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
Hermitage Police Department
The Hermitage Police Department operates nine Flock Safety automated license plate readers and other cameras as of June 2025. The agency stores ALPR data for 30 days.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Flock Safety
The Hermitage Police Department received $31,000 from the Department of Justice to fund its body-worn camera program in 2021.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Department of Justice
Farrell Police Department
The Farrell Police Department uses Motorola V300 body-worn cameras. The agency spent $30,000 to implement its body-worn camera program in 2022.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): The HeraldThe City Of Farrell Police Department's Facebook page
Sharpsville Police Department
The Sharpsville Police Department purchased eight body-worn cameras using $24,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency in 2022.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): The HeraldSharpsville
Sharon Police Department
Sharon Police Department received $50,000 to purchase 25 body-worn cameras through the Small, Rural and Tribal Body-Worn Camera program in 2024.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): SRT BWC Program
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026