if anyone here is in Asheville, NC, it looks like your police force is using DJI Matrice thermal+visible camera drones. It's a $10,000 (US) drone, but you can rent it for a day for $500, though renting just the camera is probably even cheaper if you can get data off it without needing a drone body, though you'll need to figure out which model or if they have similar spectral filters. Use that information as you will.

You might play around with what lighting makes your subjects look better, and what makes them look washed out, even at the ranges the drone is usually taking photographs. 30x optical zoom gets you pretty good resolution even at a distance.