Washington Co. Sheriff (OR) | Facial recognition
Piloted on Amazon's technology in 2017, among the first agencies in the country, and ended in June 2020 with a public statement naming community concerns. The agency's own page is the record, and it is still up.
At a glance
- Ran
- 2017 to 10 June 2020, per the agency’s own statement [1]
- Provider
- Amazon, named in the agency’s own statement [1]
- What it was used for
- "to assist investigators in identifying suspects in criminal cases" [1]
- Why it ended
- "In response to concerns from our community and our technology provider Amazon", with the statement adding that "our communities of color have expressed concerns over possible bias by the technology" [1]
- Could it come back
- The statement says the office "could solicit another facial recognition provider" but "concluded discontinuing the program best matches community values". The current body-camera policy separately bans facial recognition on its footage except by court order [1] [2]
- What happened to the data
- not stated in anything we read. In the records request queue [1]
How it happened
- Deployment
The pilot begins
The program "was piloted in 2017 and has been used to assist investigators in identifying suspects in criminal cases", in the agency's own later words. Contemporary national reporting made this office one of the earliest known law enforcement users of Amazon's recognition technology; this page relies on the agency's own account. [1]
- Denied
The office ends the program, in public
"Sheriff's Office Ends Facial Recognition Program": ending it in response to concerns from the community and from Amazon, acknowledging concerns about bias from communities of color, and concluding that discontinuing "best matches community values" rather than seeking another provider. [1]
A program that started early and ended in public
Most surveillance programs on this site are documented through what an agency bought. This one is documented through how it ended: a statement the Sheriff’s Office published on 10 June 2020, still on its accountability page, under the heading “Sheriff’s Office Ends Facial Recognition Program”.
The agency’s own words carry the whole history:
In response to concerns from our community and our technology provider Amazon, the Sheriff’s Office is ending its facial recognition program. The program was piloted in 2017 and has been used to assist investigators in identifying suspects in criminal cases.
Three years of operational use on criminal cases, beginning in 2017, with Amazon as the provider. The statement is also candid about why:
the Sheriff’s Office recognizes that our communities of color have expressed concerns over possible bias by the technology, and we want to be sensitive to those feelings.
And about the choice being a choice:
While we could solicit another facial recognition provider, we concluded discontinuing the program best matches community values.
What the ending did and did not settle
The program is over; the statement does not say what happened to three years of data, and nothing else we read does either. That question is in this county’s records request queue.
The technology’s return is constrained from a second direction. The office’s body-camera policy, revised in July 2026, provides that per ORS 133.741 the office “will not allow the use of facial recognition or biometric matching to analyze recorded data, except pursuant to a court order”, and separately prohibits real-time biometric identification and emotion analysis on the camera system. Those rules govern the footage the office records today, whatever tools exist elsewhere.
A resident reading this page should take from it what this site takes: an agency experimented early, listened to who objected, wrote the ending down in public, and left the record up six years later. Every part of that is what the record of a discontinued program should look like, and it is the only complete example this project has documented.
What we do not know
- What was retained from three years of use, and what was destroyed. The statement ends the program and says nothing about the data.
- Whether any case outcomes rested on identifications the system assisted.
What you can do
Show up
Systems like this one are approved by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have not yet confirmed where each of them meets in Washington County.
What we have documented in Washington County →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.
Surveillance Self-Defense →Sources
- 1.
- 2. Washington County Sheriff's Office, Policy 41.10-R01, "Body-Worn/Vehicle Mounted Cameras", revised 2 July 2026 · Primary document · · accessed
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