The idea is simple. A call comes in. A drone lifts off. It gets there before a patrol car can. Officers on the ground watch the live video on a screen.
Police said a drone can reach a scene in under a minute. Laredo started with two drones. The plan is to build six drone stations around the city.
Only officers with an FAA pilot license fly them. The money came from the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority. That is a state program in Texas. It pays for work on car theft and public safety.
Police have used the drones on missing person calls. They have used them on drug overdose calls, family violence calls and stolen car reports. They have used them on search and rescue. They have used them to watch the edges of a scene during a standoff.
A runner in a pickup truck is a newer use.
Car chases are one of the most dangerous things a cop does. Speeds go up fast on city streets. Other drivers do not see it coming. Some Texas departments now call chases off early for that reason.
A drone changes the math. The camera stays on the truck. The patrol cars can back off. Officers can go meet the driver where he stops. That is close to what Laredo police describe here.
Laredo is a good place to test it. The city sits right on the border across from Nuevo Laredo. It is one of the busiest truck crossings in the country. Traffic runs hard on the loop and on the roads south toward Zapata. Police here work a lot of car cases.
Drones also raise questions people ask in every city that flies them. How long is the video kept? Who gets to look at it later? What happens to footage of people who did nothing wrong?
For now, the number that matters is one minute. That is how fast police say a drone can be over a scene. A car cannot do that. A helicopter costs far more.
South Texas readers should expect to see more of this. Other border agencies fly drones too. Border Patrol in Laredo used one in February to find six people who had crossed into the country.
Police have not said anything else about the Aug. 28 arrest. They have not said how far the truck went. They have not said how fast it was going. Osorio still faces both charges.
A charge is not proof. Everyone is innocent until a court says otherwise.
