Tuscaloosa County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Tuscaloosa County.
Technology presence
What these categories mean
- ALPR
- Automated license plate readers (ALPR): camera systems that automatically capture, read, and log vehicle license 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. Extends the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Atlas, which enumerates real-time crime centers and camera registries but not standalone fixed-camera estates.
- 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 agency
Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office
The Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office operates 30 Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
The U.S. Department of Justice awarded $30,000 to the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office in 2018 as part of the Bureau of Justice Assistance's body-worn camera grant program.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): U.S Department of Justiceexternal.ojp.usdoj.govabcnews.go.com
Tuscaloosa Police Department
The Tuscaloosa Police Department operates 19 Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
The Tuscaloosa police department operates a drone as first responder program.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): WVTM13CitizenPortal.aiMyNBC15
The Tuscaloosa Police Department began using body-worn cameras in mid the 2010s, but in 2024 a new policy was adopted requiring all officers to wear them.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Government AgencyWBRC 6NewsAL.com
The Tuscaloosa Police Department maintains a voluntary registry of private and personal surveillance cameras through Motorola Solutions' CityProtect platform.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): SafeguardTuscaloosaWVUA
Northport Police Department
The Northport Police Department purchased two Flock Safety automated license plate readers in 2020 and has access to Flock ALPRs system maintained by local home owner associations.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Tuscaloosa ThreadCity of Northport
University of Alabama Police Department
The University of Alabama Police Department uses body-worn cameras.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): University of Alabama Facebook Page
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026