On Sunday, June 23, 2024, BPD officers stopped 32-year-old Dean Allen Bromley of The Dalles, Oregon for a traffic violation near the Elmonica Max station in north Beaverton. Bromley initially identified himself as Leroy Miller born in 1999. Bromley, who identified himself as Miller, was not able to tell officers how old he was, saying he was 22 or 23 years old. When officers moved to detain Bromley for providing false information to a police officer, he fled on foot.
Beaverton Police Department officers set up a perimeter to contain Bromley and radioed for a drone to respond. Washington County Deputies from the Remote Operated Vehicle Team responded.
The Remote Operated Vehicle Team, otherwise known as ROVT, is an interagency team comprised of law enforcement officers and deputies from the Hillsboro Police Department, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and the Beaverton Police Department.
Currently, the team has 12 members who are trained to operate the 25 drones and an avatar robot assigned to the team. The avatar robot is a tracked vehicle used for building searches and is equipped with a camera and a two-way communication device.
Within minutes of the ROVT drone deployment, the licensed pilot, a Washington County Sheriff’s Deputy, located Dean Bromley hiding in heavy brush. Using the drone’s camera, the Washington County ROVT operator was able to vector in Beaverton Police Officers and Washington County Deputies to Bromley’s location.
Bromley was taken into custody and correctly identified, not as Leroy Miller, but Dean Bromley. Bromley was lodged at the Washington County Jail on a felony warrant out of the State of Washington’s Department of Corrections for Escape.
