Comal County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Comal 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
New Braunfels Police Department
The New Braunfels Police Department has installed 34 Flock Safety automated license plate readers, according to data obtained in July 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Muckrock
The New Braunfels Police Department purchased 98 WatchGuard body-worn cameras in 2016 using a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): New Braunfels Police Department FacebookKSATKVUE
The New Braunfels Police Department maintains a voluntary registry of private and personal surveillance cameras.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): City of New Braunfels Police
Fair Oaks Ranch Police Department
The Fair Oaks Ranch Police Department operates six 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
Garden Ridge Police Department
The Garden Ridge Police Department submitted a policy related to drones and the use of force to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Texas Commission On Law Enforcement
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026