Clatsop County

The Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office publishes three of its protocols for public review, and says why on the page that holds them: “The Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office is committed to transparency, accountability, and maintaining the public’s trust. In accordance with Oregon law and applicable requirements, the Sheriff’s Office makes certain agency protocols available for public review.”

The three are a deadly force plan, a facial coverings policy, and Policy 607, Unmanned Aerial System. Two of them are marked, on every page, in the running header, ***DRAFT***.

The drone policy is one of them. That publication is not a courtesy. Policy 607 lists it among the program coordinator’s own duties, and cites the statute that requires it: publish the office’s policies on the use, storage, access, sharing and retention of drone data, including the text of ORS 192.345, “on the office website or other publicly accessible system (ORS 837.362).”

So the law requires a published policy, the office published one, and what is on the website is a draft. We do not know whether a signed version exists, and that is the first thing a records request to this office should ask.

What the draft would require, if it is in force, is specific. The aircraft may fly only under a warrant, or on probable cause with exigent circumstances, or with written consent, or in a search and rescue, or in an imminent-threat emergency, or during a declared state of emergency, or to reconstruct a scene, or for training. An emergency flight requires a report and a sworn statement filed with the circuit court within 48 hours. The aircraft must be registered with the Oregon Department of Aviation. Flight times, locations, missions and operators go in a logbook unique to each aircraft, and every deployment records why it flew, who approved it, who was assigned and what happened. Data is kept only as long as public records law or evidence requires, and “The program coordinator will periodically confirm data deletion.” The first prohibited use listed is “To conduct random surveillance activities.”

The policy also speaks as though there is already a team. It describes the coordinator deploying “the team” to assist any police agency in Oregon, and extending observer duty to another member for training. Whether an aircraft exists, and whether it has flown, is not in any document we could read.

Why we are reading the cities

The Board of Commissioners is the body that funds the Sheriff’s Office, and we have not read a single one of its agendas. The county’s Agenda and Minutes page is a frame around a separate meetings portal, and that portal is unread.

Everything else about this county came from somewhere the door was open. The county’s own website, which is where the Sheriff’s protocols are. And two city councils.

Seaside pays Motorola for the cameras and Axon for the weapons

Seaside puts its bill list inside the council packet, every payment named by department, vendor and purpose. Four rows are worth reading together.

Two of them name Motorola Solutions and the Police Department. On 11 May 2026, body worn camera repair, $500.00. On 27 April 2026, an in car annual license, $1,218.75.

Two name Axon and the Police Department, both on 22 June 2026. A Taser 7 bundle, $2,753.28. A new Taser 10 payment, $24,317.96.

In most Oregon counties we have looked at, the cameras and the weapons come from the same company, and that is the stated reason for buying without competition: the county already stores its evidence in that system, so the next purchase goes there too. Seaside is the other case. Its body cameras are Motorola and its Tasers are Axon.

We found no council vote approving either. The bill list is where they appear.

Warrenton, where the camera is on the code officer

Warrenton’s code compliance officer works out of the Police Department. In November 2024 he hand-delivered a nuisance notice about junk and inoperable vehicles to a resident, and his written narrative, printed in full in the January 2025 commission packet, records the method:

The interaction was audio and video recorded on my body-worn camera, “Watch Guard,” to document the contact.

WatchGuard is Motorola. The same platform, again.

This is a wider deployment than “police body cameras” usually suggests. The camera is on the person who knocks on your door about your yard. The recording of that visit also traveled: the narrative in that packet recounts what the resident said about her circumstances, including a death in her family and why she had moved out of her house. We are not repeating it here.

The city’s budget names the equipment once. The Police Vehicle Replacement Fund, whose stated purpose in the budget document is to accumulate funds for the purchase of police vehicles and equipment, carries a line called Mobile Body Cam and Video Server, with $36,804 spent in the year to June 2023 and $3,464 in the year to June 2024. Nothing since, in either the adopted or the proposed budget.

The marina cameras, replaced without a vote

In November 2025 the Warrenton harbormaster brought the City Commission a memo. The camera system in the Warrenton Inner Basin had failed, the cameras were about ten years old and no longer worked with the current operating system, and replacing them cost $10,631.78. The city had come in about $100,000 under budget on other capital projects that year, so, in the memo’s words, “With City Manager’s approval, we are moving forward with adding the camera replacement to the current year’s CIP list.”

The action line on the memo reads “Recommendation/Suggested Motion: NA.”

Nothing was concealed and nothing was voted on. That is the ordinary administrative route by which public cameras get replaced, and it is worth seeing written down, because it is how most of them arrive.

Cameras that arrive inside a truck order

Twice in Warrenton’s packets a camera system is a line item in a vehicle purchase. A refuse truck order lists 3rd Eye cameras on the tailgate, the cab, the hopper and the grabber, with a monitor in the cab. The manufacturer’s own literature, bound into the packet, says what they are for: “3rd Eye onboard garbage truck camera systems constantly monitor your driver” and their environment, to keep the vehicle operating safely. A public works vehicle order lists a “Non shuttered three camera system (Zone Defense) to be installed by AWA (Vendor) after delivery.”

These are fleet safety equipment and should be read as such. They are recorded because of how they arrive. Nobody decides to install them. They are a line in a spec, and the decision is about a truck.

What this record does not cover

The Board of Commissioners, whose meeting documents we could not retrieve.

Whether the Sheriff’s Office operates a drone at all, what it is, when it flies, and whether it is registered with the Oregon Department of Aviation as its own draft policy requires.

Four sets of Seaside minutes from January and February 2025, which the portal will not serve us.

Astoria, the county seat, whose council agendas are unread. Gearhart and Cannon Beach, which we have not swept.

We found no plate reader, no facial recognition and no gunshot detection in any of the 22.8 million characters we read: the county’s own site, Seaside’s council record from 2024 on, and Warrenton’s from 2024 on. That is a statement about those three publishers in that window, and not about the Board.

Community contributors have mapped one automated plate reader in this county in OpenStreetMap. It is not attributed to any agency, and nothing in the records we read corresponds to it. That count covers every agency and business at once and is never merged with anything above.