By Mike Lacy & Ed Vogel
This text was initially revealed by Truthout
Nashville stands out as the newest metropolis to leverage a neighborhood nonprofit to construct a public-private panopticon.
Days earlier than Thanksgiving shuffled Nashville’s political calendar, the mayor quietly submitted a decision to approve a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to the Metro Council. The laws would allow $15 million in state surveillance funding to circulate to a neighborhood nonprofit — a controversial transfer that would stymie accountability over the usage of such surveillance know-how.
This sort of funding mechanism has change into one thing of a nationwide development that police companies are utilizing to develop their entry to surveillance instruments: route these applied sciences by means of personal entities like nonprofits that function past democratic management, primarily outsourcing surveillance and policing.
Prominently, the Atlanta Police Basis funded and constructed the Atlanta Public Security Coaching Heart, colloquially generally known as Cop Metropolis, for the Atlanta Police Division; the 501(c)(3) can be the official associate contracting with Flock Security and offering town use of the corporate’s infamous surveillance cameras.
In New Orleans, Venture NOLA, a 501(c)(3), has constructed a big equipment of greater than 200 cameras by means of donations. Information broke earlier this yr that the nonprofit was conducting actual time facial recognition scans and sending alerts to the New Orleans Police Division, a clear violation of metropolis coverage that went unchecked till reporting by The Washington Submit revealed the association.
Now, with this pending decision, Nashville is following the lead of Atlanta, New Orleans, and different cities by leveraging a neighborhood nonprofit to construct a strong surveillance infrastructure. Nashville’s model follows the identical playbook, however with a neighborhood twist that makes it significantly brazen.
Laundering Rejected Surveillance Tech
On November 21, the Friday earlier than Thanksgiving, Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell filed a decision to approve an MOU with the Nashville Downtown Partnership (NDP) that will facilitate the nonprofit receiving $15 million in state funds earmarked by Tennessee’s state authorities for public security spending in Metro Nashville. The decision has drawn criticism each for its use of NDP — a nonprofit that has had a number of main scandals inside the previous yr — and for making a backdoor mechanism for Nashville to buy surveillance gear just like what the mayor’s workplace has did not acquire by means of the Metro Council.
The MOU connected to the decision plainly states that Metro Nashville won’t apply for the $15 million in public security funds put aside for its central enterprise enchancment district, as a substitute permitting NDP, a vendor employed by that district, to use for all the cash put aside by the state.
The MOU features a part labeled Exhibit A, which lists policing gear, reminiscent of an armored emergency response automobile and a cellular command heart. The exhibit additionally lists controversial and abuse-prone applied sciences, together with software program for surveillance integration, situational consciousness, digital proof storage, in addition to entry to Fivecast, an AI intelligence assortment device which advertises having over 8 billion private data in its dataset. Some gadgets, such because the armored automobile, element that they’d be used “to move [Nashville police] personnel in response to Lively Occasions” throughout soccer video games and holidays. Different gadgets, such because the surveillance software program, make no reference to regulation enforcement companies, and if taken at face worth, recommend that the nonprofit may probably personal and function these instruments.
One service itemized within the MOU stands out as significantly startling: LeoSight is a surveillance integration platform led since March 2025 by Mark Wooden, who, in accordance with his LinkedIn, was the chief income officer of Fusus (a subsidiary of Axon) till February of 2024. Simply months earlier than Wooden went to LeoSight, the Nashville Metro Council stalled a contract for the Fusus surveillance know-how that the mayor’s workplace had pushed for repeatedly. The built-in regulation enforcement surveillance system would have linked taking part privately owned cameras to Metropolitan Nashville Police Division. O’Connell, as soon as a staunch surveillance skeptic, was dogged in his help of the device.
After public outcry over the invention of the newest proposed decision, a consultant from the mayor’s workplace despatched an e mail to Metro Council framing the memorandum as an oversight device limiting fund makes use of to what’s “already permitted by Metro” — moderately than acknowledging it as an enabling doc that enables a nonprofit to obtain $15 million in surveillance know-how, funding that Nashville may have utilized for straight.
On December 1, three days earlier than the general public vote, native information outlet WKRN reported on numbers shared by NPD about how the funds can be used. The figures, which don’t seem within the decision or its connected MOU, tally as much as $15 million, however notably absent had been line gadgets for the AI surveillance device Fivecast and for LeoSight. It’s unclear if they’re not on the desk or if they’re being included in another broader line gadgets, or whether or not these allocations align with Metro Nashville’s ambitions or solely mirror NDP’s preferences. Neither the mayor’s workplace nor NDP responded to Truthout’s requests for extra info on the association.
Nashville Downtown Partnership’s Observe Report
The Tennessee nonprofit that will obtain the $15 million of state funds underneath the MOU has been on the coronary heart of native controversy for a while. As with just about all enterprise enchancment districts, there are two principal buckets of duties: beautification and public security. NDP is the first vendor employed in Nashville to carry out these duties, although it in flip subcontracts their implementation out to 2 different companies: Block by Block for beautification, and Solaren for public security.
The general monetary construction of NDP got here into focus this summer time when an in the end profitable transfer to combine two enterprise enchancment districts underneath the nonprofit’s purview led to enhanced scrutiny of the group and its administration of public funds. In reviewing the related laws, a neighborhood lawmaker requested why the budgets of the enterprise enchancment districts NDP operates had not been submitted for evaluation and approval by the council, in breach of yearly necessities stipulated in Metro Code.
In July 2025, the Metro Council’s Particular Counsel revealed that these budgets, which had been submitted to the council for a number of years after the founding of Nashville’s first enterprise enchancment district in 1998, abruptly stopped arriving for council approval in 2004, and had not been correctly permitted by the council for 21 years. Regardless of Metro Council failing to authorize these funds, Nashville’s finance division continued paying out NDP tens of tens of millions of {dollars} for over 20 years.
Public report requests present that since 2019, NDP has acquired over $40 million of funding by means of town’s enterprise enchancment districts, arriving as not too long ago as October 1, 2025. In the meantime, in accordance with the newest obtainable tax returns, the yearly wage of the non-profit’s President and CEO had ballooned to almost half 1,000,000 {dollars} a yr in 2023.
However the scandals aren’t restricted to NDP itself. Its two main distributors have drawn ignoble headlines within the latest previous.
NDP’s safety contractor, Solaren, was cited by the state of Tennessee in 2024 for 62 counts of impersonating cops. Solaren’s eccentric proprietor, Jack Byrd, has made headlines for shaking off requires accountability and transparency, and for personally proudly owning a tank. Solaren’s officers, primarily off-duty police and Tennessee freeway patrol officers (who legally retain their capability to arrest residents whereas working shifts for Solaren), have been accused of working as a “shadow police pressure” in native media. Critics allege that Solaren’s main focus is eradicating unhoused Nashvillians from town’s excessive profile Decrease Broadway vacationer areas. “Our job is to police the homeless neighborhood,” a Solaren whistleblower informed native NBC affiliate WSMV. “Profiling is what it’s.”
One other NDP vendor, Block by Block, which implements the NDP’s beautification programming, made headlines when a concrete parking storage the place it saved gear, which is connected to Nashville’s downtown library, unexpectedly caught fireplace. The reason for the five-story storage’s partial destruction went unexplained within the preliminary fireplace investigator’s report, although impartial investigative reporting revealed that a number of dozen propane tanks had been saved the place the ignition befell. The library department continues to be closed and not using a scheduled date to reopen.
The Mayor Who Modified Course on Surveillance
The official behind the surveillance MOU is Mayor Freddie O’Connell, who constructed his political status as Metro Council’s most vocal surveillance critic earlier than taking workplace. The transformation is jarring.
When on Metro Council, representing town’s downtown core in District 19, O’Connell commonly publicly railed in opposition to surveillance in his social media posts. He even suggested his followers on Twitter to acquire memberships to the privateness watchdog Digital Frontier Basis. He warned Nashville concerning the risks of public-private surveillance partnerships like what has emerged in New Orleans.
However as soon as elected mayor, O’Connell shocked a lot of his supporters along with his enthusiastic push for public-private surveillance tech. Within the midst of advocating for the kind of surveillance instruments he as soon as railed in opposition to on social media, he informed a reporter from the native information outlet The Nashville Scene that his recommendation for anybody frightened about this sort of surveillance infrastructure was to “simply throw your telephone within the river.”
The mayor’s flip in the direction of privateness nihilism comes at a time when surveillance is changing into massive enterprise in Nashville. Multinational tech firm Oracle, the world’s seventeenth largest company by market cap, which counts the CIA as its first consumer, is within the means of transferring its world headquarters to Nashville. The campus it’s constructing is reportedly the single largest public–personal funding in Tennessee historical past.
Oracle’s co-founder and CTO, Larry Ellison, has gone on report advocating for AI digital surveillance maximalism, telling an viewers of economic analysts in 2024 about his imaginative and prescient of a digital panopticon with Oracle at its heart: “Residents can be on their finest conduct as a result of we’re always recording and reporting the whole lot that’s occurring.”
Although a Nashville-based operations hub had lengthy been underway, the announcement of Oracle’s new headquarters befell throughout O’Connell’s administration in April 2024. O’Connell appears significantly attuned to Mr. Ellison’s opinion of Nashville. In October he informed The Tennessean: “Final yr, we heard Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison extol the standard of the lifetime of town that attracted them, and we work day-after-day to enhance it,” including that “we proceed working towards making certain we attain the perfect consequence to set Oracle and Nashville up for achievement for generations to come back.”
Blocking the Panopticon
It could seem that Nashville’s personal mayor is able to assist the likes of Ellison obtain their imaginative and prescient of complete recording, complete management. When confronted with pushback from democratic checks and balances like Nashville’s Metro Council, the technique is evident: try an finish run, pushing by means of funding proposals over a vacation break when there can be minimal time for public dialogue and scrutiny.
The Metro Council nonetheless, nonetheless, has the last word say, with a December 4 vote on the decision and MOU figuring out if the Nashville Downtown Partnership will be capable to entry the state funds to construct surveillance infrastructure outdoors democratic management.
Nashville’s expertise displays a broader nationwide development: When surveillance know-how can’t move by means of democratic processes, route it by means of non-profits that function past public accountability. The sample is evident. The query for Nashville — and for different cities watching this unfold — is whether or not democratic “oversight” nonetheless means something when it may be so simply circumvented.
This article was initially revealed by Truthout and is licensed underneath Inventive Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Please preserve all hyperlinks and credit in accordance with our republishing tips.
