Documents

Everything on this site traces back to documents like these. Read them yourself.

The August 25, 2026 Flock vote: agenda documents

• Agenda: the Flock resolution is New Business VI.A. · Resolution calling for the City Manager to terminate the City’s contract with Flock: seven sections, scored here. · Chief Stepp’s memo to council, August 14, 2026: “not pursuing a full transition away from Flock”; 86 Flock cameras in Buncombe County; searchers 18 to 12; sharing narrowed to four states; retention 30 to 21 days; Axon readers “operational” by February 2027; “consolidating the BCSO RTIC into the APD RTIC.”

The May 12, 2026 vote: official record

• Meeting Minutes: confirms 6–1 on both RTIC items, all seven members present, Roney the sole no; records 22 speakers in opposition. Motion text verbatim: Hess moved, Ullman seconded, on both items.
• Action Agenda · Resolutions PDF · Ordinances · full documents folder
• Staff reports: Item B.1: RTIC grant · Item B.2: Axon contract
• Full video, and our timestamped reconstruction
• What was enacted: Resolution 26-97 (civil-liberties resolution) · Resolution 26-98 (DOJ grant acceptance) · Ordinance 5222 ($1,141,255.56 budget amendment) · Resolution 26-99 (Axon contract authorization, Sourcewell cooperative pricing)

What’s still not public: the executed Axon contract itself. Resolution 26-99 authorized the City Manager to sign it. The signed contract has never been released, including after council member Turner relayed (Aug 13, 2026) that it would be made public “tomorrow”; three days later, nothing (Promise Tracker row 12). What is public is the framework it rides on: the Sourcewell cooperative contract 101223-AXN with Axon’s embedded Master Services Agreement (112 pp.), the current pricing catalog, and the Fusus appendix: five-year auto-renewal, non-cancelable payments, no convenience termination, fixed-ALPR pre-authorization, and a pricing-confidentiality clause. Analysis: Getting Flock Out.

The earlier votes

• April 28, 2026 work session (Axon and Flock reps presented; no public comment): agenda · materials · video
• April 14, 2026 (the pulled vote): minutes · action agenda · video
• March 25, 2025 (first RTIC money, via consent agenda): minutes · action agenda · video
• January 24, 2023 (joining the county Fusus network): minutes · action agenda

The full meeting archive: 2020–present · 2012–2019. We also hold a local transcript corpus of 102 council meeting videos.

The August 20, 2026 release: the RTIC’s rulebook

Seven documents from two public records requests (PRR-2026-837 and PRR-2026-840), shared publicly by Sunshine Labs’ Patrick Conant: four drafts of APD Policy 1703 (the RTIC’s governing policy, facial recognition ban included, effective date still blank), the private policy workgroup’s meeting notes (June 11 – July 23, 2026), and two Axon email chains showing the contract went for signature July 16, a second contract for 20 Axon Fleet in-car plate readers, and the ACEIP data-program opt-out. Full analysis, all seven links, and archived copies: The RTIC Policy. (Drive folder)

APD’s own policies

APD publishes its policy manual publicly on PowerDMS: 116 documents. The ones that matter here:

• Policy 1703: Real Time Intelligence Center (not yet on PowerDMS; released in draft via records request Aug 20, 2026): the RTIC’s own four-page rulebook. See the dedicated page for what it says, what changed between drafts, and what’s missing.

• Policy 505: Automated License Plate Recognition, the written policy NC law requires. Original issue March 2024; last revised May 5, 2026, one week before council voted, and the revision already assigns responsibilities to “the RTIC supervisor,” for a center council had not yet approved. Governs hot lists, data access, 30-day retention, preservation requests.

• Policy 510: Recording Devices · SOP 3102: Body-Worn Cameras · Policy 1701: Criminal Intelligence · Policy 206: Technology Use and Security

The sheriff’s own policies

The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office publishes its manual on PowerDMS: 131 public documents. The ones that govern the county network Asheville’s RTIC plugs into, with archived copies (analysis on Buncombe County):

• Policy 217: Real Time Intelligence Center (effective April 9, 2025) · archived. “Proactive monitoring,” crowd-watching at public events, rapid-deployment cameras, and the sharing sentence APD copied word for word.
• Policy 402: License Plate Reader (effective March 22, 2023) · archived. Sharing with any “criminal justice agency” for “active criminal intelligence operations”; annual audit by the Fusus coordinator and “sworn members of the FUSUS Advisory Committee.”
• Policy 403: Unmanned Aerial Systems (effective April 17, 2023; revised August 15, 2026) · archived. Adds a “Drone as a First Responder” program with an unnamed livestream partner.
• HB 10 directive · archived. The Sheriffs’ Association summary of the 2024 ICE-detainer law, adopted as office guidance.
• Buncombe County Security Camera Policy (county government, approved August 25, 2023; revised January 28, 2026) · archived. The May 25, 2023 revision gave the Sheriff’s Office access to stored county-building footage outside the public records process. Cover sheet: “Requires Board Approval: No.”
• HACA Executive Report, March 25, 2026 · archived. “Surveillance Integration”: updating passwords “for all users who access the camera DVRs, including BCSD and APD.”

Released records and refused ones

• APD Flock Camera Sheet: which agencies have search and hot-list access to Asheville’s Flock data (released Sept 2025 via Sunshine Request).
• Refused: the same request asked for Flock organization and network audit logs, the record of who searched what. The city declined, citing G.S. 20-183.31(b) and the criminal-intelligence exemption (G.S. 132-1.4). The dispute remains open. The trail exists, and the city has already refused to show it to the public. See Promise Tracker.
• Missing: APD’s transparency page describes an “Axon ALPR Dashboard” and a “Flock Safety ALPR Dashboard,” but the page contains no working links and the dashboard page returns a 404 (checked Aug 17, 2026).

Filing your own requests

The city’s records portal is JustFOIA (no account needed; NC law lets anyone request, no reason required). Note: the city’s old NextRequest archive of past requests has been taken offline: released records are no longer publicly searchable at all, which is itself a transparency failure. High-value requests not yet fulfilled:

1. The executed Axon contract (authorized by Resolution 26-99), with all pricing schedules and renewal terms.
2. The quarterly RTIC access audits APD promised (frame around G.S. 20-183.32(f) oversight records, since the city rejects requests framed as ALPR “data” under 20-183.31(b)).
3. The index of all closed records requests from the retired NextRequest system: request numbers, titles, dispositions.
4. Answers to Roney’s 29 questions from March 2025.

Related: 2026-05-12 City Council · Promise Tracker · Claims Library

The full bibliography of reporting and investigations this site draws on: Sources.