Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.

Days before Thanksgiving shuffled Nashville’s political calendar, the mayor quietly submitted a resolution to approve a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to the Metro Council. The legislation would enable $15 million in state surveillance funding to flow to a local nonprofit — a controversial move that could stymie accountability over the use of such surveillance technology.

This type of funding mechanism has become something of a national trend that police agencies are using to grow their access to surveillance tools: route those technologies through private entities like nonprofits that operate beyond democratic control, essentially outsourcing surveillance and policing.

Prominently, the Atlanta Police Foundation funded and built the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, colloquially known as Cop City, for the Atlanta Police Department; the 501(c)(3) is also the official partner contracting with Flock Safety and providing the city use of the company’s notorious surveillance cameras.

In New Orleans, Project NOLA, a 501(c)(3), has built a large apparatus of more than 200 cameras through donations. News broke earlier this year that the nonprofit was conducting real time facial recognition scans and sending alerts to the New Orleans Police Department, a clear violation of city policy that went unchecked until reporting by The Washington Post revealed the arrangement.

Now, with this pending resolution, Nashville is following the lead of Atlanta, New Orleans, and other cities by leveraging a local nonprofit to build a powerful surveillance infrastructure. Nashville’s version follows the same playbook, but with a local twist that makes it particularly brazen.

On November 21, the Friday before Thanksgiving, Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell filed a resolution to approve an MOU with the Nashville Downtown Partnership (NDP) that would facilitate the nonprofit receiving $15 million in state funds earmarked by Tennessee’s state government for public safety spending in Metro Nashville. The resolution has drawn criticism both for its use of NDP — a nonprofit that has had several major scandals within the past year — and for creating a backdoor mechanism for Nashville to purchase surveillance equipment similar to what the mayor’s office has failed to obtain through the Metro Council.

The MOU attached to the resolution plainly states that Metro Nashville will not apply for the $15 million in public safety funds set aside for its central business improvement district, instead allowing NDP, a vendor hired by that district, to apply for all the money set aside by the state.

The MOU includes a section labeled Exhibit A, which lists policing equipment, such as an armored emergency response vehicle and a mobile command center. The exhibit also lists controversial and abuse-prone technologies, including software for surveillance integration, situational awareness, digital evidence storage, as well as access to Fivecast, an AI intelligence collection tool which advertises having over 8 billion personal records in its dataset. Some items, such as the armored vehicle, detail that they would be used “to transport [Nashville........

© Truthout