In December 2024, the Nashville City Council rejected Metro Nashville Police Department’s FUSUS contract — by one vote. FUSUS, a technology that merges private and public video feeds into one centralized platform for the police to monitor, was backed by Mayor Freddie O’Connell as a vital tool to help keep Nashvillians safe. But local advocates described the technology as one which, without proper policies and procedures, attempts to use Davidson County residents as the “beta testers” for a new era of policing.
Immediately after the bill’s defeat, Mayor O’Connell blamed FUSUS’s failure on community members who “attach[ed] fears about unrelated possibilities to it.” So city leaders have already brought back the bill in an attempt to barge it through. Community concerns seem so insignificant when they collide with a process determined to chug along.
The mayor has dismissed all concerns about FUSUS as misguided and lobbyists have reportedly resorted to making threats to council members who refuse to vote their way. But in five key ways, this coalition of political power and business interests have failed to address citizens’ concerns, because it is very difficult to argue that FUSUS technology makes Nashvillians more safe.
- This coalition failed to produce any data suggesting this bill would be effective in reducing violent crime. That is because this data does not exist. Data that has been collected seems to suggest the opposite, with large drops in Nashville’s violent crime rates occurring after video feeds to FUSUS were disabled.
- They failed to develop coherent policies and procedures to ensure that intended goals would be achieved. Despite FUSUS first being installed in September of 2022, the MNPD never enacted a Standardized Operating Procedure (SoP) for the technology at all.
- They failed to provide enforceable guardrails to protect Nashvillians’ civil rights. The FUSUS contract indemnified the MNPD from any allegations of “misuse” by rerouting all allegations of abuse to Axon Enterprises (FUSUS’ parent company). Local civil rights leaders warned that litigation against private organizations is so expensive that it would prevent Davidson County residents from seeking justice for civil rights violations.
- They failed to be proactive to anticipate the dangers of outsourcing key government functions to private corporations. The terms and conditions of the FUSUS contract between Metro Nashville and Axon (the owner of FUSUS) reads, “In no event will either party [Metro and Axon] be liable to the other for any … damages of any kind for any matter arising out of or in connection with … this agreement.” Even if Axon violated the key terms of any amended agreement, our government would have already forfeited the responsibility to pursue legal remedy for its citizens.
- They failed to provide clear and consistent descriptions of the FUSUS technology, with council members regularly coming away from meetings with different interpretations. In the discussion directly preceding the last FUSUS vote, council members repeatedly disagreed on what kind of data FUSUS captures and where this data is stored. One councilman turned to the citizens in the gallery and tried to argue that FUSUS does not capture data at all.
The Tennessee state legislature has made it clear that they will force local police departments to use all available tools to criminalize immigration, homelessness and protest. But rather than addressing this crisis head-on, Nashville’s elected officials are pushing legislation that further weakens citizens’ ability to hold the police department accountable to our priorities.
Watching local lawmakers openly mock our concerns reminds me that public safety is not primarily an issue of crime, but of democracy. Although Nashvillians have repeatedly stated that community control over public services makes us safer than surveillance, our elected officials continue to advance “solutions” that directly contradict our community’s greatest needs.
In Mayor O’Connell’s final encouragement to Nashville council members to vote in favor of FUSUS, he described the vote as one that would answer “a question about whether we trust ourselves — local government, local law enforcement — to perform a core mission of public safety.” The answer came back: “No.”
In a time where authoritarianism is in such clear view, we are once again checking for effectiveness, coherence, enforcement, proactiveness and clarity from a mayoral administration that wishes to operate according to business-as-usual. It is no surprise that upon receiving a vote of no confidence, they would decide to dismiss the results.
Stephen Joel Watts (he/him) is a political advocate and artist based out Nashville. Stephen works with organizations such as Black Mental Health Village, the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development, and founded the Black Mythology Project. The goal of all this work is to build awareness of the patterns of power and control that connect all forms of oppression.