The mayor’s office and the Metro Nashville Police Department are making what could be a final push to secure Metro Council’s support for a surveillance footage centralization system sought by police.
Consideration of a resolution expanding MNPD’s use of Fusus has been delayed in recent weeks as councilmembers probe the necessity and safety of the program, but the legislation faces a vote on Tuesday night. At the council’s most recent meeting, several dozen residents spoke out about the contract during a public hearing, the vast majority of whom were opposed to Fusus. Some residents and councilmembers expressed concerns that the program could be co-opted by state or federal agencies to enforce laws related to immigration, abortion or gender-affirming care.
If the legislation is approved, MNPD could use Fusus, a system operational in dozens of cities around the country, to access private surveillance footage from camera owners who volunteer for the program. Police could review the footage in prescribed scenarios, including in response to higher-level calls for service.
The mayor’s office and MNPD have been seeking to assuage concerns in recent weeks, and a new amendment could help sway wavering councilmembers in what promises to be a narrow vote margin.
According to Dave Rosenberg, Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s director of legislative affairs, the amendment does three things: It allows for the immediate termination of the contract if an entity (state or federal law enforcement, for example) seeks to use the system in a way that violates Metro policy; it prohibits the use of facial recognition or artificial intelligence; and it prohibits Fusus from unilaterally changing its terms of use.
Raising questions
A coalition of more than two dozen community organizations including the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Open Table Nashville and the Nashville People’s Budget Coalition has also come out against Fusus on the grounds that the MNPD cannot be trusted with the technology. A letter sent to councilmembers last month pointed to the disproportionate effect of other policing strategies on marginalized communities. The initial rollout of license plate readers in Nashville, for instance, was found to focus primarily on areas with higher minority and low-income populations — although the MNPD’s proposal for a full LPR rollout would see cameras more equally distributed around the county.
“Because of the nature of policing, FUSUS technology will be used in the same biased and unwarranted patterns against low-income and otherwise marginalized communities, including individuals seeking pregnancy care, gender-affirming care and the tracking of unhoused and alleged undocumented persons,” the coalition letter read.
According to Rosenberg, the technology is not the panopticon its critics claim it is. Although anyone in Nashville can register a security camera with the MNPD — informing police that a camera is operating at a particular location — the proposal would only allow cameras on commercial properties to be integrated with the Fusus system. That means security cameras at single family homes would not be included. But cameras at multifamily housing properties — like apartment complexes, which are considered commercial properties — could be.
The system allows business owners to offer up their surveillance camera footage to police under certain circumstances. For instance, camera owners could give MNPD permission to access live footage from a camera during an active call or restrict the department to viewing a certain amount of footage prior to an alleged incident. The footage is stored on a device at the business and can be accessed by police if an incident is taking place nearby. Businesses are notified when footage is accessed and can pull out of the program when they want.
Police already seek that footage, but it is a time-consuming process that, given the storage and technical limitations on many business’ security systems, can critically delay investigations, according to MNPD Deputy Chief Greg Blair, who oversees the Crime Control Strategies Bureau that houses the Fusus system. Seeking the footage in person can also increase overtime costs, Blair said.
“It makes the job easier and doesn’t do anything we can’t already do,” Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg is an interesting person to lead the push. Prior to joining the administration, Rosenberg fought to establish protections against surveillance technology while a member of the Metro Council.
“I stand by that, and I’m thankful that this is an issue that the mayor and I have always aligned on,” Rosenberg said. “Fusus does not add tools for surveillance. It’s giving police access, when specifically authorized by business, to video under very specific circumstances that they could otherwise [get]. … Fusus is not built to be a real-time monitoring of video tool. First of all, MNPD is not equipped to be everyone’s security company for free. But second of all, it’s set up in such a way that when they activate a camera, it has to be in association with a call for service.”
“What we are doing is improving our service, providing a better service, a faster service, and saving our detectives time by having the video ahead of time so they don’t have to go get it,” Blair added.
At a meeting of the council’s Public Health and Safety Committee last month, Councilmember Jordan Huffman asked MNPD Deputy Chief Chris Gilder if the Fusus system would have been helpful to police in responding to a recent fatal shooting at a Hermitage bowling alley.
“The responding officers … had to go in, had to find somebody who operated the camera system, look at the camera footage,” Gilder said. “If they’re a donor camera, that’s something that could have been done literally as the call came out as officers were still on their way to the call and possibly have intercepted the people who were involved on the way there.”
The administration is proposing a “kill switch” that would end the contract if outside actors seek to use it. Even without that provision, Rosenberg and Blair contend that Fusus would be an impractical tool to achieve what critics warn it could be used for.
“Fusus would be a terribly ineffective way of doing terrible things,” Rosenberg said. “It can be tempting to attach to Fusus all of the unrelated possibilities out there, but that’s not what this product is. The products that were being described in public hearing were terrifying, and I’m thankful that those are not Fusus.”
Making the case
In recent weeks, MNPD has been inviting councilmembers and the community to its Family Safety Center to see the tech themselves. On a recent tour, Blair showed off the Fusus interface, currently deployed but without the donor camera feature enabled. The version of Fusus now in operation allows police command to see where each patrol car is located in the city as well as the locations of registered private cameras.
More than 1,000 private business and residential cameras are currently registered with police. That does not mean police have live access to footage. Instead, police can see where cameras are located, along with owner contact information, to speed up the process of seeking and collecting footage related to incidents.
Blair brushes off concerns about federal or state intrusion in the system.
“The feds don’t need our help to go do whatever their mission is,” Blair said. “They just don’t. We’ve been here for two years and no federal partners [have] called down here whatsoever.”
Additionally, he said he is skeptical that outside law enforcement could figure out what footage to look for, and how that footage alone could prove any crime related to, for example, travel out of state for abortions.
“I don’t know how the state is even going to prove that case,” Blair said. “People can drive. … They want to go to another state, they want to go to another country, they can go anywhere they want. They’re not breaking any laws.”
Blair said MNPD’s surveillance policy is pulled from Fusus policies in Orlando, Minneapolis and Lexington. It includes a “duty to intervene” if police employees observe colleagues misusing the product.
“If you don’t follow the rules, or you access information [you’re not supposed to], your job’s on the line,” he said.
“We need to be responsible,” Blair said. “I get that. But I think this is a great opportunity for council to give us the opportunity to earn this trust in the space.”
Business groups representing Nashville’s hospitality and corporate sectors are coming out to back the MNPD’s use of Fusus.
“In this technology-dominant era, we owe it to the public to give first responders the most innovative solutions that best enable them to limit and contain violent incidents,” the groups, including the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp., wrote to councilmembers. “We can do this while simultaneously balancing privacy concerns and public safety while maintaining trust in our civic institutions.”
Prospects for passage
The amendment with new protections may be enough to convince some, but Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda was adamant at the previous meeting: “There are no amount of amendments that can be added to this legislation that can make people feel comfortable,” she said.
Sepulveda reiterated her opposition to the proposal in an interview with the Banner last week, highlighting the ways Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House changes the context into which Fusus would be introduced.
“With the stance that they have taken when it comes to mass deportation, immigration in general … reproductive rights, trans issues and a number of other stances when it comes to marginalized communities,” she said, “I think that technology that centralizes camera footage is dangerous. And I don’t know what the future holds.”
She also expressed a concern that the Republican supermajority in the state legislature could pass legislation preempting any restraints Metro puts on the Fusus program. She has heard the argument that the system will simply make the MNPD’s current process for obtaining surveillance footage more efficient.
“If they’re already doing that then why don’t they just continue with that process?” she said. “Do the concerns of the community not give them pause?”
But concerns from the community are also fueling some support for Fusus expansion. Councilmember Erin Evans, who chairs the Public Health and Safety Committee, told the Banner that her constituents in the southeast area of the county saw the program as a helpful tool during the brief period it was online before being paused earlier this year. In particular, she pointed to a number of properties in her district that have seen frequent turnover in ownership — sometimes to out-of-state owners — making it all the more difficult for police to obtain footage they need to investigate alleged crimes.
She said confirming that apartment complexes and other multifamily housing properties could be part of the Fusus program is key to her support. The participation of those properties, she said, could contribute to a faster and better police response.
As for why she does not share the concerns expressed by community organizations and other councilmembers, Evans emphasized her trust in the mayor as well as people in his administration, like former councilmembers Rosenberg and Bob Mendes, who were skeptical of surveillance.
“I know that they’re not going to set us up in a situation where their values are going to be compromised,” she said. “I’m electing to put my faith in our mayor, Metro Legal, that they understand the concerns residents brought forward, the concerns other councilmembers brought forward, and are going to be able to address those.”