Yuma County

The Yuma County Sheriff’s Office has bought plate readers, and the Board of Supervisors approved them by name. On 1 June 2020 the Board approved “license plate reader equipment in the amount of $242,726.05 from Vigilant Solutions”. On 19 September 2022 it approved $583,731.36 more from the same company, as a “sole source vendor”. Both items are marked “Approved as presented”.

Before either purchase, in November 2019, the Board accepted a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice “for purchase of equipment for the Yuma County License Plate Reader Project”.

The EFF Atlas of Surveillance, a national dataset, records body cameras at the Sheriff’s Office and no plate readers there. It lists plate readers at two city departments, Somerton and San Luis. The county’s own agendas show $826,457.41 of plate reader equipment bought by the Sheriff.

What else the Board approved for the Sheriff

In March 2020, a $766,100 contract with Utility Associates for body cameras and in-vehicle cameras, running to April 2025.

In April 2022, a drone for up to $125,000, paid from a state emergency management grant, “for the purpose of enhancing border security”. State law bars counties from regulating drones but leaves them free to set rules for their own. We found none in the agendas.

In May 2024, $1.5 million from the state’s Local Border Support Program, and in the same item a BearCat armoured vehicle for up to $400,000. In February 2026, a full body scanner for the jail, $172,475, paid from the same program’s money.

In June 2025, a ten year agreement with Axon for Tasers and support, $1,136,841.52.

What the agendas do not say

Where the plate readers are, how long they keep what they record, and which other agencies can search it. Those are the questions to put to the Sheriff’s Office, and a records request can answer them.

Volunteers have mapped 113 devices in the county, 85 of them plate readers. Most of the operators they name are city police departments. Two of the mapped plate readers name Yuma County as their operator and Motorola Solutions as their manufacturer. Community reporting and the county’s own record are separate datasets here, and neither one connects a mapped camera to a purchase the Board approved.

Volunteers have also mapped one gunshot detector, tagged as a Flock Safety device with no operator recorded. It is community-reported, and nothing in the Board’s record corresponds to it.

In the Board’s agendas from 2007 to 2026 we found no real time crime center, cell site simulator, facial recognition or gunshot detection.

Where this leaves a resident

The Board meets at 9 a.m. at 197 South Main Street in Yuma. You can speak at the Call to the Public in person, or send a comment to publiccomment@yumacountyaz.gov by 8 a.m. on the day of the meeting, and it will be read aloud. The Board can only discuss what is on the agenda, so the useful request is to have a plate reader policy scheduled as an item.