Forrest County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Forrest 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
Forrest County Sheriff's Office
The Forrest County Sheriff's Office received a $500,000 Bureau of Justice Assistance grant to purchase body-worn cameras in 2022.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): US Bureau of Justice Assistance
Hattiesburg Police Department
The Hattiesburg Police Department uses Coreforce (formerly Utility) body-worn cameras. The department was one of 65 law enforcement agencies whose body-worn camera policy was analyzed by the ACLU of Mississippi in 2017.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): ACLU of MississippiAgency's Facebook Page
In 2020, the Hattiesburg Police Department began building a real-time crime center project through Project NOLA's crime camera program. The "cameras transmit video to the Project NOLA Real-Time Crime Information Center at UNO, where video may be live-monitored, stored and re-broadcast to local law enforcement."
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): The Pine Belt NewsThe Pine Belt News
The Hattiesburg Police Departmen an automated license plate reader trailer in 2017 using a $40,000 state grant.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): WDAM 7
University of Southern Mississippi's Parking Enforcement
The University of Southern Mississippi's Parking Enforcement department uses automated license plate readers.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): WDAM 7
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026