Stephen Baxley
Stephen Baxley is the founder and operator of Airworx Unmanned Solutions. Since 2017, his vision is to be the leading expert in developing unmanned and robotics programs within public safety, in an effort to reduce risk and enhance life-saving responses.
Stephen began his public safety service as an explorer cadet with an upstate SC agency in 1994 at the age of 14. He quickly grew his interest into a passion for full-time volunteering service in public safety. Stephen was certified by the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy in 2001 and has over twenty-three years as a law enforcement officer, and thirty years total in public safety.
In his professional career, Stephen has served in the communication technology field and assisted during numerous hurricane responses, under the emergency response team (ERT) with Nextel Communications (Sprint Nextel), providing critical communication support at the disaster sites.
Stephen has assisted dozens of public safety agencies, in multiple states, by integrating and developing UAS/drone programs. Stephen, as a reserve deputy sheriff, developed the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office UAS program in 2019. In 2021, after transferring to the Easley Police Department, Stephen was the Chief Pilot and Drone First Responder (DFR) Manager, helping develop one of the countries first series of DFR programs. EPD had the first DFR program in South Carolina. After 3 years with Easley PD, Stephen transferred to the South Carolina State Constables where he can now work alongside and support multiple municipal, county and state agencies with their drone programs.
“After committing the majority of my life to public safety in law enforcement, I have observed and analyzed hundreds of task and scenarios that can be accomplished with less risk to the public safety professional, and greater success to the victims or citizens by using robotic technology”
Stephen’s passion in the industry continues to develop relationships with the best vendors in the Unmanned industry to provide the most valuable solutions to the public safety and private industry though the enterprise sector.
From 2021 to 2022, Stephen served on the Board of Directors for the South Carolina Interagency Drone Users Consortium (SCiDUC).
Contact Stephen by phone at 864.303.2002 or sbaxley@airworxdrone.com
