Police and sheriff's departments across America are using AI-powered drones for pursuits, investigations and emergencies — even delivering Narcan to stop overdose deaths.

• Why it matters: Local law enforcement agencies are facing chronic staffing shortages amid pressures to reduce violent crime. AI-powered drones can do some police work — but using them raises new questions about surveillance and privacy, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

📈 Some 1,500 police and sheriff's departments were flying drones by late 2024 — a 150% jump since 2018, per Police1.com, a law enforcement news site.

• Drones cost a fraction of human-flown helicopters, and federal grants and state budgets are increasingly footing the bill for equipment and training.

How it works: Police deploy drones powered with AI and equipped with cameras and sensors, which means they can interpret footage and act on it.

• The technology is far more powerful than your standard human-operated drone. They're dispatched in response to 911 calls and act as a new kind of first-responder unit, assessing active shooter events or natural disasters and dropping off supplies and medicine.

⚖️ What we're watching: It's unclear what police are doing with that data or what's happening to the data in the hands of private companies, Beryl Lipton, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Axios.

• The ACLU Foundation of Northern California is going after Sonoma County in a lawsuit that's being closely monitored as a test case that could set limits of police drone use.

The suit was filed over allegations the county is using drones to collect images of residents' backyards, swimming pools and homes through windows without warrants.

• It claims that, after drone flights, residents have received citations about code violations and warnings about too many hemp plants on properties.

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Everything's an economic indicator these days — from offbeat numbers on restaurant reservations and visits to the Statue of Liberty to more standard info on job listings, Axios' Emily Peck reports.

• Why it matters: Companies and investors are scrambling for alternatives to the data put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which halted almost all releases in the government shutdown. Businesses use the numbers to make big decisions about hiring, firing, prices, spending — even figuring out what goods to sell to consumers.

🍽️ Zoom in: A few days after the shutdown started, Apollo Global Management put out a 75-page pdf stuffed with charts tracking all kinds of data put out by the private sector:

• To figure out consumer spending, they suggest looking at: Open Table data on restaurant reservations; weekly hotel occupancy numbers; Broadway show and movie attendance — even visits to Las Vegas.

For a read on the job market, there are a lot of alternatives, too, many more conventional:

• Jobs site Indeed tracks the number of job listings, ADP has data from Americans' paychecks.

💡 BLS did decide that some data was just too important to pause.

• Yesterday, the agency said it would release its monthly Consumer Price Index report, albeit a bit late, because it is crucial to determining annual cost of living increases for millions of Social Security recipients.

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On the last trading day before this bull market's third anniversary, the S&P 500 closed down 2.7%.

• It was the biggest drop since April — a month that saw the White House announce a raft of new import taxes on global trading partners.

Reality check: Despite yesterday's sharp decline, the S&P 500 remains up over 11% year-to-date, up 88% in the last three years and within roughly 3% of its all-time high.

• The record-breaking run for U.S. stock indexes has been accompanied by recent strong gains for other assets, including gold, silver and bitcoin, Reuters notes.

Catch up quick: The market took a hit yesterday after President Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese goods next month if China follows through on plans to tighten export controls on a range of minerals the U.S. desperately needs to power the AI boom.

• The latest threats between the two nations could reignite a tit-for-tat trade war with the potential to rattle America's economy, Axios' Andrew Childers, Josephine Walker and Courtenay Brown report.

The second Monday in October — Oct. 13 this year — is a federal holiday officially known as Columbus Day. A small, but increasing, number of states and cities now mark it as Indigenous Peoples Day instead, Axios' Kelly Tyko reports.

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We may have hit peak social media in 2022.

• Why it matters: Social platforms used to be the place to see and be seen, but they're increasingly filled with AI-generated videos and creators chasing virality. It's turning people off, the Financial Times reports ($).

Zoom out: Nearly every age group is spending less time on social media than they were a couple years ago, according to a GWI analysis of the online behavior of 250,000 people in 50 countries.

• The sharpest decline is among 16- to 24-year-olds.

The intrigue: "There is one notable exception to this promising international trend: North America, where consumption of social media's diet of extreme rhetoric, engagement bait and slop continues to climb," according to the FT.

• "By 2024 it had reached levels 15% higher than Europe."

🔮 Go deeper: Axios' Scott Rosenberg called it in 2022, "Sunset of the social network."

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been somewhat of an outlier in San Francisco.

• "While other tech titans built private rocket ships and scooped up super yachts, Benioff was known for spreading large sums of money around San Francisco, his hometown. He tended toward the liberal side of Silicon Valley politics. He lectured other business leaders about the importance of helping homeless people instead of complaining about them," The New York Times' Heather Knight reports (gift link).

But Benioff is changing his tune. This week, he told the Times that President Trump should send National Guard troops to San Francisco, like he has to D.C., Chicago and LA.

• "We don't have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I'm all for it."

The big picture: Benioff — whose company has hundreds of federal contracts — is one of several Bay Area tech tycoons more closely aligning themselves with Trump.

• At a White House dinner last month, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Bill Gates all lavished praise on the president.

👀 "At the end of the interview, [Benioff] turned to a public relations executive. He could be heard asking why her mouth was wide open and if he had said anything he shouldn't have," Knight reports.

• "What about the political questions?" he asked. "Too spicy?" Then he hung up.

The Las Vegas Aces became WNBA champs for the third time in four years last night after completing a four-game sweep of the Phoenix Mercury.

• Stat du jour: "Aces superstar and four-time league MVP A'ja Wilson led the way in Game 4, finishing with 31 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 blocks en route to earning Finals MVP honors," ESPN reports.

"You have your Mount Rushmore, she's alone on Everest," Aces coach Becky Hammon said. "There's no one around."

Forget secrets — more people are taking recipes to the grave, carving their signature cookies, pies and dips on their headstones.

• A new cookbook, "To Die For," from author Rosie Grant, is the first to compile such recipes from around the country, Axios D.C.'s Anna Spiegel reports.

The book celebrates 40 beloved dishes — from spritz cookies to guava cobbler, and Irish coffee — alongside reflections from families.

• While full recipes are rare, more gravestones reference food — take Julia Child's memorial, which offers a final culinary tip: "Fat gives things flavor."

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