Asheville voted 5-2 to end its Flock contract, and will keep reading plates from patrol cars
Asheville City Council voted on 25 August to have the city manager terminate its Flock Safety contract, with council members Antanette Mosley and Sheneika Smith opposed. The city ran eleven cameras on a contract worth close to $73,000 that would otherwise have run to the end of January 2027. One speaker put the case for ending it as: "We’re imprisoned by our watchers. We can never know when or by whom our movements are catalogued." Council Member Bo Hess argued the readers serve legitimate purposes such as finding stolen vehicles and missing people. The vote is a real outcome and this desk records it as a win, with the qualification the council itself acknowledged: Asheville keeps Axon cameras mounted on patrol cars that also read plates, and 86 Flock cameras remain deployed across Buncombe County by other bodies the city does not control. Council directed staff to study automated plate readers more broadly. Ending a Flock contract and ending plate reading in a city are two different things, and Asheville is the clearest example yet of the gap between them.
From the reporting
- Voted 5-2 on 25 August 2026 to direct the city manager to terminate the contract. Antanette Mosley and Sheneika Smith opposed.
- Eleven city cameras on a contract of nearly $73,000, which would otherwise have run until the end of January 2027.
- Council Member Bo Hess argued the readers serve legitimate public safety purposes including locating stolen vehicles and missing persons.
- Asheville keeps Axon dashboard cameras on police cruisers that also collect plate data.
- 86 Flock cameras remain deployed across Buncombe County by entities other than the city.
- Council separately directed staff to study automated plate readers for future consideration.
- Recorded as a win on the contract, not as an end to plate reading in Asheville. Those are different, and the council said so itself.
Read the originalThis summary is ours. The reporting is Public Radio East's, and the link below opens their page in a new tab.
Open Public Radio East report (opens in a new tab)Inclusion is not independent verification of every claim. Dates are the publisher's publication dates. Corrections are published, not quietly patched: see sources and corrections.