Fayette County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Fayette 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
University of Kentucky Police Department
The University of Kentucky Police Department operates 14 Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
Lexington Police Department
The Lexington Police Department uses Brinc drones. The agency received approval to purchase drones for $300,000 in November 2024.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): WKYT
The Lexington Police Department has implemented a policy for using face recognition technology.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): The Lexington Police DepartmentKentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet
Lexington Police Department uses the Fusus camera registry system.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): 404 Media
The Lexington Police Department uses Axon's Fusus real-time crime center platform.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Lexington Herald Leader
Lexington Police Department uses automated license plate readers.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Hamburg JournalWDRBAmerican Civil Liberties Union
University of Kentucky Police
The University of Kentucky Police has implemented a policy for using face recognition technology.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): The University of Kentucky PoliceKentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet
Fayette County Sheriff's Office
The U.S. Department of Justice awarded $87,000 to the Fayette County Sheriff's Office 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
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026