WNC Surveillance Watch

Site Updates

14 min read

This site is a working notebook, and it changes often. This page is the changelog: every release, the pages it touched, and the primary documents that drove it. Corrections are listed too. If you find an error, tell us with a link or a document and it will be fixed and logged here.

August 24, 2026: the site joins WNC Surveillance Watch

This site now lives at wncwatch.org and carries the name of the project it belongs to: WNC Surveillance Watch, the same neighbors keeping the same record. Two changes with this release: the site speaks as “we” throughout, because it is kept by more than one pair of hands now, and the share card’s QR points at the new address. Nothing about the method changed: every claim still links its record, corrections still run with the same prominence, and the old address will keep working.

2026-08-23, afternoon: Correction on Getting Flock Out, demand 3

The August 20 briefing note said Flock’s new ten-camera minimum meant termination would end APD’s network access, “substantially” covering demand 3. That was written before the chief’s August 14 memo was public. The memo plans a Flock software license to “preserve access to the Flock network” with no cameras, so the note now says the opposite: demand 3 is the live fight Tuesday, not a settled one. Page: Getting Flock Out.

2026-08-23, late: The home page, rebuilt

The share card with the QR code now sits near the top, right after Tuesday’s callout, so it is the first thing to screenshot. The opening names the county network that came first. The timeline gains the county’s audit-log release (May 13) and the resolution posting with the chief’s memo (Aug 21); the now-box leads with Tuesday’s guide, the audit log, and the budget exit; the “why should I care” door adds the audit log; the eight sections are listed; the rest is trimmed.

2026-08-23, night: The way out, in the contracts’ own words, and the sections on the home page

The home page now lists the site’s eight sections with one line each; every page’s breadcrumb names its section and links back to that section’s front page.

A reader asked whether these contracts can be cancelled any time on 30 days’ notice. Checked against the texts: neither vendor’s baseline allows termination for convenience. Axon’s Sourcewell contract and Master Services agreement allow exit for Axon’s uncured breach (30 days) or for non-appropriation, the latter “immediately upon notice,” with hardware returned within 30 days to avoid a list-price clawback. Flock’s standard terms (updated Aug 21, 2026) allow non-appropriation termination “at the end of the applicable fiscal year upon thirty (30) days’ written notice.” North Carolina’s continuing-contract statutes (G.S. 160A-17, 153A-13) and the preaudit rule (159-28) are why the clauses exist. The exit is the budget. New section on What Axon Contracts Do, a short version on Getting Flock Out, a lever on What the Law Lets the County Do (and one more item for its needs-a-lawyer list), and a line for Tuesday’s speakers.

2026-08-23, evening: Tuesday’s vote, as an action page

Tuesday, August 25: Make the Vote Count is the page for the Flock vote, rebuilt the same evening as a guide rather than a script: what council is actually deciding, section by section; a menu of angles (process, the Constitution, immigration, reproductive care, public housing, schools, money, the exit, the vendors, the neighbors, and “you support the cameras and want rules”), each with a page and a sourced fact; the four shapes an ask can take and a fill-in skeleton; and, as one worked example, three asks shaped to fit an amendment a council member can make from the dais (end Flock; make the Section 6 pause cover every plate-reader vendor, fixed or in-car; make the review real, with hearings and a community-chosen reviewer), the amendment text itself with a fallback, each member’s position in their own words and the ask for them, the speaking logistics from the city’s own rules (sign up at the door, ten minutes for a group of four, written comment by 9 a.m. Tuesday), an email template, the mailing address and voicemail line, and what to watch for after. The home page opens with it. Sourced to the chief’s memo, APD’s count of 162 in-car Axon readers (828NewsNow, Aug 20), the released July emails, and the August 20 briefing.

2026-08-23, later: The sheriff’s own audit log

A reader pointed to a public records request on MuckRock that produced 28 months of the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office’s Fusus access log, 337,838 entries from January 2024 to May 2026, released by the county within a day and with eight columns, including every timestamp, withheld under G.S. 132-1.4. The Sheriff’s Audit Log is the analysis: 58 percent of all camera viewing was on Asheville Housing Authority cameras (Pisgah View Apartments alone, 39,404 events, more than any school or county building); 95 to 99 percent of viewing was live monitoring rather than recorded playback; at least 9,617 logged hours of live watching, 5,178 of them on housing; three accounts did half of all viewing; 309 plate searches and 212 saved clips in the whole period. The page explains the method and what the withheld timestamps make impossible to know. Cross-referenced on Watching the Poor, Buncombe County, What Is the RTIC, The RTIC Policy, Board of Education, Ella Santos, Quentin Miller, and the Timeline. Records Center request 17 asks the county for the timestamps and the city for APD’s log. Individual deputies and analysts in the file are not named on this site.

2026-08-23: The August 25 documents, a full audit, and the site rebuilt in sections

The vote, two days out. The agenda for August 25 posted on the 21st with the Flock resolution (New Business VI.A, not consent) and Chief Stepp’s August 14 memo attached. Getting Flock Out now scores the resolution’s seven sections against the eight demands: one met (terminate), one partly (removal requested, no deadline), six not addressed, and Axon absent from the text. The memo says APD “is not pursuing a full transition away from Flock,” plans “a Flock software license that would preserve access to the Flock network,” and puts Axon plate readers on a February 2027 calendar; it counts 86 Flock cameras in Buncombe County (11 the city’s), says the sheriff “currently uses Flock ALPR cameras,” and describes evaluating “consolidating the BCSO RTIC into the APD RTIC.” Both documents are on Documents; the memo’s numbers are on Buncombe County, What Is the RTIC, Promise Tracker, and the briefing page.

The site, rebuilt in sections. The root had 33 pages in alphabetical order. They now live in eight sections, each with a front page: The Record, The System, Western North Carolina, The Vendors, The Wider Fight, People, Act, and Reference. Every profile is now in its region, including the original Asheville ones, with city staff moved out of the county folder into Asheville. Every moved page redirects from its old address. Browse Everything mirrors the sections.

The audit. Every page was checked for broken links (one, fixed), orphans (none), frontmatter that would fail the build (eleven pages, seven from the previous release; fixed), and recurring figures that disagreed across pages. Every quoted passage was checked against its cited source: 353 quotes, 172 sources fetched. The quotes held up. Corrections:

  • Flock’s start date. The chief’s memo and BPR both date APD’s Flock system to 2025 (February, per the memo), and assign April 2024 to Axon in-car readers. This site had said Flock went live in April 2024; the Timeline, home page, What Is the RTIC, and The Flockbook now carry both, pending the contract.
  • Macon County’s vote was Tuesday, July 14, 2026 (three pages said July 15).
  • Sheriff Holbrooks’ two post-vote quotes are from The Franklin Press, not the Smoky Mountain News; “life-saving tool” and “nearly unanimously against” were the paper’s paraphrases and are now presented that way; Commissioner Shearl’s “car salesman” line is sourced to NC Local with its full wording.
  • Axon’s facial-recognition post says “early-stage field research” and “a predetermined list of individuals,” not the shortened versions the Axon page had; Flock’s safeguards post says “blocking searches related to immigration enforcement”; Flock’s Nova walk-back is now quoted verbatim; Rick Smith’s “safer, less dangerous place” is from an Axon blog post, not the earnings release.
  • The Citizen Times’ “removal of vagrants” sentence and the Chamber’s “plug into” wording restored verbatim.

Still open: the executed Flock contract, which would settle the start date; the records behind the memo’s 86-camera count; and the paywalled sources (The Franklin Press, parts of 404 Media) a subscriber could re-check.

2026-08-22, later: People by region, and the vendors

People, rebuilt as a map. The People page now organizes everyone by where they decide (the city, Buncombe County, Western North Carolina, Raleigh and Washington, the vendors, Community) and, within each, by the next date voters can act. Existing profile addresses are unchanged. Thirty-eight new profiles and roster pages, each opening with title, tenure, term end, and next voter decision, each quote linked:

The vendors. A new hub, The Vendors, with entity pages for Flock Safety (the company, its products including Nova and FreeForm, its August 2026 safeguards dated against what leaked) and Axon (Fusus, the Outpost and Lightpost readers that mount inside streetlights and are “designed to completely blend in,” the facial-recognition research, the ethics board), profiles of Rick Smith and Garrett Langley, and Stories That Check Out, a dated, sourced ledger of incidents by harm: federal and immigration reach, reproductive care and protest, officers stalking, wrong-person stops, tracking people not plates, hiding the tool from courts, leaks, and what the companies do when a town says no.

Corrections in this release. HACA’s chief executive is Ella Santos; David Nash retired in June 2023 (the Watching the Poor page now says “then-executive director”). APD Deputy Chief Sean Aardema sits on the housing authority’s board (verified in the May 20, 2026 minutes, archived). No “Jackson letter” was read at the May 12 vote; the letters were from the DA and the U.S. Attorney. Rep. Mike Clampitt died March 18, 2026; Rep. Mark Pless lost his primary; Rep. Balkcom’s House seat is open. The site’s earlier reference to police-chief semifinalist interviews on Aug 24 to 25 was unconfirmed and has been replaced with what the city has said: a September target and no names yet.

Layered into existing profiles: Esther Manheimer (Aug 21 framing; November 2025 ICE statement), Kim Roney (Aug 20), Bo Hess (Aug 21 on Axon; November 2025 ICE statements), Quentin Miller (the Tillis fight and the DHS dispute), Jackie Stepp (the chief search).

2026-08-22: The county network, its neighbors, and the law

The first release built from the county side of the record rather than the city’s. Method note, because it matters for trusting what follows: nearly everything new here came from primary documents pulled directly (the Sheriff’s Office policy manual on PowerDMS, Department of Justice forfeiture tables, Flock’s own transparency portals, ICE’s participating-agencies list, the county’s document center, housing-authority board reports, statute text at ncleg.gov) rather than from news coverage.

New pages

  • What the Law Lets the County Do: the sheriff-commissioner divide in statute, the budget and preaudit levers, the forfeiture certification, interlocal ratification, the plate-reader statute’s sharing clause, the three immigration-cooperation laws passed over vetoes since 2024 (HB 10, HB 318, SB 153), who in WNC has signed with ICE, and a plain list of risks and levers. Questions that need a lawyer are marked.
  • Site Updates (this page).

Buncombe County, rebuilt (Buncombe County)

  • The Sheriff’s Office’s own rulebook, archived and quoted: Policy 217 (RTIC, April 2025), Policy 402 (plate readers, March 2023), Policy 403 (drones, revised August 15, 2026), and the HB 10 directive. Findings: “proactive monitoring” and crowd-watching at public events are written policy; APD’s Policy 1703 sharing clause is copied from the county’s word for word; the plate-reader audit is done with “sworn members of the FUSUS Advisory Committee,” not a community board; sharing is allowed with any “criminal justice agency” for “active criminal intelligence operations”; a “Drone as First Responder” program was added one week ago.
  • Federal forfeiture payments to the Sheriff’s Office by year, about $988,000 across eight reported years, from DOJ’s equitable-sharing tables; the annual certification a county official must sign.
  • The county’s Security Camera Policy revision (May 2023) giving the Sheriff’s Office off-portal access to county-building footage, no board approval required.
  • HACA’s March 2026 executive report: both BCSD and APD hold DVR access at public housing.
  • The April 2023 downtown patrol plan and the September 2023 Axon contract added to the Timeline; fewer than 15 private downtown businesses were on the “enterprise fund” network that year.
  • Records Center: request 16 (audit reports, the advisory committee, forfeiture certifications, contracts, camera counts, the drone partner).
  • Quentin Miller: “His rulebook, in his own words.” Documents: “The sheriff’s own policies” section with six archived PDFs. The RTIC Policy: where APD’s sharing sentence came from. Follow the Money: forfeiture payments to APD ($325,303 in FY2022).

The neighbors (WNC and NC and the county pages)

  • Henderson County: the sheriff’s Flock portal, read August 22, lists 2,048 agencies with access to the county’s plate reads, including the FBI, the US Postal Inspection Service, an Air Force base, five state police forces, and 212 North Carolina agencies (Buncombe’s sheriff and APD among them). Henderson holds the only 287(g) jail agreement in WNC (June 2020). Updated portal figures for the sheriff and Hendersonville PD.
  • Jackson County: the sheriff’s published policy manual is four documents, one of them an unedited Colorado template; no plate-reader policy is public. Sheriff Farmer on ICE detainers.
  • Haywood County: the sheriff’s race (Mease vs Howell) and commission seats on the November ballot. McDowell County: a new sheriff, Nathan Mace, sworn in August 10. Rutherford County: the February 2025 pitch in detail (“If you get the 8, you have access to the nationwide database”); the vandalism case still open. Transylvania County: Sheriff Owenby unopposed; Brevard PD’s public policies. Macon County and Madison County: what the neighbors’ records show.
  • Every county page now carries its 287(g) status from ICE’s August 21 list and its federal forfeiture payments from DOJ’s tables.
  • WNC and NC: two new sections, “Where the data goes” and “Who has signed with ICE”; Boone’s reported narrowing of its sharing list.

Corrections

  • Drew Ball: district corrected to 3, per the county’s current roster (the page had said 1, and before that 2).
  • Asheville PD’s Flock portal showed 21-day retention on August 21, 2026; the site had said 30 days, which is what APD’s policy states. Both are now noted on Promise Tracker and What Is the RTIC.

Still open after this round (the unpublished research log tracks these): the schools MOU text; the enterprise fund’s revenue; the FUSUS Advisory Committee’s membership; the DFR drone vendor; Madison County’s November sheriff matchup; Flock portal pages for the remaining WNC agencies; HACA’s earlier board reports; the exact veto date of SB 153; and every item marked “needs a lawyer” on the law page.

Earlier

Releases before this page existed are summarized on the Timeline (“Aftermath and accountability”) and in the dated update boxes on the home page. The site went live under its current name on August 17, 2026.

Graph View

Backlinks