Churchill County

Most counties in this project bought something. Churchill County asked, and was told no.

In its budget request for 2024-25, the Churchill County Sheriff’s Office wrote down what it wanted and why, in a form that goes to the county commissioners. The account was Contracted Services. The increase was $35,000. The justification:

“We are seeking to establish a contract with Flock Safety, a provider in high tech License Plate Readers (LPR). This expansion of the budget would allow us to establish 5 cameras set around the perimeter of our community and allow us to receive notices on Stolen Vehicles, Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts, and vehicles running stolen license plates. These cameras can also assist us and our surrounding counties in locating vehicles used in crimes just as their application in other jurisdictions has helped solve crimes within our community.”

Read the end of that again. The office is not arguing that plate readers might help someday. It is saying that cameras belonging to other jurisdictions have already solved crimes inside Churchill County, and asking to join the arrangement.

The same argument, three counties running

This is the third Nevada county on this site where the reason given for plate readers is the neighbours.

In Lyon County in November 2023, a lieutenant told the commissioners that one benefit was “Lyon County and neighboring counties utilizing the same system to work together”. In Storey County, the Sheriff wrote in his annual report that his office “played a major role in assisting other regional Law enforcement agencies obtain this same technology”. In Churchill County in 2024, the Sheriff’s Office wrote that other jurisdictions’ cameras were already solving crimes here.

Each of those is a separate county, a separate budget, a separate vote. There is no meeting where anyone decides whether northern Nevada should have a regional plate reader network. It is being assembled one county at a time, and the fact that the neighbours already have it is itself the argument for the next one.

What happened to the request

The county’s own budget worksheet carries the answer in a notes field, in capitals:

“BUDGET HEARING REMOVED THE REQUESTED INCREASE AS THE LICENSE PLATE READER SYSTEM IS IN THE BUDGET TWICE, I LEFT THE REQUEST IN CAPITAL OUTLAY.”

A capital list elsewhere carries a line reading “Sheriff Flock -License plate surveillance” at $10,000. That description is the county’s own.

A later budget note is blunter: “License Plate Readers (LPR’s) Our budget was cut in this area last year and historically has not been sufficient.” And a Sheriff’s Office list of things it had asked for and not received includes “License plate readers, stationary and at least one mobile one”, alongside notes that a phased weapons purchase “was rejected and funds denied”.

Exactly one document out of the 1,545 we fetched mentions Flock Safety, and it is that budget request. No minutes we could read record a plate reader contract being approved, signed or installed. The EFF Atlas has no plate reader entry for this county either.

So we cannot tell you that Churchill County has plate readers. We also cannot tell you that it does not. What we can tell you is that its Sheriff’s Office asked for them, described them to the county as licence plate surveillance, and did not get the money in the years we can see.

Cameras it did buy, or was asked to buy

Two Verkada purchases went to the commissioners with prices attached. On 20 March 2024 the agenda carried “Approval to purchase Verkada Security Equipment and Licenses for a 10-year term through Carahsoft, a state purchasing contractor, in the amount of $212,442.22”. In December 2025 a second item asked for a contract for “Verkada Security Equipment for the New Pass House and Day Center, in the amount of $87,414.31”, and the quote attached to it lists outdoor two-camera units with zoom lenses and a maximum of 30 days of retention.

A ten-year term on a camera system is a long time. It outlasts the sheriff, the commissioners and whatever retention setting is configured today.

We cannot tell you what the board decided on either item. Verkada appears in nine packets and four agendas in this county’s record and in none of the minutes we could read, and the minutes for the March 2024 meeting are among the documents we could not read at all.

One more thing about the Verkada line is worth repeating exactly as the county wrote it. A capital worksheet lists “Sheriff VerkadaSecurity Cameras for Emerson Building what is this for??? 60,000.00” Somebody working on the county’s own budget did not know what a sixty thousand dollar camera purchase was for, and typed the question into the spreadsheet.

Listening to 911 calls from the field

In June 2026 the county’s E-911 committee approved two software contracts for the Sheriff’s Office, and they went to the commissioners together. RapidSOS, which enriches emergency calls with location and device data, at a total contract value of $199,202.60 over five years. And Live911, at $6,000 a year plus $1,380 to install, which does something more specific.

The sales agreement in the packet, between HigherGround, Inc. of Thousand Oaks, California and the Churchill County Sheriff’s Office, describes it: Live911 “provides the ability for first responders in the field, as well as any support personnel such as Watch Commanders, UAS Operators (DFR), Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) Staff, Incident Commanders, EOC Staff, SRO’s, etc., to monitor the location and audio of incoming 911 emergency” calls.

Officers hear the caller directly rather than waiting for a dispatcher to relay it.

That list of job titles is the vendor describing everyone who uses its product anywhere, not an inventory of Churchill County. There is no evidence in this county’s record of a real-time crime centre or a drone-as-first-responder programme, and the phrase “real-time crime” appears exactly once in 106 million characters of county documents, inside that contract.

What we did not find

Across 1,085 readable documents we found no gunshot detection, no facial recognition, no camera registry programme, and no body camera policy. The phrase “portable event recording” appears two dozen times, which is the wording of Nevada’s body camera statute, so the law is being cited in this county’s paperwork even though the policy it requires is not in the board’s papers.

The EFF Atlas records the Sheriff’s Office using WatchGuard body cameras and operating two drones as of 2024, and the Fallon Police Department using L3 Mobile Vision body cameras, thirty of which were approved by the city council. That last decision was made by the city, whose record is kept separately and which we have not read.

Churchill County does not appear in the drone registry the Nevada Department of Public Safety is required to publish, while the Atlas records two drones here. As in Lyon County, that is a statement about what the state publishes and not about what this county did.

An unusual amount of this record cannot be read

Of the 1,545 documents we fetched, 459 are scans with no text in them at all. That is thirty per cent, the highest share of any Nevada county we have researched, and it is not a technical failure on our side: the county’s system offers a text version, we asked for it, it came back empty, and we re-fetched and checked the original PDFs.

It matters more here than it usually would, because we know at least one thing we wanted is inside the unreadable portion. The minutes that would say what the commissioners decided about a $212,442 camera contract are among them.

Everything above is a statement about the seventy per cent we could read.

What this record does not cover

Whether the Flock cameras were ever bought by another route. What the commissioners decided about either Verkada contract. The Sheriff’s body camera policy. The City of Fallon’s council record, which holds its own police department’s body camera decision. And the county school district, whose board meets separately and whose police arrangements, if any, we have not examined.

Community contributors have mapped one device in this county in OpenStreetMap. That count covers every agency and business at once and is never merged with anything above.