Multnomah County

The first Oregon county researched, and an unusual shape: a complete, readable rulebook with the decisions behind it out of reach.

The Sheriff’s Office publishes its entire agency policy manual, and all of it can be machine-read. One hundred and nineteen documents, not one an image-only scan, every search verified against canary terms. On this project’s evidence that is rare, and it makes the negatives here unusually strong.

The strongest one: no plate reader policy exists anywhere in that manual. Zero references to ALPR under any spelling, with the only “license plate” matches being the plates of the office’s own vehicles. Since 31 March 2026, Oregon’s SB 1516 has required an agency to establish and publish ALPR policies before deploying a system, so a published manual with no such policy is what the statute would predict for an agency with no deployment. That is a statement about the published record, not proof about equipment, and the office’s board record, where a purchase would appear, is the part we cannot read.

What the manual does show: a body-worn camera programme, established by the agency’s own policy reference and governed in public only on the reviewing side; a voluntary private camera registry whose terms are more candid than most, including that a refused footage request may be followed by a warrant; and a military surplus policy that bans weaponized drones and combat aircraft outright and requires a Board resolution, with costs and intended use stated, before any acquisition.

No drone policy exists in the manual either. Two documents brush against the subject: the crowd control policy lists unmanned aerial systems among resources the office and partner agencies may draw on at First Amendment events, and a safety policy references a county administrative procedure for drone worker-safety. Neither establishes that the Sheriff flies aircraft, and the state record that would settle it, the Department of Aviation registry that ORS 837.360 requires every public body to file into, is on our request list.

Why there is no board record here

The Board of County Commissioners’ modern meeting record lives on a Granicus host whose robots file turns away every automated reader, and the county’s own archives stop in 2010. We honor that file while the question of Granicus hosting is unresolved, so the votes behind these policies are documented in a record this site cannot yet check. The military surplus policy makes that record concrete: every surplus acquisition requires a Board resolution, and those resolutions are exactly where we cannot look.

What this county does not cover

Six cities, none researched, and the biggest gap on the page: Portland. The EFF Atlas records the Portland Police Bureau using plate readers since 2008 and both Portland and Gresham holding registered drone fleets. Those are city agencies, documented here only as leads.

Community contributors have mapped 217 devices across the county in OpenStreetMap. That count covers every agency and business at once and is never merged with anything above.