Summary: On Tuesday, City Council will consider terminating the City’s contract for eleven fixed Flock license-plate readers. Ending that contract seems worthwhile to us, but APD already operates a larger Axon mobile ALPR system and plans further Axon integration. Residents affected by serious crime may value these tools, while others raise legitimate concerns about privacy, misuse, and the tracking of people’s movements. Changing vendors resolves neither perspective. Council should pause expansion, close the proposed resolution’s loopholes, and use an independent review and public engagement process to develop safeguards for the entire ALPR system.

The Facts: On Tuesday, City Council will consider a resolution terminating the City’s Flock license-plate-reader contract and directing a review of the technology’s use, safeguards, and civil-liberties implications. Automated license-plate readers, or ALPRs, photograph license plates and record where and when vehicles are observed. Police can search those records to identify vehicles or reconstruct their movements.

The Asheville Police Department (APD) operates eleven fixed cameras licensed from the Flock Safety corporation. APD also has used Axon mobile ALPR technology on marked police vehicles since April 2024. APD’s August 14 memo says the department plans to reduce its Flock contract and APD-owned Flock infrastructure while expanding and integrating Axon’s ALPR capabilities. APD may retain software-based access to the broader Flock network. APD is also considering a Flock software license that would preserve access to the wider regional Flock network even if the City removes its own cameras.

The proposed Council resolution would terminate the City’s contract with Flock, direct Flock to remove its hardware, and prohibit City employees from querying or sharing data collected through the City-owned cameras. It would require a review of Flock’s uses, retention, sharing, auditing, and civil-liberties protections, with participation from an independent civil-liberties reviewer. It would also prohibit new or expanded Flock technology during that review.

APD recommends retaining access to Flock’s databases. It says ALPR information has assisted investigations involving homicides, shootings, robbery, hit-and-run incidents, and stolen vehicles. APD reports that it recently reduced the number of authorized Flock users, narrowed outside-agency access, and shortened its Flock search window from 30 to 21 days.

Our Assessment: Terminating the City’s Flock contract seems worthwhile to us, but it does not resolve the larger surveillance issue. APD already operates a larger Axon mobile ALPR system and plans further Axon integration. Without amendments, Asheville could remove eleven Flock cameras while expanding substantially the same surveillance through another vendor.

The debate does not divide neatly between public safety and civil liberties. Many residents – particularly in neighborhoods most affected by shootings, theft, and other serious crime – support technology that may help identify offenders. Their safety concerns deserve substantial weight. At the same time, those communities may experience the greatest concentration of surveillance and the consequences of mistaken alerts, expanded data sharing, and high-risk stops. The challenge is to preserve demonstrated public-safety benefits while preventing unnecessary or unauthorized surveillance.

APD has identified serious investigations in which Flock provided useful leads. But it has not provided comparable information about total searches, confirmed and false matches, resulting stops and arrests, case outcomes, complaints, or policy violations. Without those facts, the public cannot fully evaluate the technology’s benefits and harms.

Mission creep is a central concern. A system introduced to locate homicide suspects or stolen vehicles can gradually gain more users, databases, integrations, and permissible purposes. APD can already access a regional Flock network and plans additional integration through a Real-Time Intelligence Center capable of combining license-plate information with police, municipal, and private camera feeds. Removing City-owned Flock cameras may therefore do little to limit APD’s practical surveillance reach.

Experience elsewhere shows why safeguards matter. In Kenosha County, Wisconsin, prosecutors charged a former deputy after an audit allegedly found that he used Flock to track a coworker for a personal purpose. In Sherwood, Arkansas, a camera reportedly misread one character of a plate, after which officers detained an innocent couple at gunpoint while their infant remained in the vehicle. We’re not alleging any similar misuse by APD, but these cases demonstrate the potential consequences of inadequate controls and verification.

Changing vendors does not remove those risks. The Guardian reports that several municipalities have moved away from Flock and then selected or considered Axon readers, while Axon has actively pursued the resulting business. Our concern is not simply that Axon is the vendor. It is that cities can preserve or expand the collection of residents’ movements without adequate transparency and public review, particularly when Axon’s Fusus platform can integrate numerous public and private camera feeds.

Patrick Conant of Sunshine Labs makes the same vendor-neutral argument in an August 21 letter to Council. He recommends applying the review and expansion freeze to all ALPR and real-time surveillance technology. He also reports that a contract for approximately 20 additional Axon fleet-mounted readers was nearing completion in July.

The proposed resolution leaves two additional concerns. It does not clearly prevent APD from using Flock records collected by other agencies or private cameras after Asheville removes its own cameras. It also does not require certified deletion of the City’s existing Flock data.

The political context for this resolution is difficult to ignore. Council received substantial criticism for approving the Axon contract and Real-Time Intelligence Center grant without adequate public review. Ending Flock provides a visible response as an election approaches, but removing eleven cameras while maintaining and expanding a larger surveillance system could amount primarily to a change in vendors.

We recommend that Council terminate the Flock contract and amend the resolution to:

1. Freeze all new or expanded ALPR cameras, capabilities, integrations, contracts, and database access during the review, regardless of vendor. (Patrick Conant has a call to action that does propose a full pause on all ALPR use – if that aligns better with your own position, you can access it here.)
2. Require certified deletion of data from the City-owned Flock cameras and prevent APD from using outside Flock networks to circumvent the termination.
3. Create a structured public process – centered on residents of neighborhoods most affected by both crime and policing – to evaluate ALPR’s claimed public-safety benefits and the evidence supporting them, along with its civil-liberties risks, acceptable uses, and appropriate limits.
4. Following the independent civil-liberties review and public engagement process, require Council – not APD or the City Manager – to decide whether and under what circumstances Asheville should continue using ALPR technology and, if it continues, adopt vendor-neutral safeguards governing searches, verification, retention, sharing, sensitive activities, audits, transparency, and consequences for misuse.
   

Things to do: Email City Council and ask members to strengthen the Flock resolution so that ending one contract does not enable the same surveillance system to expand through Axon or outside networks. You can use our email template below, which addresses this issue as well as the zoning one described above.

Email Template: You can send an email to the Asheville City Council by filling out the form below. Our email tool will send an individually addressed email to the recipients, and enable us to track how many emails were sent overall in the campaign. If you prefer to write your own email, you can copy and paste (and adapt) our template text – please cc: or bcc: info@gapavl.org on your individualized email, so we can better track how many emails were sent.

Important: If you receive a response to your email, please forward it to us at info@gapavl.org so we can reflect that in the report back.

To: AshevilleNCCouncil@ashevillenc.gov

CC: or BCC: info@gapavl.org

Subject: Put protections and public oversight before expansion

Dear Mayor Manheimer and City Council members,

Please postpone the duplex and ADU amendments and consider them through the comprehensive UDO overhaul beginning later this year. That process is supposed to apply displacement-risk analysis and anti-displacement strategies that are not yet ready.

These relatively modest reforms may ultimately be appropriate, but Council has not demonstrated why they must be approved separately before the City can evaluate their cumulative effects and identify protections for vulnerable residents.

Please also terminate the Flock contract while strengthening the proposed resolution to address the larger ALPR system. Residents affected by serious crime may value these investigative tools, while others raise legitimate concerns about privacy, misuse, and the tracking of people’s movements. Asheville needs a broader public conversation about whether and under what circumstances this surveillance should continue – not simply a change in vendors.

Specifically, please:

1. Freeze all new or expanded ALPR cameras, capabilities, integrations, contracts, and database access during the review, regardless of vendor.
2. Require certified deletion of data from the City-owned Flock cameras and prevent APD from using outside Flock networks to circumvent the termination.
3. Create a structured public process – centered on residents of neighborhoods most affected by both crime and policing – to evaluate ALPR’s claimed public-safety benefits and the evidence supporting them, along with its civil-liberties risks, acceptable uses, and appropriate limits.
4. Following the independent civil-liberties review and public engagement process, require Council – not APD or the City Manager – to decide whether and under what circumstances Asheville should continue using ALPR technology and, if it continues, adopt vendor-neutral safeguards governing searches, verification, retention, sharing, sensitive activities, audits, transparency, and consequences for misuse.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Name]

[Neighborhood or community]