City of Pittsfield

Berkshire County · Massachusetts

3 Deployments on record

1 Agencies

3 Technology categories

Technology presence

ALPR · 1 Fixed cameras & RTCC · none on record Face recognition · none on record Drones / UAS · none on record Gunshot detection · 1 Body-worn & dashcam · 1 Doorbell & camera registry · none on record Cell-site simulators · none on record Predictive policing · none on record Social-media monitoring · none on record

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

Pittsfield Police Department

Pittsfield · 3 deployments · last documented Feb 2023 · on UnGovr: City of Pittsfield

ALPR Vendor: Axon

The Pittsfield Police Department made a 60-month, $281,000 arrangement with Axon in 2023 to equip 20 police cruisers with cameras with automated license plate reading capability.

Sources (via the EFF Atlas): WAMC

Body-worn & dashcam

The Pittsfield Police Department received a grant of $166,586.73 from the Massachusetts FY23 Body-Worn Cameras (BWC) Grant Program.

Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security

Gunshot detection Vendor: ShotSpotter

The Pittsfield Police Department began using ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology in 2017. The system was paid for with a $300,000 gift from Berkshire Health Systems.

Sources (via the EFF Atlas): WRGB 6 iBerkshire iBerkshire

Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026