Humboldt County

Humboldt County buys its body cameras from Motorola Solutions and its Tasers from Axon, and it approved the two contracts four months apart.

On 16 March 2026 the Board of Commissioners renewed the Axon contract. The motion is more specific than the agenda item was: renew “the contract with Axon Taser and well as the additional materials and supplies that come with it in the amount not to exceed $194,352.00 for a five-year contract beginning in July of 2026; there will be a $1,000.00 upfront to secure the contract and then there will be annual payments in the amount of about $39,000.00.” It passed unanimously.

On 20 July 2026 the same board extended the camera contract. Sheriff Angel Cardenas, Captain Sean Wilkin and Sergeant Kyle Negus appeared. The motion: “To approve to extend the five-year Motorola Solutions contract for the body-worn camera program in an amount not to exceed $125,000.00.” Three commissioners voted aye and two were absent.

That split is worth noticing because it is not how these decisions usually go. Across the counties this site has documented, the camera platform and the Taser normally arrive from the same company at the same time, and the fact that an agency already stores its evidence in that system is the stated reason for buying the next thing without competition. Humboldt did not do that. Its cameras and its weapons come from two companies on two contracts, and this is the third county across two states where we have found that arrangement, after Seaside and Warrenton on the Oregon coast.

The record does not say why, and we are not going to guess.

The camera question in Nevada is not the one you would expect

Nevada does not leave body cameras to each sheriff. NRS 289.830 requires a law enforcement agency to “require uniformed peace officers that it employs and who routinely interact with the public to wear a portable event recording device while on duty.”

So the Motorola contract is not really news. What the statute also requires is a written policy, and it lists six things that policy must contain: when the camera must be switched on, that it must not be switched off until the encounter ends, that general activity must not be recorded, protections for people in their homes and for anonymous reporters and for people claiming to be crime victims, a retention floor of fifteen days, and discipline for officers who fail to use the device, manipulate a recording or erase one early.

We did not find that policy. It would not be in the board minutes, because a policy is an agency document rather than a board item, and asking the Sheriff’s Office for it is the first records request this county needs.

Eight cameras, bought as computer equipment

On 8 September 2025, in a block of technology purchases between three network switches and a swamp cooler platform, the Commission approved “eight security cameras, licenses and cloud storage, from Amplify SI, in the amount not to exceed $24,506.16.”

The minutes explain where the request came from: “Coordinator Brooks reviewed the request for the Commission explaining that these cameras were requested by the Buildings & Grounds Director for the new building location. Coordinator Brooks confirmed that this cost was included in the IT budget.” It passed unanimously.

This is building security at a county facility, requested by the buildings director and paid from the technology budget. It is not policing, and it should not be read as policing. It is here because of the route, which keeps repeating in this work: cameras arrive as an information technology line item and the decision in the room is about a building. The purchase includes cloud storage, so the footage does not stay in the building.

What we did not find

Across 2.2 million characters of Board of Commissioners minutes from January 2025 onward, these do not appear at all: ALPR, automated license plate, camera registry, DJI, facial recognition, Flock, gunshot detection, license plate, unmanned aerial, unmanned aircraft.

The two mentions of drones are not about this county. One is a commissioner reporting back from a national conference. The other is an engineering quote for survey work at railroad crossings in Elko.

That is a statement about the board’s minutes in that window, and not about the Sheriff’s Office as an agency, whose own purchase records and policies we have not read.

What this record does not cover

The Sheriff’s body-camera policy, which state law requires to exist.

Whether the Sheriff flies a drone. Nevada law requires the Department of Public Safety to keep a registry of every drone a public agency operates and to publish it on its website. We looked for that registry and could not find it published, which is a problem for every county in this state and not just this one.

Winnemucca Police Department. The EFF Atlas records body-worn cameras there too, and nothing in the county’s record speaks to the city’s department.

The years 2019 to 2024, which the county publishes and this pass did not read.

Community contributors have mapped no devices in this county in OpenStreetMap. That is a fact about what volunteers have mapped and not a finding that there are no cameras here. The county bought eight of them in September 2025.