Centre County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Centre 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
Bellefonte Police Department
The Bellefonte Police Department entered a five-year contract Axon to purchase 11 body-worn cameras and cloud storage for $25,000.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Bellefonte Police Department FacebookWTAJ NewsThe Express
Patton Township Police Department
The Patton Township Police Department received a Small, Rural and Tribal Body-Worn Camera Program grant for $23,767 for 16 body-worn cameras in 2023.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Justice & Security StrategiesJustice & Security Strategies
Pennsylvania State University Police Department
The Pennsylvania State University Police Department began using body-worn cameras at all 22 campuses in 2020.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): PennState
The Pennsylvania State University Police Department operates one drone, 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 Collegenews.psu.edu
Ferguson Township Police Department
The Ferguson Township Police Department uses body-worn cameras.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Ferguson Township PoliceFerguson Township Police
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026