Western Australia
Technology presence
What these categories mean
- ANPR
- Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR): camera systems that automatically capture, read, and log vehicle number plates with location and time, producing a searchable record of vehicle movements.
- Fixed cameras & RTCC
- Agency-operated fixed video cameras and the real-time crime centers (RTCC) that aggregate live and recorded feeds for monitoring.
- Face recognition
- Software that matches faces in images or video against a reference database to identify or verify individuals.
- Drones / UAS
- Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), commonly called drones, operated by an agency for overhead observation, imaging, or sensing.
- Gunshot detection
- Networks of acoustic sensors that detect and locate suspected gunfire and alert an agency.
- Body-worn & dashcam
- Officer body-worn and in-vehicle dashboard cameras that record encounters; public access to the footage is frequently restricted.
- Doorbell & camera registry
- Programs that give an agency access to privately owned camera footage: doorbell-camera partnerships, citizen camera registries, and private-camera integration platforms.
- Cell-site simulators
- Devices that mimic cell towers to locate or identify nearby mobile phones. They are often called Stingrays, or IMSI catchers after the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number that identifies each phone on a network. Adjacent: communications surveillance outside the visual/sensor core.
- Predictive policing
- Software that forecasts where crime may occur or who may be involved, to direct policing. Adjacent: analytics rather than a sensing deployment.
- Social-media monitoring
- Tools that collect and analyze public social-media activity for an agency. Adjacent: open-source/communications monitoring outside the visual/sensor core.
The record, by operator
Western Australia Police Force
A September 2024 Sphere Drones contract supplies drone-in-a-box docking systems for a wider statewide rollout of remote operations under CASA approvals. A year-long Drone as First Responder trial began at Yanchep Police Station in August 2024, completing 80 flights by the announcement date for tasks including missing-person searches and tracking wanted vehicles. An RPAS program has been running since 2019 with a dedicated 13-officer team and nearly 100 part-time trained pilots statewide.
Sources: WA Government media statement, law enforcement drone trial in Perth (Aug 2024)DroneLife, Sphere Drones secures contract with WA Police Force (Sep 2024)
The force reported a 25 percent reduction in complaints alleging excessive force and unlawful arrest after the cameras went into use. Rollout began in the Pilbara and Mid West Gascoyne districts and reached all frontline officers by June 2021. 4,184 Axon Body 2 cameras were deployed alongside matching Signal Sidearm sensors that start recording when a firearm is drawn, under an $18 million five-year contract announced in March 2019.
Sources: Axon press release, WA Police deploys more than 4,000 Axon Body 2 cameras (Mar 2019)ARN, WA Police awards $18m body camera contract (2019)
Automatic number plate recognition deployed in more than 80 police vehicles, operating through an in-vehicle application integrated with Apple CarPlay.
Sources: Motorola Solutions press release
City of Perth City Watch
In 2019 the council trialled BriefCam video analytics on the network, including facial and gender recognition and movement tracking, under a $1 million Smart Cities grant. The City Watch network of more than 800 council-reported cameras is monitored 24 hours a day from a control room where two WA Police officers work each day alongside the city's surveillance operators and a 15-member ranger patrol team, with footage retained for 31 days under a public Code of Practice.
Sources: City of Perth, security and surveillanceThe West Australian, City of Perth BriefCam trial (May 2019)
Source: the public record. Australian police-force and government publications, regulator decisions, and Victorian Government open data (Road Safety Camera Network dataset); per-entry citations on each record · retrieved July 2026