surveillance_spending

A DISCOVERY INDEX of surveillance and police-technology dollar figures found in local government meeting records across 130+ named vendors — NOT a table of confirmed spending, and NOT safe to SUM. An audit on 2026-07-29 found aggregate views were adding amounts that must not be added: the same procurement recurs at committee, council, approval, amendment and renewal stages; "not to exceed" figures are authorization ceilings, not payments. Use the canned query "the CONSERVATIVE total" for any number you intend to publish, and "data-quality report" to see what is flagged. Columns added for this: `amount_type` (stated / ceiling / proposed / recommended / estimated), `dup_rank` (>1 = redundant copy), `geo_suspect` (city disagrees with the source link), `anomaly` (implausible figure), `state_norm` (normalized state). Vendors covered include ALPR (Flock, Vigilant, Genetec), body cameras/tasers (Axon, WatchGuard, Utility, Getac), gunshot detection (ShotSpotter/SoundThinking), face recognition (Clearview AI, DataWorks Plus), fingerprint biometrics (Idemia AFIS/Livescan, filed separately under `sv:biometrics`), data fusion and OSINT (Fusus, Peregrine, LexisNexis Accurint, Thomson Reuters CLEAR), phone forensics (Cellebrite, GrayKey, Magnet), drones (Skydio, BRINC, DJI), cameras/VMS (Verkada, Avigilon), cell-site simulators, CAD/RMS records systems, photo enforcement, jail-call and student monitoring. Every row carries a VERBATIM quote from the minutes and a link to the source document, and a row only publishes if that quote was found character-for-character in the source text. READ THE `ledger` COLUMN: `sv:<category>:<vendor>`. `radio_infra` (two-way radios), `rms` (records/CAD software), `biometrics` (fingerprints) and `not_surveillance` are NOT surveillance sensors — exclude them before quoting any surveillance figure.

Data license: CC BY 4.0 · Data source: MyTown

2 rows where state = "NJ" and vendor = "Paladin Drones" sorted by amount descending

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vendor 1

  • Paladin Drones · 2 ✖

state 1

ledger 1

Link rowid vendor city state spend_date product amount ▲ quote source_document mytown_record ledger amount_type dup_rank geo_suspect anomaly state_norm
2718 2718 Paladin Drones Paramus NJ 2024-02-20 drone program package (award contract) 123900.0 A RESOLUTION AWARDING THE CONTRACT TO PALADIN DRONES, INC IN THE AMOUNT OF $123,900.00 FOR DRONE PACKAGE FOR THE POLICE DEPARTMENT DRONE PROGRAM https://www.paramusborough.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_02202024-1453 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/paramusborough.org/#m1324358 sv:drone:paladin stated 1 0 0 NJ
2549 2549 Paladin Drones Elizabeth NJ 2025-10-28 two Paladin Drones (award contract) 71163.0 Letter dated October 16, 2025, from the Business Administrator recommending awarding a contract to SHI International Corp., 290 Davidson Avenue, Somerset, NJ, for the purchase of two (2) DJ Dock 3 Set (+M4TD) Paladin Drones and two (2) DJIM4TD Paladin Drones for the Elizabeth Police Department replacing two (2) older non-operational units at the total cost of $71,163.04. https://www.elizabethnj.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_10282025-449 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/elizabethnj.org/2025/#m1522940 sv:drone:paladin recommended 1 0 0 NJ

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CREATE TABLE surveillance_spending (
  vendor TEXT, city TEXT, state TEXT, spend_date TEXT, product TEXT,
  amount REAL, quote TEXT, source_document TEXT, mytown_record TEXT, ledger TEXT, amount_type TEXT, dup_rank INTEGER, geo_suspect INTEGER, anomaly INTEGER, state_norm TEXT);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_vendor ON surveillance_spending(vendor);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_state ON surveillance_spending(state);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_amount ON surveillance_spending(amount);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_ledger ON surveillance_spending(ledger);