California
San Bernardino County
On record
Checked 21 Aug 2026- Technologies
- 2
- Systems
- 2
- Devices mapped
- 1512
San Bernardino County, California. Device data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), with community reporting via DeFlock. Open the full map →
The largest county by area in the contiguous United States keeps an unusually complete public record of what it bought and when, and an unusually old set of rules for using it.
The board writes long agenda titles that carry the vendor, the dollar figure and the presenting captain, so the plate reader network can be traced without a single records request. Four purchases from Vigilant Solutions between 2016 and 2017, about $856,000, including an agreement to mount cameras on Bear Valley Electric power poles. Then in June 2025, on the consent calendar with five ayes, a three-year lease of 55 Flock cameras for Arrowhead Farms, Rosena Ranch, Muscoy and Bloomington, at $575,750. The money came from a supervisor’s discretionary fund and, in part, from a federal homeland security grant.
The Sheriff publishes a 1,036-page manual, dated June 2026, and all of it can be read. Its rules for sharing plate data are the ones it published in 2018: law enforcement or prosecutorial agencies, with no geographic limit and without the statutory definition that excludes federal and out-of-state agencies. The Attorney General sent that definition to every agency in California in October 2023. The subsections carrying the older language have no revision stamp at all.
Nothing we read records this county sharing plate data outside California. What the record shows is which rule is on the books.
The two things the record does not answer
A policy added in March 2024 establishes that the Department uses facial recognition technology and requires a separate manual governing acquisition, use, training, retention and accountability. That manual is not among the documents the Department publishes, and we found no copy.
The manual describes a Drone as First Responder programme in detail, with aircraft pre-positioned across service areas and launched automatically to emergency calls. The statutory equipment inventory through December 2025 lists seven drones, all of them SWAT equipment. Across 237 readable documents, including every board agenda and Statement of Proceedings the county’s portal advertises since January 2022, the phrase appears twice and both times in the Sheriff’s own manual.
What this county does not cover
Twenty-four cities, none researched. Community contributors have mapped 1,432 plate readers across the county in OpenStreetMap, most with no operator recorded. That count belongs to every agency and business in the county at once and is never merged with the Sheriff’s own figures.
What's in use here
Seven aircraft in the statutory inventory, all of them SWAT equipment. The manual published two months later describes a Drone as First Responder programme, with aircraft pre-positioned across service areas and launched automatically to emergency calls.
Fifty-five Flock cameras leased for four unincorporated communities in June 2025, on the consent calendar, paid for from a supervisor's discretionary fund and a federal homeland security grant. The manual governing them still carries its 2018 sharing clause.
Who runs it
The agency is the accountability unit: who voted, whose policy applies, and who answers a records request.
| Agency | Jurisdiction | Systems |
|---|---|---|
| San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department | San Bernardino County | 2 |
| 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 San Bernardino 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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