Clovis police drone tracks suspect in donut shop tip jar theft

A stolen tip jar with about $10 inside still mattered at Liv’s Donuts near Fowler and Herndon avenues in Clovis, because that money was part of the day’s take for workers standing behind the counter. Clovis police said the theft happened Monday, April 13, 2026, and ended with an arrest after officers used a drone to track down the suspect.

Police said the jar was taken from the front counter and that the response was quick enough to keep the case from becoming just another small loss for a neighborhood business. Officers deployed a drone, located the suspect and arrested that person for theft. The tip jar was then returned to the business.

The episode shows how a low-dollar theft can still hit a small shop hard. In food service and retail, tips often help make up wages, and even a modest amount of cash can matter when it disappears from a register area or counter where employees are trying to serve customers and keep business moving. At Liv’s Donuts, the theft was not just a nuisance. It was a direct hit to the people working the shift.

Clovis police have increasingly framed drones as a practical tool for exactly this kind of response. The department says its unmanned aerial vehicles are used as a reactive tool for calls for service and can help officers locate suspects, missing persons and items of evidence, as well as assist with crime-scene and collision reconstruction. The department also says public flight data for patrol UAVs and the drone-as-a-first-responder program is posted within 48 hours for transparency.

City reporting on the drone-first-responder program says the technology is meant to cut response time and can capture details such as license plates from about 200 feet in the air. That gives Clovis a faster way to follow a suspect through a neighborhood and ties street-level policing to a broader push to make visible retail crime easier to solve.

The Clovis Police Department says it serves a community of more than 129,000 people and has described its goal as remaining the Safest City in the Central San Joaquin Valley. In a city built around busy corridors, small restaurants and neighborhood shops, even a $10 tip jar can become a test of how quickly police can respond and how far technology can reach.