Columbia County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Columbia 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
Lodi Police Department
The Lodi Police Department operates three Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
Poynette Police Department
The Poynette Police Department uses Motorola V300 body-worn cameras.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Poynette Police Department's Facebook page
Portage Police Department
The Portage Police Department installed an automated license plate reader in 2021.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Portage Police DepartmentGovernment budget/purchasingGoogle Maps
All officers in the Portage Police Department wear body-worn cameras, according to a 2020 Wisconsin Department of Justice survey.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Wisconsin Department of Justice
Columbia County Sheriff's Office
The Columbia County Sheriff's Office received $100,000 from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to purchase 50 body-worn cameras through the 2022 Small, Rural, Tribal BWC Microgrant program.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Small, Rural, and Tribal Body-Worn Camera microgrant grantee list
The Columbia County Sheriff's Office operates one DJI Phantom drone as of 2015, 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.wiscnews.com
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026