Here's an EFF release about FAA drone certificates.

Here's the list, along with a google map noting locations.

Some of them make sense: CAL FIRE, the fire-fighting branch of the California Dept of Forestry has a license, a lot of universities, and the four branches of the military (duh, they have drones in spades). But the North Little Rock police department?? really? you need a drone(s)?

I imagine Newport Beach and Costa Mesa CA are both on the list of applicants.

When I was a much younger lass, my apartment was under three ghetto bird flight paths which both PDs would fly nightly after 9:00pm. Good times, if by good times you mean being kept awake by a GD helicopter flying over your house.

This is where I wish we had a judiciary with a backbone and respect for individual liberties so I could trust the police a little more with this stuff. Yeah the invasive use of this and similar technology is very concerning but the potential benefits could outweigh that concern for me.

This year I crashed my mountain bike 7 miles from the car. I woke up alone in the middle of the night, my face smashed in, my tongue hanging out of my mouth by a thin sliver of flesh. I didn't know it yet but I left a couple teeth out there and had fluid pooling in my basal skull area too. I was very lucky I was able to self extricate. The hour or two it took to get to the hospital were the worst of my life, cried like a little baby. It has given me profound respect for search and rescue. I want those guys armed to the hilt with toys like this so they find me quickly when I hit that button on my Spot.

Most of the UAs (the people who build and use the things never call them "drones"; that's a media coinage) that police departments are using are very small things flown below 1,000 feet, and so fall under FAA rules for model aircraft. Which is essentially what they are. They don't have the lifting capacity to fly with a weapon on board. Larger ones are almost entirely confined to the military at this point. The FAA currently has no rules for how they are going to authorize civilian UA flights.

I'm in the mapping industry and it was really cool to see mapping grade UAs at the big conference last year. They look like mini stealth bombers. The cost of manned lidar/aerial mapping has come way down in recent years but still way too much to mobilize more than every few years. I think they make a fair point about mapping accident scenes and natural disasters and the like. Too bad it will inevitably net a bunch of pot raids in the process.

I wouldn't care if the S&R, Rangers, etc. to map or monitor conditions have them. But for that matter, all it would take is a couple of satellites to do infrared checks of national and state forest lands for hot spots could take care of forest fire warnings. (Hint: the technology exists courtesy of the cold war.)

As for use by law enforcement -- I could see a tactical use, i.e. launched to get a tactical view in a car accident, SWAT team reaction, etc. The use as general surveillance method -- that is gets into Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations. Just like the TSA.