California
Tulare County
On record
Checked 21 Aug 2026- Technologies
- 2
- Systems
- 3
- Devices mapped
- 113
Tulare County, California. Device data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), with community reporting via DeFlock. Open the full map →
Two police departments here publish enough about their own plate readers to be described, and they make an odd pair: the city of Visalia, and a community college district.
Visalia’s department told its own officers, in a training bulletin dated January 2025, that it had installed eleven Flock cameras with eleven more scheduled, and had also been granted access to twenty-four “owned by various organizations within the City of Visalia.” More cameras it does not own than cameras it does. Nobody voted on those twenty-four. That is how a plate reader network in a mid-sized city reaches its actual size: the public decision sets a floor and the private market sets the number.
The same department flies twelve drones, and here the record is unusually complete, because a different law applies. AB 481 makes police departments publish an annual military equipment report, so Visalia’s lists every aircraft by model and records 221 deployments in calendar 2025. The missions it names include searching for missing persons, monitoring unlawful fires, chasing fleeing suspects, and public demonstrations.
Put the two systems together and the structure shows. AB 481’s fifteen categories do not include plate readers, so the report that counts drone flights one by one mentions licence plates zero times. The cameras fall under a different statute, which requires a published usage policy instead. The training bulletin tells officers to follow Policy 428. We could not find Policy 428 published on the city’s website, which is a statement about our search rather than about the department’s files.
The county’s third documented operator is the Sequoias Community College District Police Department, which put twenty cameras across three campuses in April 2023, including six at its Hanford Educational Center, which is in Kings County. The page explaining them is largely the vendor’s marketing copy, still in the first person.
The Tulare County Sheriff’s Office is unswept. We have not looked, which is different from having looked and found nothing.
What's in use here
A community college district police force runs twenty plate readers across three campuses in two counties. The page explaining them is mostly the vendor's marketing copy, still in the first person.
Four plate reader decisions since 2023, from two vendors, every one of them sole source and every one on a consent calendar. None was pulled for discussion.
Twelve aircraft, flown 221 times in one year. The department's own report lists what it used them for, and the list ends with public demonstrations.
Who runs it
The agency is the accountability unit: who voted, whose policy applies, and who answers a records request.
| Agency | Jurisdiction | Systems |
|---|---|---|
| Visalia Police Department | City of Visalia | 2 |
| Sequoias Community College District Police Department | Sequoias Community College District | 1 |
| 2 agencies 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 Tulare 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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