When asked last year about the city’s connection to the SkyGuardian, Capt. Jeff Jordon, who manages special projects for the police chief, told the Union-Tribune he hadn’t heard of the drone but assumed the public wouldn’t react well to it. “People are concerned about the smart streetlights, so I can only imagine how they would feel about these,” he said.

People are "concerned" about them because they absolutely do not work, resulting in hundreds or thousands of people getting tickets for things they haven't done, and this has been well documented for a long time. They're also "concerned" because it's well established that these cameras have literally nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with generating revenue for the city that operates them. In fact studies have also demonstrated these cameras are positively correlated with increases in accidents, including accidents involving injuries.

In any case, allowing police departments to load up on military gear in general has not at all helped to increase public safety- very much the opposite. The increasing militarization of municipal police forces is a huge problem in this country. Police and military are supposed to serve very different functions. The police are (ostensibly) there to help people. The military is a hammer, and when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.