FLORIDA — Could drones be the future when it comes to policing from the skies? Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood believes so.

He also hopes that the way law enforcement agencies use helicopters now should be the same for drones.

Right now, policing agencies cannot do that. A Florida statute passed six years ago states that a judge must issue a warrant to use a drone. In 2015, the Florida Legislature passed a law forbidding drones from capturing images, saying it infringes on people's privacy.

"I understand the privacy concern," Chitwood said. "This is such a great tool. We need to be able to utilize it because we have to be ahead of what is coming our way."

Currently, agencies use drones mainly to assess damage after natural disasters or for search-and-rescue missions.

Chitwood worries the time is coming when drones are used against us.

"It would not take much to put some type of detonating charge in there, fly that in to an aircraft, fly that in to a school bus, fly it in to the stadium," he said.

The problem is, the way the law is written now, local agencies cannot do what they need to do with drones to stop it.

"Right now, to mitigate a drone (that) may be acting in a malicious manner, we have to depend on our federal partners to handle that," Capt. Brian Henderson of the Volusia County Sheriff's Office said.

The Winter Springs Police Department just got its first drone. However, it cannot fly it, because officials are still waiting for government certification.

It's not just waiting on certification in the mail that is the only restriction, either.

"One of the things that I find amazing with the drone that we have here is that it has built-censors and GPS settings," Winter Springs Police Chief Kevin Brunelle said. "It won't fly into certain areas unless you have the permissions to do that."

A citizen, though, can go online, buy a drone, fly it, and not have the same limitations that current law enforcement has.

There are two bills on the table in Tallahassee that would allow law enforcement agencies to expand how they use drones.

House Bill 75 and Senate bill 132 would let agencies use drones to assess traffic accidents, collect crime scene evidence, and help with crowd control at large public events. 

Drones would not be allowed to be used to spy on suspects without a warrant, however. The Senate bill also bans putting any kind of weapon on a police drone.

"These are an incredible tool, and I'm glad to see that the Legislature is incorporating ways for us to get this in to our arsenal," Chitwood said.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, more than two million drones have been sold in the U.S. The FAA also estimates that small, hobbyist drones will more than triple in number to 3.5 million drones by 2021.