The Public Safety Committee

The Public Safety Committee is the council committee assigned oversight of the RTIC: three council members (chair Bo Hess, Vice Mayor Antanette Mosley, Sheneika Smith) meeting remotely, roughly every other month. Below is the record of each meeting from the committee’s May 2025 relaunch through Sept 24, 2026, from the city’s own meeting streams. Captions are unlabeled, so attributions follow the meeting context.

Next meeting

Date: Thursday, Sept 24
Time: 1:00 PM
Body: Asheville City Council Public Safety Committee
Place: Remote meeting (virtual, per NC Gen. Stat. 166A-19.24(f)); livestream on Engagement Hub or the City's YouTube Channel, call-in (855) 925-2801 code 11543
How to comment: Live call-in comments during the public comment period: (855) 925-2801, code 11543, then press * and select option 3. Pre-recorded voicemail comments accepted at the same number/code until 5:00 p.m. the day before the meeting. Written comments to publicsafetycommittee@PublicInput.com, also closing 5:00 p.m. the day before.
Status: Held; the account.

September 24, 2026

No RTIC, plate-reader or audit item; the meeting was moved from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The one caller, a resident who requested the Axon quote on Aug 17 and has not been provided it, asked the committee to have the quote published, prices redacted if need be, and to take up the Resolution 26-180 review with a way for the public to follow it. No committee member or staff member responded; the chair adjourned. APD reported its drone unit’s coverage of the G20 flight restriction and, at the PGA Tour event, “airspace monitoring to detect unauthorized flights from other drones.” Deputy Chief Sean Aardema described a planned exchange of APD data on juveniles with the Department of Juvenile Justice and the district court judges, still at the planning stage. Full record: 2026-09-24 Public Safety Committee.

March 26, 2026: no recording published

On March 26, 2026 the committee advanced the RTIC grant to full council, 2 to 0. Every other committee meeting in 2025 and 2026 was streamed and archived; this one has no published recording. Its trace in the public record is the approval of its minutes at the next meeting, 3 to 0, without discussion. The minutes are a standing records request.

November 20, 2025

Eight callers asked the committee to cancel the Flock and Fusus contracts over immigration-enforcement concerns; one asked the committee to “disable any city-owned Flock or Fusus camera and pause any data sharing agreement so that proper oversight and further review can be put in place.”

Mosley asked whether the city has agreements with ICE. Chief Lamb answered “No… we do not share any of our data with any federal agencies,” adding that Flock and Axon “don’t have the right to share our data either.” The city attorney added that LPR use is “limited to only active criminal investigations, which is specifically exempt from public records.” Smith asked one follow-up. No member asked for the data-sharing agency list, no member asked for an audit, and no motion was made.

Two later records bear on those answers. In 2025 Flock’s own customers learned of federal pilots giving Customs and Border Protection access to their cameras (Camera network misuse, documented cases). On April 28, 2026, Roney read the Flock contract’s “irrevocable, worldwide license” clause into the record at the work session.

The recorded meetings

May 29, 2025: orientation. Staff describe the coming technology work, including the planned real-time center. A caller notes the Citizens Police Advisory Committee has been dormant since 2020 and asks the committee to restart it; the item did not return to a later agenda through July 2026.
July 31, 2025: APD presents its technology plans (a new technology division, a future RTIC, “actively seeking grant opportunities” for Fusus). A caller asks: “what is the audit process? what is the transparency process? Why does the community have to come ask these questions?” The questions were not taken up. Smith: “if the technology can scan, capture, and read a license plate, it can probably scan, capture, and read my face… What’s the difference?”
September 25, 2025: no public comment; no surveillance items.
January 29, 2026: the last recorded meeting before the RTIC grant vote; the grant was not previewed. Smith to APD: “It’s a fine line between proactivity and profiling. How do you all keep it clean?”
March 26, 2026: the RTIC vote; no recording (above).
May 28, 2026: 38 minutes; no surveillance items. The comment system was down; the chair said emails could be read by the meeting’s end; none were read.
July 29, 2026: no surveillance items; the words Flock, Fusus, intelligence center, and audit do not occur in the recording.
September 24, 2026: no surveillance item on the agenda; one caller on the Axon quote and the review, no response (above).

No plate-reader audit report had been presented to the committee as of its Sept 24, 2026 meeting, which had no RTIC, plate-reader or audit item. State law requires such reports to exist (G.S. 20-183.31(a)(7)); APD’s Policy 1703 routes its quarterly review to the chief (row 4). Public comment runs 30 minutes (the asks for the committee).

Figures presented to the committee

July 2025: Chief Lamb described “predictive policing” and “predictive analytics”; the city’s later description of the RTIC was “reactive, not predictive” (Asheville’s RTIC claims and the record).
July 2025: a “multi-year 100% clearance rate for homicides” was stated; a deputy chief’s figures in the same period showed two 2024 homicides open.
The violent-crime reduction was given as “37%” in July 2025, “over 36%” in November 2025, and 24% in the annual figure reported in January 2026. In September 2026, violent crime through Aug 31 was given as “33% below the four year historical average” of 2021 to 2024 (Sept 24).

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