Nashville’s Metro Council will no longer consider the police surveillance contract they were set to take up at Tuesday’s meeting. Council members announced Monday that the legislation would be withdrawn. The Metro Nashville Police Department has also halted their usage of the program.
For the past year, the department has been using Fusus, a technology that integrates video footage from both public and private cameras for the police department. The new agreement would have doubled the contract amount from the current $175,000 to $350,000.
More: What’s the fuss with Fusus?
Hours before the council’s Budget and Finance and Public Health and Safety committees joint meeting on Monday, Budget and Finance Chair Delishia Porterfield posted an update to Twitter.
Spread the word! MNPD is NO LONGER using FUSUS as of today. The current contract will be amended to remove surveillance. The legislation will be withdrawn. Today's presentation will be rescheduled for the Fall when the legislation comes back. See below for details. Please share. pic.twitter.com/WbgnoyvfhS
— Delishia Danielle Porterfield (@DelishiaForNash) February 5, 2024
During Monday’s committee meeting, Metro Law Director Wally Dietz said that Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell had instructed to renegotiate with Fusus. He requested that any usage of the software be paused, until they could delete the feature that permits the police department to access privately-owned camera footage.
Once the private video feeds are paused, certain usages of Fusus will be reintroduced. These include integrating things like police vehicles and the computer-aided dispatch system onto a consolidated map. It also includes accessing the video feeds of around 130 city-owned cameras.
The police department also has a memorandum of understanding regarding the cameras within Metro Nashville Public Schools. This agreement will allow for certain cameras to be accessed in the event of an “active, ongoing” threat.
The contract will reappear before the council in September. At this time, the private camera use could be reintroduced, although it will require a public hearing and council approval.
The contract had already been deferred by one meeting, after eliciting outcry from the community. Opponents of the technology said that the increased government surveillance contributes to a culture of over-policing certain communities.
Some council members said the program was not an example of increased scrutiny, as it draws upon cameras that already exist. They pointed to the voluntary nature of the program, as private camera owners have to opt in. But, other council members — like Porterfield — questioned the focus on surveillance, rather than the root causes of crime.
“Instead of investing your money in additional surveillance to survey, to watch people, what are the investments looking like for affordable housing and workforce development?” Porterfield told our daily show, This Is Nashville, last week. “You meet people’s needs, and you lower crime when needs are met.”
Questions also arose over how the current contract was implemented in the first place, as it never went before Metro Council.
Metro Code requires that “sole source contracts” (contracts that can be issued without a competitive bidding process) worth $250,000 or more must be approved by the council. While the original Fusus contract was under that threshold, Metro Code also demands that contracts involving certain surveillance technology be subject to council approval.
In an update to reporters, Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell said that the surveillance requirement was missed because of the contract value.
“Legal has reviewed how it happened,” O’Connell said. “I have requested process improvement recommendations here to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again effectively.”
In recent weeks, Fusus has made headlines nationally — first, as the Amazon-owned Ring stopped allowing police departments to request doorbell camera footage from users. Ring cameras that had opted in were centralized through programs like Fusus.
Then, last week, it was announced that the Taser company, Axon, had acquired Fusus. Late last year, the Metro Council rejected a $24 million contract that would have outfitted the MNPD with new Axon Tasers.
Update: This story has been updated to include details from the Budget and Finance and Public Safety and Health joint committee meeting held on Monday night. It was last updated at 10:45 p.m. Monday.
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