The Orange County Sheriff’s Office has launched Connect Orange County, a new voluntary public safety program aimed at harnessing the power of privately-owned cameras to deter, solve, and respond to crime effectively. This innovative initiative allows residents and business owners to play an active role in creating a secure environment for their community.

Connect Orange County is a voluntary program that encourages residents and business owners to register their privately-owned cameras with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. By doing so, members become an essential part of the county’s safety network, enabling law enforcement to quickly locate cameras in the vicinity of a crime or critical incident.

Camera registry provides a streamlined method to quickly locate nearby cameras in a specific area during investigations, emergency events, or emergency responses. Previously, OCSO investigators had to depend on eyewitness accounts and painstakingly gather relevant information over extended periods, often spanning days or even months.

Registering your cameras does not grant direct access to your live video stream. Instead, it offers the following benefits:

• Enables investigators to identify the presence of a camera at your location, allowing them to request video evidence if an incident occurs.
• Maps the location of your cameras in an online portal exclusively accessible to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
• Streamlines the process of collecting direct video evidence, increasing investigative efficiency.
• Provides investigators with contact information in case they need to reach out to you.

The camera registry map is accessible solely to authorized Orange County Sheriff’s Office users and registry data is treated as protected, non-public information, can only be accessed by authorized users of our system and is excluded from public information requests.

For more information and to register your camera, visit ocso.com.