Title: Law Enforcement Technology Manager, Asheville Police Department, per the most recent WLOS rendering; outlets have also styled him “Law Enforcement Technology Specialist” (April 2025) and “Technology Supervisor” (August 2026). No press coverage assigns him a sworn rank or calls him an officer; whether the position is formally civilian or sworn is not published anywhere I can find, itself a records question for a role this consequential. In this role since: unpublished (earliest press appearance: April 2025) Current term ends: — (not elected; serves as city staff) Next voter decision: never directly; accountability runs through the city manager, the chief, and the council elections
Why an unelected technologist has his own page
Because by APD’s own testimony, the safeguards run through him. When Chief Stepp described to council how outside agencies get access to Asheville’s surveillance data, the process she described was one person: “all requests for shared data access from other law enforcement agencies has to be approved. We… our technology manager approves that.” (April 28, 2026, 1:38:28) The wall between your plate scans and any of the thousands of agencies in the network is, per the city’s own account, a single civilian staffer’s judgment call, with no published criteria, no external review, and no reporting to any elected body (The Committee).
The system, in his words
Wingo has explained the apparatus on the record more candidly than anyone, which makes him one of this site’s most-cited sources:
The private-camera blueprint (March 25, 2025, 42:09): “whether it’s businesses or the Ring camera at your home, it can be optioned to feed into the public’s real-time intelligence center data… There’s a registry, just so we know where a camera is in a city — and then there’s also one where you could provide us full viewing capability.” When Councilmember Roney noted courts elsewhere have compelled private footage, he conceded the limit of “voluntary”: “if the court comes to your house and has a warrant for that Ring camera footage, then you would have to give it to us.” (Before You Plug In)
The self-audit structure (Public Safety Committee, July 31, 2025): APD’s LPR oversight consists of “monthly” supervisor audits and an “annual” professional-standards audit: APD auditing APD, with no recorded instance of results reaching the committee. He also told the committee the data is “100% APD-owned” with sharing “discretionary,” and that facial recognition is not “part of the Fusus system or any platform that we have”, though the systems can distinguish “a green car.”
The reason box (828NewsNow, August 6, 2026): “We have 18 people who have the ability to search, and only 18 people. Those searches, you have to put the reason.” And on the quarterly audits: “100% of the time, we have reasons.” On retention (WLOS, July 8, 2026): “The only time we retain the video is when it becomes a criminal act, and we’re investigating that.”
The record beside the assurances
Each assurance has a documented national counterpart:
- “You have to put the reason” is the safeguard a U.S. Senate investigation already dismantled: in EFF’s 11.4-million-search dataset, 14%+ of reasons were the single word “investigation”; the ACLU found “hehehe” passed review; the Texas deputy’s reason (“had an abortion, search for female”) was a reason. Having reasons and having oversight are different things. (What They Can Actually Learn About You · Wyden letter)
- “100% of the time, we have reasons” is also what Mooresville’s audit would have shown: the officer accused of using cameras to stalk logged a reason every time. She made them up, and they passed review. (The Abuse Record)
- “18 people” counts APD’s searchers, not the network’s: the county’s Fusus side lists 59 authorized Flock searchers, and the national network Asheville’s cameras answer to has run millions of outside-agency queries against local data elsewhere; over 95% of searches on Spokane County’s data came from outside agencies. (Who Gets Watched)
- The self-audit is the structure that has failed everywhere it’s been tested, and when a resident asked to see Asheville’s audit records, the city refused. The audit is conducted by APD, on APD, reports 100% compliance, and the public is not allowed to read it.
None of this depends on doubting Wingo’s sincerity. The critique of single-gate, self-audited, reason-box oversight is structural: it depends entirely on every future occupant of one desk being careful forever, in a system where no one above that desk is checking.
A standing accuracy note for anyone citing him: no press coverage or public testimony assigns Wingo a sworn rank; do not style him as an officer or give him one. His job title varies across outlets (Specialist/Manager/Supervisor), his start date and background are unpublished, and his formal civilian-versus-sworn classification is unverified in public sources. That the person who approves all outside data requests has no published bio, org-chart entry, or job classification is itself a transparency problem.
Related: Jackie Stepp · The Committee · Their Claims vs The Record · Before You Plug In · Records Center