Metro councilmembers blocked a new contract with Axon that would have brought Fusus, a video integration system, to the Metro Nashville Police Department. Approval of the contract secured just 20 votes — one under the 21-vote threshold for passage. Every member’s position proved pivotal.
Several people spoke for and against the technology during Tuesday’s public hearing, including concerned citizens and certain professionals. Anti-Fusus community members packed the gallery, identifiable with matching buttons.
Almost every councilmember spoke on the floor; some spoke twice, as members voted repeatedly to continue discussion. Debate became an abstract exercise in weighing relative fears, with members caught between the possibility that police will abuse surveillance power and the threat of violent crime, as many Fusus proponents believe stronger video tools could help prevent repeat offenders. Metro attorneys and Dave Rosenberg, a former Metro councilmember, answered questions in the chamber on behalf of the mayoral administration.
Three forms of police technology raise questions about privacy and public safety
In February, Mayor Freddie O’Connell initially paused the city’s use of Fusus, an Axon product that combines hardware and software to allow police to view private video collection with owners’ consent. The city had been operating on an existing contract that counted hundreds of cameras across the city. Hours before the meeting, O’Connell leaned on members to extend the Axon contract, publicly expressing his confidence in additional guardrails to discourage inappropriate uses. Members considered new tweaks, including a "kill switch" enabling the chamber to immediately terminate the contract with a vote, which strengthened Metro oversight.
Both Rosenberg and O’Connell opposed expanding certain police technology as councilmembers, most notably during the chamber’s protracted adoption of automated license plate readers. One public speaker quoted O’Connell to the chamber, citing a 2020 Scene article in which O’Connell dismisses body-worn cameras as an insufficient tool for police accountability.
Similar to chamber debate on LPRs, supporting police technology became a proxy for supporting police. Councilmember Bob Nash, a former law enforcement officer, and longtime Councilmember Burkley Allen trusted police with Fusus because they trust MNPD. Both spoke to that effect on the floor Tuesday. Opting in to share your video with police is the right of a private business owner, first-term Councilmember Jordan Huffman told colleagues, emphasizing that violent crime is often committed by repeat offenders.
“We have an opportunity tonight to move forward,” Huffman said. “To show Nashville citizens that we’re serious about the growing public safety crisis in our city. Public safety is not a partisan issue — or it shouldn’t be. We’ve got to get past this anti-police rhetoric, y’all — we’ve got a city to serve.”
Councilmembers Delishia Porterfield and Sandra Sepulveda continued their work as chief opponents of police technology, both delivering speeches about how police power can amplify the overpolicing and profiling of certain communities. Sepulveda specifically argued that Fusus would enable heightened scrutiny of renters at apartment complexes that house many Latino families in Southeast Nashville.
First-term Councilmember Olivia Hill, Tennessee’s first openly transgender elected official, inflected debate with her personal fear that Fusus could accelerate the state’s hostile legal environment.
“It sounds very intuitive: ‘Olivia, the cameras are already there — you’re already going to be filmed, and it’s only going to be used to catch criminals and bad guys,’” Hill told colleagues, paraphrasing arguments for the technology. “I stand before you as one of those criminals. I am illegally dressed in women’s clothes and drag. If some police officer has a problem with the trans community — that has happened in the past — or some other citizen decides they want to make a comment about something, a crime has been committed. I will be arrested. And because I will be arrested for impersonating a woman, I will be put in jail with men. That terrifies the heck out of me.”
Proponents also implied that Fusus would shore up policing power currently lacking in MNPD’s depleted officer corps. The city’s police department is aggressively hiring after years of high turnover.
O’Connell and Rosenberg, both of whom stressed robust data and usage guardrails, maintain that the benefits to police outweigh the dangers. After the vote, Mayor O’Connell released a statement.
“Over the course of the discussion about this technology, we heard concerns from the community and worked to strengthen the guardrails that prohibit its misuse," reads O'Connell's statement, in part. "The timing of Fusus legislation at council made it easy to attach fears about unrelated possibilities to it, but passage of this legislation would have allowed Metro Police to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively and keep Nashvillians — particularly those in vulnerable communities — safe. I hope we'll have opportunities in the future to work together as a city to ensure that our police department has effective tools as we work to keep people safe."
