Buncombe County Sheriff gets real-time Fusus bodycams, dashcams: Who can access?

ASHEVILLE - The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office will soon have real-time body cameras and vehicle dash cams for sheriff deputies, adding to a network of real-time surveillance cameras throughout the city.

Sheriff Quentin Miller in a September meeting of the Council of Independent Business Owners announced his request for the new dashcams and bodycams. Sheriff's Office spokesperson Aaron Sarver confirmed with the Citizen Times Sept. 18 that the sheriff’s office has signed a contract with Axon ― a company that initially created the Taser and develops technology and weapon products for military, law enforcement and civilians ― and will be switching over to bodycams with live-feed capabilities “in late October into early November.”

Sarver said the contract will include adding real-time dashcams to the “majority of marked patrol cars” by the end of the year. The five-year contract will cost just over $2.4 million, according to a copy obtained by the Citizen Times Sept. 18.

“The whole goal is that the cameras that we have ― bodycams, dashcams, etc. ― we’re migrating to a system where they are all real-time based with our real-time intelligence center,” Sarver said.

In the CIBO meeting, Miller said the live bodycams will help ensure that officer interactions with the community “abide by our policies and standard operating procedures.”

“Whenever our deputies are in the vicinity of APD officers, the system makes all the cameras come on,” Miller said. “What it does is, if I have my camera on, it’s going to make yours come on.”

This is the latest addition to the sheriff’s office’s expansion of its real-time surveillance camera network over the past year. In January, City Council approved an agreement between City Manager Debra Campbell’s Office and the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office, allowing BCSO and the Asheville Police Department to use 1,800 cameras equipped with Fusus software.

This system allows officers access to some real-time camera feeds within the city, with “the vast majority of those cameras in Buncombe County Schools, the City of Asheville Housing Authority” and less than 15 in private downtown businesses, according to Sarver.

The city of Asheville pays the sheriff’s office $30,000 a year for the Fusus-equipped camera service, as previously reported by the Citizen Times.

The Fusus software is capable of some advanced features, such as facial recognition, but the sheriff’s office has said that it is not using those.

Real-time surveillance software has been criticized by some civil liberties advocates, particularly when used by law enforcement agencies. In 2020, the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about the use of Fusus in Jackson, Mississippi, as reported by NBC. The Mississippi chapter of the ACLU said in a statement that it wanted to work with Jackson to develop policies “to ensure the program serves its aimed purpose and avoids threatening constitutional rights.”

More: Buncombe County Sheriff has 1,800-camera network; Asheville PD now gets to use it

Who can see the live camera feeds?

When deputies start their shift, they log into the cloud-based system on their work phone, which operates much like an iPhone app. Sarver said this is also helpful because it allows them to track where the officers are located. However, not every officer at the sheriff’s department can access the live camera footage, but the ones who can have access straight from their phones.

“A deputy is not going to be able to pull up all the cameras via the app, that’s going to require a supervisor,” Sarver said, adding that there are role-based permissions for what individual officers are allowed to access.

Since the system is cloud-based, officers with the right security clearance can access the camera feeds in real time on any device during a critical incident – a phone, laptop, iPad, desktop – once they go through the security protocol and log into the app.

Deputies can also turn on their work phones’ video cameras in the real-time intelligence center app, which will livestream “an on-the-ground view,” Sarver said.

More: Asheville police, fire departments launch 'cutting edge' drone unit

An expanding network of cameras

In addition to the new officer bodycams and dashcams, Miller said the sheriff’s office is looking to “enhance and increase” the number of cameras downtown that can connect to its real time intelligence center.

“Our plan is to have business owners downtown connect to the system,” Miller stated at the meeting. “Then the next item would be how do we get that system connected to the residential areas.”

Business owners and residents can now register their security cameras or Ring doorbells online with the sheriff’s office. To register a camera, owners must include an address, whether the location is residential or business, and how many internal and external cameras the place has.

According to the sheriff’s office website, which says it takes 60 seconds to register a camera, the registry does not provide Buncombe County access to the cameras of private residents, “it only helps investigators get in touch in case of a criminal incident.”

“We cannot look at your camera unless you give us permission,” Miller said.

Sarver confirmed much the same: “You basically give us permission to access your doorbell camera system, but you still have to authorize and send over the video.”

In the future, Sarver said the sheriff's office is looking at getting permission to access convenience store and gas station cameras, which will be moved onto the system to access footage in real time.

“The overarching vision that Sheriff Miller has with this is we want it to be real time because every minute is critical when you have an active shooter or critical incident, or even a robbery of a gas station,” Sarver said. “We want our deputies and law enforcement personnel to be able to show up as quickly as possible and have as much information about what’s going on as possible as they arrive.”

Ryley Ober is the Public Safety Reporter for Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. News tips? Email Ryley at rober@gannett.com. Please support local, daily journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Buncombe County Sheriff to install real-time bodycams, dashcams