Zapata County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Zapata County.
3
Deployments on record
1
Agencies
3
Technology categories
Technology presence
ALPR · 1
Fixed cameras & RTCC · none on record
Face recognition · none on record
Drones / UAS · 1
Gunshot detection · none on record
Body-worn & dashcam · 1
Doorbell & camera registry · none on record
Cell-site simulators · none on record
Predictive policing · none on record
Social-media monitoring · none on record
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
Zapata County Sheriff's Office
ALPR
The Zapata County Sheriff's Office received $375,000 from the Operation Stonegarden program to purchase automated license plate readers in 2023.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Laredo Morning Times
Drones / UAS
The Zapata County Sheriff's Office uses a drone.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): News4 San Antonio
Body-worn & dashcam
Vendor: Wrap Intrinsic
The Zapata County Sheriff's Office uses Wrap Intrinsic body-worn cameras.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Wrap
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026