Douglas County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Douglas 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
Lawrence Police Department
The Lawrence Police Department launched a camera registry in July 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Lawrence TimesLawrence Police DepartmentLawrence Police Department Facebook
The Lawrence Police Department adopted an automated license plate reader policy. The police department said it intends to integrated ALPRs into its real-time operations center in 2026.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): City of LawrenceCity of Lawrence
The Lawrence Police Department uses drones.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Lawrence Times
The Lawrence Police Department maintains an annual subscription with BriefCam as recently as February 2020.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Commission ReportBuzzfeedLawrence Police Department
The U.S. Department of Justice awarded $231,000 to the Lawrence Police Department in 2017 as part of the Bureau of Justice Assistance's body-worn camera grant program.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): U.S Department of Justice
University of Kansas Police Department
The University of Kansas Police Department received a Small, Rural, and Tribal Body-Worn Camera Program grant for $19,000 for 18 body-worn cameras in 2023.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Justice & Security StrategiesJustice & Security Strategies
University of Kansas Transportation Services Office
The University of Kansas began using automated license plate readers for parking enforcement in 2015.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): 8/17/2015
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026