Mercer County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Mercer 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
Mercer County Sheriff's Office
The Mercer County Sheriff's Office operates 10 Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
The Mercer County Sheriff’s Office received more than $50,000 in grant funds for the Ohio's Governor's Office for body-worn cameras in 2023. In January 2022, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine awarded $43,832.46 to the agency for expenses associated with launching or maintaining body-worn camera programs.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Office of the GovernorOffice of the GovernorOhio Governor's Office
The Mercer County Sheriff's Office operates one Yuneec Typhoon 4K drone as of 2016, 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.dailystandard.comwww.dailystandard.com
Coldwater Police Department
The Coldwater Police Department received a $22,600 grant to purchase body-worn cameras in 2025 from the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Ohio Department of Public SafetyGovernor Mike DeWine's X account
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026