Klickitat County

Klickitat County’s body cameras surface in its record the way most small-county technology does, as line items and staff updates rather than announcements. In January 2024 the undersheriff’s report to the commissioners listed a Body-Worn Camera Program among the office’s standing operations, between the K-9 unit and the marine patrol. That June, a Sheriff’s purchase authorization itemized the stack: two Motorola Solutions body cameras, two Axon Tasers, and Lexipol policy subscriptions for patrol and jail, budgeted together at $105,126.73. The vendor, the policy publisher, and the program’s routine footing are all in one consent-calendar line. The contract behind it, the camera count, and the program’s start date are records questions.

In the readable board record, no plate reader, Flock, drone, or facial recognition item appears for any county agency, and the Atlas of Surveillance carries no Klickitat rows at all, including the camera program the minutes document. A third of the board’s minutes in our window are scanned images with no text layer, so the absences are scoped to what was readable. The record’s only other “surveillance” is the health department’s mosquito program, which monitors West Nile virus, not people.

What this record does not cover

The scanned-image minutes. The cities of Goldendale and White Salmon, municipal, never merged into county counts.

Community contributors have mapped 8 devices across the county in OpenStreetMap. That count covers every agency and business at once and is never merged with anything above.