Asheville City Council approved around $325,000 in police spending at last night’s meeting after a debate over transparency and privacy. One measure in particular – a federal grant for new surveillance-related equipment – sparked a spat between two council members.
In a 6-1 vote, elected officials accepted a federal grant of $71,999 that will allow the Asheville Police Department to outfit a new surveillance hub known as a Real Time Intelligence Center. The grant allows Asheville to purchase a video wall, workstations, chairs, desktops and other equipment.
The item was originally on the consent agenda, along with six other police funding measures, but all seven were pulled out for a discussion at the request of council member Kim Roney, who is a vocal critic of the city’s approach to police spending. All measures passed 6-1, with Roney as the sole dissenter.
This program would be in addition to the one that Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office already uses. The Sheriff’s Office contracted with FUSUS, a platform that aggregates video footage from public and private camera systems, to create a Real Time Intelligence Center in 2023, which the Asheville Police Department has accessed and shared data with.
Prior to her vote, Roney said she had concerns around “the security of data, privacy of our residents and the implications of how this federally funded equipment might not be exclusively used by our staff.”
She also critiqued the city’s process for approving new police technology.
“We're really missing those levels of public transparency and accountability. I would expect something like this, with these serious questions, could go to the [Environment and Safety] committee, but we haven't been meeting since Helene,” she said. “It could go to a citizen police advisory committee, but we haven't reconvened that since 2020. We're just skipping all of those steps and burying it into the consent agenda.”
Ahead of the meeting, she submitted 29 questions to the police department about the technology, which included concerns over who can access and ultimately control the data obtained by FUSUS.
“I still have a long list of questions that are about the process, about the services that it provides, about the legal liability,” Roney told BPR in a phone call. “There are implications potentially for violations of our constitutional rights. All of those are conversations that I think our community needs to have before we pursue the funding and the installation of a real time intelligence center.”
Roney also voted against a federal grant that would supply a 50% match for the purchase of bulletproof vests for police and a $215,000 police recruiting contract paid for with local funds, among other items. She wants the city to spend more money on behavioral health services, grow its community response program and “diversify its public safety response.” Roney said she’d like Asheville to closely resemble cities like Durham and Fayetteville, which have robust community responder programs for people experiencing mental health crises.
During public comment, resident Molly Rickert was one of several residents who shared concerns about how camera footage could be used.
“I just don't believe that it won't be accessible to federal organizations, that I think right now are pushing us into a non-democratic state. And we are already seeing so many transgressions of constitutional rights and human rights in this administration,” she said. “I don't know what this might end up being used for.”
Hess: Technology ‘de-escalates risk’
Most of the council, however, supported all police funding measures on the table.
In an impassioned five-minute speech, council member Bo Hess argued that these tools could actually reduce risk for residents.
“When you actually responsibly deploy technology like drones and real time intelligence, what you do is you actually de-escalate the risk for officers and our citizens,” he said. “You're removing the need to send an officer blindly into a dangerous situation and that lowers the chance of use-of-force incidents.”
At one point, Hess also accused Roney of “cherry picking” Durham’s HEART Program, a crisis response program, as an example of how Asheville should approach policing.
“Durham uses a Real Time Intelligence Center. They use ShotSpotter, they've integrated tech and public health together. They didn't throw out public safety, they modernized it. And that's what we're doing here in Asheville, too,” he said. “I don't think we can praise Durham's HEART Program and ignore the fact that they also use the same things that we are using here to make our citizens better.”
The room got tense for a moment as Hess and Roney argued back and forth over their philosophies toward policing. Eventually, Mayor Esther Manheimer, curbed the debate, telling the two that “we aren't in a candidate form.”
‘A lot of questions’
Roney did see support from one other council member, Sheneika Smith, in her critique of the Real Time Intelligence Center. While Smith ultimately voted in support of the grant funding, she agreed with Roney’s push for more public conversations around policing.
“Whether it's a major technological advancement or something as small as equipment, I would just appreciate it if we can bring the conversation through committees first so that people can air all of their issues or get their questions answered,” she said.
“There are a lot of questions generating about people's safety, people's privacy of their identity and how information is shared. I think we just need to have that community forum through a committee before we come here.”
Before Hurricane Helene, the Environment and Safety Committee was scheduled to hear an update on Asheville’s Real Time Intelligence Center in November 2024, but since Helene, all committee and commission meetings have been canceled indefinitely and the Asheville Police Department has not made any public presentation on the program.
The grant was briefly mentioned at an Environment and Safety Committee meeting on September 24, three days before Helene, but did not provide much detail on plans or governance for the Real Time Intelligence Center.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, Police Chief Mike Lamb said that his department has not yet launched all components of the center, but the police department is getting closer.
Asheville is using license plate readers and has “some cameras out in the field currently,” along with “a lot of the hardware that we need for the Real Time Intelligence Center,” Lamb said. But the department has not yet purchased the FUSUS software necessary to fully operationalize the hub, Lamb said.
In the meantime, it has been partnering with Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office for its other data needs, he said.
In an email, police spokesperson Samantha Booth said she anticipates that the hub will be “fully operational in the near future,” though she did not specify a date.
I-26 Connector changes
Several residents expressed frustration with the latest – and possibly final – version of the I-26 Connector Project, which includes an overpass bridge above Patton Avenue.
Previously, the massive $1.2 billion highway expansion included an underpass, a blueprint that Asheville residents advocated for over a decade ago as a way to maintain property values, walkability and aesthetics on a core artery of downtown.
The community has worked with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) since the early 2000s to develop a design that minimizes disruption and any negative community impacts that could stem from a behemoth project that cuts through the heart of downtown Asheville.
At public comment, Wendy Legerton, an Asheville resident and architect, argued the original plan was something “local residents, architects, landscape architects, elected officials, the NCDOT and Housing Authority representatives” had all contributed to and criticized the NCDOT, which has ultimate say as it is funding the project, for changing the plan “without true community engagement.”
The project’s design was altered by the DOT in February as part of an “optimization and refinement” process that shaved $125 million off the $1.2 billion contract.
It’s unclear if council has the ability to change the plan at this point. City Attorney Brad Branham said that decision “remains within the unilateral authority of the state.”
Hess added that he met with Nathan Moneyham, the project’s head engineer, in Raleigh.
“I don't want to get anyone's hopes up,” he said, but Moneyham “is open to listening and coming back and explaining to the public how we got to this point.”
The project is set to move forward with construction in the fall of 2026. Construction is expected to wrap up in 2031.
Every second and fourth Tuesday, Asheville City Council meets at the Council Chamber on the 2nd Floor of City Hall, 70 Court Plaza, beginning at 5 p.m. See the full recording of the March 26 meeting and the agenda.
