After an officer's killing, TDOC asks senators for drone detection funding and outlines intelligence center

Tennessee Department of Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada told the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee that drones have become an emerging and growing method to introduce contraband into prison yards and that the department has added a FY27 request to expand drone‑detection and countermeasure capabilities and to establish a centralized security intelligence center.

Strada opened his presentation by recognizing the murder of correctional officer Dustin Pedego at Morgan County Regional Correctional Facility and said the department's priorities include improving detection, modernizing technology and stabilizing the workforce. He said TDOC currently supervises about 20,000 state inmates and roughly 5,000 additional state inmates are in county jails.

TDOC finance staff clarified the department has entered a multi‑year contract with Axon Enterprises for AI camera overlays and related surveillance contracts, described in hearing testimony as a five‑year agreement with a $20 million notional total (presenters clarified the contract is planned at roughly $4 million per year). In addition, TDOC requested recurring funds (~$1.8M recurring referenced in testimony) for dedicated drone detection and another allocation for intelligence center staffing and operations.

Committee members asked pointed questions: how drones are detected and whether TDOC can disable or intercept drones (TDOC said FAA rules prohibit shooting down or disabling aircraft and that interdiction would require law enforcement collaboration), whether the drone detection duplicates items in the Axon contract (TDOC explained the Axon AI overlays existing cameras while drone detection uses Skydio hardware, radar and RF systems that integrate with Axon), and why additional staff are needed to operate a shared training campus (the new MELIDA campus will co‑locate multiple agencies, TDOC observed similar scale management issues).

Senators also raised the recent death of Officer Pedego and pressed TDOC about prior warnings concerning jam‑style cell locks at Morgan County. TDOC said a lock replacement program began in 2013 and the agency is in the middle of a long replacement schedule; as an immediate mitigation after the incident it installed padlocks with a waiver from the fire marshal and said it is conducting an after‑action review while a criminal investigation proceeds.

Other fiscal issues discussed included an expanded hepatitis C treatment request (TDOC said the base recurring budget included roughly $9.5M, with a one‑time boost of $27M in the current year to address backlog and a requested additional $10M), county jail growth funding (TDOC sought $13.1M for increased county jail populations but that increase was not funded), and a procurement reissue for the statewide court system after a December protest.

What happens next: TDOC agreed to demonstrate the proposed systems and to provide follow‑up documentation on contract totals, procurement memoranda and deferred maintenance requests. The committee deferred detailed consideration of parts of the TDOC budget to a later meeting to allow more information to be gathered.

Representative quotes are included from the hearing where speakers self‑identified or were introduced; committee members repeatedly asked for documentation to substantiate contract totals and fiscal notes before votes.