Nashville, Tenn., city council votes against police surveillance expansion

The Nashville Metropolitan Council on Tuesday narrowly voted against approving a new contract proposed by the city’s police department with Fusus, a law enforcement software company that enables police to access video feeds from private surveillance cameras voluntarily provided by businesses.

In October, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department shared its plans to request approval from Nashville Metropolitan Council to enter a new contract with Fusus, which would have included an integration of the video feeds provided voluntarily by commercial establishments into its existing Fusus video surveillance platform to assist in criminal investigations. The council voted 20-18 in favor of voting for the contract, just one vote short of an approving vote.

Nashville’s police department has used Fusus’s cloud-based video surveillance platform since 2022 for police vehicle location services and computer aided dispatch, but the agency’s access to privately owned cameras has been limited to the city’s Community Safety Camera Network, a voluntary registry that allows residents either to let Nashville Police access their cameras in real time, or view the cameras’ addresses to request later access.

In addition to integrating video feeds into the city’s Fusus platform, the new contract would have provided several oversight mechanisms, including a stipulation that the contract would be immediately terminated if the system were to be used in a way that violated police policy. It also would have prohibited facial recognition and artificial intelligence tools and it would have barred Fusus from unilaterally modifying its terms of use.

Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell has strongly supported upgrading the city’s Fusus platform. In a statement Wednesday morning, he shared his disappointment with the outcome of the city’s vote, WSMV Nashville reported.

“I’m disappointed that Metro Council was unable to pass a Fusus contract update that offered clear benefit to the safety of Nashville,” O’Connell said. “Not only will Metro Police not get a helpful tool, but they will also lose existing Fusus tools that they have been using to dispatch officers to residents in need and identify officers’ locations.”