California
Colusa County
On record
Checked 20 Aug 2026- Technologies
- 1
- Systems
- 1
- Devices mapped
- 10
Colusa County, California. Device data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), with community reporting via DeFlock. Open the full map →
Colusa is California’s fourth-smallest county, about twenty-two thousand people, and its city police department has nine sworn officers. It is the smallest agency documented anywhere on this site, and it has a licence plate reader.
The state has the record: a notice filed in March 2026 for a Flock camera on a thirteen-foot pole with a solar panel to run it. That is the whole physical footprint, and it is enough to record every car that passes.
The department publishes its rulebook properly, all 736 pages of it, no request needed. Policy 430 sets a one-year minimum retention, requires access through a login that records who looked and when, and requires regular audits. It also says no reasonable suspicion or probable cause is needed to run a search, and that the data is not open to public review.
Two things about that policy are worth reading closely. Its collection section describes data “transferred from vehicles to the designated storage”, which is a system that moves data out of patrol cars, and not how a camera bolted to a pole works. And its sharing clause permits release to “other law enforcement or prosecutorial agencies”, where the same clause in a neighbouring county’s manual restricts it to other California agencies. One word, and it is the word the whole question turns on.
Neither of those is a violation and this site does not call them that. Policies lag purchases everywhere, and a template choice is not conduct.
What nobody wrote down is the decision. The state has a record of the camera going up and we found no record of anyone deciding to put it there. That gap is ours: we never identified the city council’s agenda system, so we never looked in the one place the answer would be.
What's in use here
Nine sworn officers, one camera on a thirteen-foot pole, and a published policy that describes data coming out of patrol cars. Its sharing clause is missing one word.
Who runs it
The agency is the accountability unit: who voted, whose policy applies, and who answers a records request.
| Agency | Jurisdiction | Systems |
|---|---|---|
| Colusa Police Department | City of Colusa | 1 |
| 1 agency on record. A jointly run system counts against each of its operators, so this column is not a county total. | ||
Trackers
Meetings, contracts, records
Nothing listed yet. The trackers launch here, and facts appear only with their sources.
How the inventory works →What you can do
Civic action
Show up
Public comment is open to any resident, and you do not have to be an expert to use it. We have not yet confirmed where the bodies that decide for Colusa County meet. How the inventory works explains what we check and how to check it yourself.
How the inventory works →Personal protection
Protect yourself
Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail. Our guides publish at launch; until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.
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