Portage County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Portage 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
Portage County Sheriff's Office
The Portage County Sheriff's Office operates 12 Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
The Portage County Sheriff's Office received a $616,000 Bureau of Justice Assistance grant in 2022 to acquire body-worn cameras.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): US Bureau of Justice AssistanceWAOW
Plover Police Department
The Plover Police Department operates 10 Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
All officers in the Plover Police Department wear body-worn cameras, according to a 2020 Wisconsin Department of Justice survey. The agency began using body-worn cameras in 2016.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Wisconsin Department of JusticeStevens Point Journal
The Plover Police Department operates one DJI T600 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 Collegeregistry.faa.gov
Columbia County Sheriff's Office
The Columbia County Sheriff's Office uses automated license plate readers.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Columbia County Board of Supervisors
Stevens Point Police Department
The Stevens Point Police Department uses automated license plate readers.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Stevens Point Police DepartmentStevens Point Police Department
All officers in the Stevens Point Police Department wear body-worn cameras, according to a 2020 Wisconsin Department of Justice survey.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Wisconsin Department of Justice
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026