13 May 2026 @ 1221
Last night Asheville city council voted 6-1 — literally over the voices of assembled citizens — to accept a $1.14M grant from the US Department of Justice to build a Real-Time Intelligence Center (RTIC), a mass surveillance hub to be used by the Asheville Police Department, that will have as-yet-unknown connectivity to ICE and wider AI-powered surveillance networks. The vote locked Asheville into a years-long relationship with Axon, a surveillance corp that is a major ICE contractor, without any contractual agreement. Other municipalities in North Carolina and around the country have rejected such relationships due to privacy and security concerns.
Disclaimers: I didn’t attend the meeting. Video of the meeting was streamed live and is, in theory, available here. This morning the video has been unreliable, presumably due to high traffic. I screen recorded the portion of the the video that shows the vote and the crowd’s uproar. To acknowledge my bias, I strongly oppose increased surveillance, but I am not an expert on Axon and won’t comment on the core issue. But I do have A LOT of experience covering public meetings, and this is the angle that needs attention:
1 – The vote was initially scheduled 28 days prior, at April’s meeting, but so many citizens turned out to speak against the RTIC that the vote was removed from the agenda in the name of “further consideration.” This is a common public-meeting tactic when a body wants to pass something over a lot of citizen pushback: Folks take the time to show up at the meeting, and then the issue is rescheduled, interrupting the public’s momentum and doubling the time commitment for those who want to speak against the issue. Organizers of any opposition now have to focus their messaging on a new date. Politicians gain recon: They learn the opposition’s talking points and get in front of them BEFORE the new meeting.
I’ve usually seen this tactic employed when a controversial development is set to be approved/disapproved by an un-elected board, and the rescheduling often happens at the behest of the developer. It is notably unusual for city council to pull this trick.
2 – In spite of the reschedule, citizens opposed to the RTIC/Axon vote packed the room and filled overflow areas. While Axon sales people were allowed to give lengthy presentations in support of their own product, council limited public comment to one hour and admonished the crowd not to make noise, repeating their admonishments when the hour was up and 21 people were still slated to speak. (Council member Maggie Ullman in particular reminded the crowd that “We gave notice ahead of time about how our public comment works.”)
3 – No acknowledgment was made when public comment ended and the vote was taken within seconds. In fact, it was taken so fast that council member Kim Roney, the sole dissenting vote, was unable to give a presentation she had planned to outline her opposition to the RTIC. Because of crowd uproar, the initial vote had to be taken by a show of hands because members could not be heard answering yay or nay. Roney was allowed to give her presentation — which apparently constituted the only discussion of the issue among council — only after the initial vote was taken and confirmed. Council then immediately voted, with only Roney dissenting, to approve the agreement with Axon.
In addition to my experience covering public meetings, I’ve also covered more than my fair share of protests in this town. Council members Maggie Ullman and Bo Hess (pictured here with AVL Mayor Esther Manheimer and then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem) have both appeared on stage at No Kings rallies decrying the Trump administration’s extra-Constitutional tactics in immigration enforcement. Axon’s connections with ICE are well documented. Because it will always bear repeating: ICE agents have killed at least two American citizens this year, and the Trump admin has blocked state and municipal investigations into the killings.
The final note is the complete silence of local media. It is *very* unusual for a contentious issue to pack council and overflow chambers, let alone for two meetings in a row. Press can report on the meeting, as I have here, without attending. The live video is public. And yet here are screenshots from the front pages of local media at ~1200 on Wednesday, 13 May 2026. No mention of the meeting, much less the issue itself, is made on the front pages of five local outlets.
