Summary: The City should reject the proposed Real-Time Intelligence Center and Axon/Fusus surveillance expansion unless it first establishes meaningful transparency, public oversight, and enforceable guardrails around how surveillance technologies are used.

The facts: City Council is being asked to approve funding and purchasing authority connected to a new Real-Time Intelligence Center (RTIC) and Axon/Fusus surveillance platform for the Asheville Police Department.

The proposal includes approximately $1.14 million in federal funding and would expand the Asheville Police Department (APD)’s ability to integrate:

• body and dash cameras
• drones
• public and private camera feeds
• live-streaming systems
• mapping and intelligence tools

APD describes the system as a tool for faster emergency response and improved situational awareness. City materials state that participation in camera integration programs is voluntary and that the system does not currently use facial recognition. 

You can read the two staff reports on this issue here and here and see the presentation slides here.

Our Assessment: The core issue is not whether technology can sometimes assist emergency response. The issue is whether Asheville is prepared to create a centralized surveillance infrastructure without strong civilian oversight, transparency requirements, independent auditing, explicit bans on facial recognition, and meaningful public governance.

Community advocates, including Sunshine Labs, have raised significant concerns about the proposal, including:

• lack of public oversight
• absence of a final negotiated contract for Council review
• long-term vendor lock-in with Axon
• future AI and facial recognition expansion
• insufficient guardrails around data use and sharing
• risks of disproportionate surveillance in Black, immigrant, unhoused, and activist communities

(You can read Sunshine Labs’ more detailed analysis here. You can join their Community Forum on the surveillance issue from 6-8 pm tonight, Monday, May 11. Here is the link.)

We agree with Sunshine Labs that once these systems are established, they are extremely difficult to scale back and often expand beyond their original purpose. Asheville is moving faster on surveillance expansion than on the accountability structures needed to govern it responsibly. Across the country, surveillance technologies initially introduced for limited purposes have steadily expanded into broader monitoring systems with disproportionate impacts on historically over-policed communities.

The City should pause this proposal until robust oversight and public accountability measures are established.

Things to do: We invite you to use our email template to urge City Council to reject the RTIC/Axon/Fusus proposal unless meaningful public oversight and enforceable surveillance guardrails are adopted first. (The template also addresses the other two issues in our report: the proposed Shiloh developments and the allocation of funding for affordable housing through disaster recovery money.) Scroll up or click here to access the template.

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