Clallam County

Clallam County’s drones were bought with forest money. The county’s search and rescue team funded its “Drone Assisted Rapid Response” through a federal Title III application, the Secure Rural Schools program that returns federal forest payments to timber counties, and the December 2025 board packet itemizes the kit: two thermal-and-zoom drone systems at nine thousand dollars, spare batteries, waterproof cases, packed alongside satellite messengers and handheld radios. Thermal search aircraft for the Olympic Peninsula’s backcountry, funded from the same stream that fixes forest roads.

The Sheriff’s Office describes the rest of its technology itself. In a May 2026 column, Sheriff Brian King listed body-worn cameras implemented, drones acquired, an armored crisis response vehicle, and “a state-of-the-art digital forensics lab”. None of those has a procurement record in the two and a half years of board documents we read, which means they predate the window or moved through channels the packets do not itemize, and the records requests ask for each: the camera contract, the forensics lab’s tools, the fleet, the vehicle.

What the record supports firmly is a negative: in 1,423 readable board documents from 2024 through 2026, no plate reader, Flock, or facial recognition item appears for any county agency. Among the smaller counties on this site, that is the deepest-swept absence, though it remains scoped to the readable record.

What this record does not cover

One hundred one unreadable documents in the window, and everything before 2024. Sequim’s police, with their LensLock cameras, and Port Angeles’s police, with their federal camera grant, are municipal, never merged into county counts.

Community contributors have mapped 17 devices across the county in OpenStreetMap. That count covers every agency and business at once and is never merged with anything above.