Pacific County

Pacific County’s drone lands on water. The Sheriff’s Office started its aircraft program in 2019 with a waterproof Splash drone bought on state boating-safety money, built to set down in the surf and drop life vests to people in trouble, and it trains with the regional fire authority that shares its coastline. That is the friendliest use of a police drone in this site’s coverage, and the same reporting carries the program’s next ambition: state drug task force funding that could buy a larger aircraft for executing search warrants. A rescue tool and a warrant-service tool are different machines with different rules, and the records request asks what the fleet holds now and under what policy.

The county’s own record

The county publishes a full board record going back to 2014: agendas, minutes, and what it calls proceedings, which carry the text of its resolutions in the body.

What that record shows is a county that equips its deputies from one company and says so on the record each time. Twice it has adopted a resolution reciting the state statute that exempts single-source purchases from competitive bidding, and then bought from Axon.

In October 2023, Resolution 2023-067 authorized

purchase of tasers and body cameras from Axon Enterprise, Inc. “Single Source of Supply” provider in the total amount of $357,513.19 for 15 Taser-7 units for the corrections division

along with 18 body camera units for patrol. In June 2025, Resolution 2025-036 did the same thing for

two (2) OSP7+ body camera units for the patrol division

at $10,196.60.

The resolutions explain themselves. Each recites that state law “provides for an exemption from bidding requirements and authorizes purchases that are clearly and legitimately limited to a single source of supply”, and each concludes that Axon is the single source for these units “plus corresponding software, hardware, and training supplies containing unique features.”

That last phrase is worth sitting with, and it is the vendor’s own logic rather than the county’s: the features are unique because one company makes them. The exemption follows from the choice rather than preceding it. Nothing about that is improper, the statute exists for exactly this, and Pacific County did the thing in public with its reasoning printed. It is the fourth county in this run to arrive at Axon without a competitive process.

What we could not read

Two hundred and twenty-nine of the 587 documents in the window carry no text layer. This county puts the substance of its decisions inside the proceedings rather than in separate attachments, so an unreadable proceedings file hides a whole meeting rather than one document.

In the 355 we could read there is no plate reader, no Flock, no facial recognition and no camera registry. Read that at a discount. It covers 60% of what the county published in the same period.

What this record does not cover

The 229 documents in the window with no text layer, and everything the county published before 2023. The Shoalwater Bay Tribe’s own waterproof drone is a sovereign tribal matter, never merged into county counts.

Community contributors have mapped no devices in the county in OpenStreetMap yet. When that count appears, it will cover every agency and business at once and never merge with anything above.