Mendocino County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Mendocino 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.
- Fusion & investigative platforms
- Third-party platforms that fuse data across sources, sometimes including other surveillance feeds, for law-enforcement search and analysis, sold or licensed to multiple agencies rather than built by any one of them: examples include Palantir, Peregrine Systems, C3.ai, and SoundThinking's CrimeTracer (formerly Coplink X). Adjacent: an analytics layer that sits above the surveillance feeds this site otherwise tracks, rather than a sensing deployment of its own.
The record, by agency
Mendocino County Sheriff's Department
The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office operates seven Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue operates one drone, according to data compiled by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard Collegewww.mendocinosar.org
Ukiah Police Department
14 cameras measured on the agency's Flock Safety transparency portal, via UnGovr, as of August 2026.
As of April 2024, the Ukiah Police Department operates 14 Flock Safety automated license plate readers. The agency stores ALPR data for 30 days.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): The News & ObserverThe News & Observer
Fort Bragg Police Deparment
The Fort Bragg Police Department purchased 10 body-worn cameras in 2016 using federal grant money.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): City of Fort BraggCity of Fort Bragg
Mendocino County District Attorney
The Mendocino County District Attorney operates one DJI Matrice 210 drone as of 2019, according to data compiled by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard Collegewww.ukiahdailyjournal.com
Willits Police Department
The Willits Police Department began using Axon body-worn cameras in 2016.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Willits Weekly
Camera counts measured independently of this record
Flock Safety publishes a live camera count on each agency's own transparency portal. 2 agencies have a portal we read directly, with no deployment documented above for that technology. Each count below is measured, dated, and cited to the portal itself, via UnGovr, rather than a claim about what the documented record establishes.
| Agency | Technology | Cameras | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City of Fort Bragg | ALPR | 7 | July 2026 | Flock Safety transparency portal |
| City of Willits | ALPR | 4 | August 2026 | Flock Safety transparency portal |
Sources: Flock Safety transparency portals · EFF Atlas of Surveillance