Skagit County

Skagit County’s Sheriff documents its drone program better than most agencies document anything. The office has flown unmanned aircraft since early 2018, and its annual reports name the fleet piece by piece: a Brinc Lemur bought in 2022 for flying into buildings ahead of SWAT entries, a Matrice M210 with thermal and zoom cameras, a Mavic 3 Enterprise that can carry loudspeakers. By the 2025 report the unit counted over 500 missions and training flights since inception, flown by seven FAA-certificated deputies, mostly search and rescue, K9 assists, suspect searches, and flood surveys.

The body cameras arrived on a deadline. A 2021 state law required recording interviews with felony suspects, and the office put 67 cameras on deputies, one each, plus five for corrections deputies who transport inmates, by 1 January 2022, about $540,000 over five years with a federal grant covering roughly a quarter of it. The undersheriff told the local paper the cameras protect deputies and citizens both, and also said the office had no choice. Both statements are in the record.

The county flies a second drone that has nothing to do with law enforcement. Public Works launched its surveying aircraft, a DJI Matrice 300 nicknamed Genesis 1, in spring 2023, and the county’s announcement commits in writing that it will not be used to gather evidence of criminal conduct except as authorized by law. A county putting that restriction on paper unprompted is worth noting.

The county buys from one company, for both sides of a criminal case

The commissioners’ minutes carry a run of Axon purchases across eleven months, each one a consent item. In December 2024 the county bought 66 Officer Safety Plan bundles, body cameras and tasers together, at not more than $1,142,449.09 over five years, plus 20 more body worn cameras at not more than $139,849.80. A week later it put the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office on Axon’s evidence software for ten years, and two weeks before that it had waived the competitive bidding requirements of state law to authorize the purchase.

In October 2025 the prosecutors added a second subscription at not more than $670,000, and the Public Defender’s Office was authorized to buy 39 licenses to the same platform.

One company now sells this county the cameras that record the evidence, the storage it sits in, the software the prosecution works it in, and the software the defense answers it in. Nobody did anything improper, and defenders need access to the footage. What is worth noticing is that no document in the county’s record considers the four purchases together.

Both camera agreements name Washington State Contract No. #05720, the same state instrument Benton County used to buy 19 Axon plate readers in 2026.

The surveying drone, and a written limit nobody demanded

Public Works launched its surveying aircraft, a DJI Matrice 300 nicknamed Genesis 1, in spring 2023. The board called a public hearing in February 2023 and held it on the 28th, where the County Surveyor presented the draft policy, a webpage at skagitcounty.net/drone, and the uses: topographic mapping, inventory management, volumetrics, bridge inspection, disaster response. The commissioners asked about flight logs. By April 2024 the aircraft was being discussed for bridge inspections.

The county’s announcement commits in writing that the aircraft will not be used to gather evidence of criminal conduct except as authorized by law. Washington has no drone statute, so nothing required that sentence. A county putting the restriction on paper unprompted is worth noting.

What is not here

In the 498 documents we read there is no Flock, no plate reader of any kind, no facial recognition and no real-time crime center. Four documents in scope could not be read, so that absence is scoped to the 498.

It is also scoped to minutes alone. This county publishes no readable agenda record, so a plate reader that was proposed and never carried would leave no trace we could find.

One small thing did surface: in March 2025 the board amended a lease of two bait devices used to track criminal activity, at not more than $4,000, to record that the company supplying them had been acquired and renamed Integrity Surveillance Group.

How much of this county we have read

The county publishes 4,421 Board of Commissioners minutes files. We took the 494 from 2023 onward, and they carry clean text. The agendas are a different matter: the filename pattern the county’s older pages point at returns a web page dressed as a PDF, so there is no readable agenda record here at all.

That makes Skagit a county where what the board decided is knowable and what it was asked to consider is not.

What this record does not cover

The cities, Mount Vernon first, whose police department operates 147 Flock devices per the Atlas, and Sedro-Woolley’s Flock cameras. The Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribal police, separate sovereign agencies, never merged into county counts.

Community contributors have mapped 48 devices across the county in OpenStreetMap. That count covers every agency and business at once and is never merged with anything above.