Asheville Under Surveillance

Haywood County

3 min read

Haywood decided to keep its Flock cameras a week after Macon County tore its system out, without ever having formally voted on them in the first place.

Timeline

  • 2024: Cameras go live, no vote taken. The Sheriff’s Office puts ~8–10 Flock cameras into use; like Madison County, they enter through the sheriff’s operations with no formal deployment vote. Getting Flock Out
  • FY26 budget: Maggie Valley PD buys two plate readers. $7,300 the first year, $6,000/year after, paid from the drug-seizure account, with access to state and national LPR databases. A budget-retreat consensus, not a public-hearing item (The Mountaineer).
  • July 2026: Haywood keeps its cameras. A week after Macon County’s removal, Commission Chairman Kevin Ensley tells a reporter the county will keep them, citing falling overdose deaths and “no complaints”; a chairman’s statement, not a vote (WLOS, July 21, 2026). How Cities Won

Status: keeping Flock, on an overdose-reduction claim

A week after Macon County removed its cameras, Haywood announced it would keep its ~8–10 Flock cameras (in use since 2024, run by the Sheriff’s Office). Commission Chairman Kevin Ensley’s stated reason: overdose deaths fell “in the thirties… last year we only had ten,” and the county has received “no complaints.” (WLOS, July 21, 2026)

Two facts about that decision:

  1. No formal vote has ever been taken: not on the original deployment, not on the July decision to keep them. Like Madison County, the cameras entered through the sheriff’s operations, and the “decision” to keep them was a chairman’s statement to a reporter.
  2. The overdose claim is a causal leap: overdose deaths fell sharply statewide and nationally in 2024–25 (largely attributed to naloxone availability and fentanyl supply changes). Nobody has published any analysis connecting Haywood’s plate readers to its overdose numbers; it’s the same correlation-as-causation pattern as the Buncombe sheriff’s crime claims.

Contract value, term, and renewal date: not public; no press coverage or tracker has them. A records request would.

The towns

  • Waynesville PD: verified Flock cameras (count unpublished); also operates a drone. Town council streams on YouTube (@TownofWaynesville), 2nd & 4th Tuesdays.
  • Maggie Valley PD: bought two plate readers in the FY26 budget: $7,300 the first year, $6,000/year after, paid from the drug-seizure account, with network access to state and national LPR databases. A budget-retreat consensus, not a public-hearing item. (The Mountaineer)
  • Canton: one mapped camera, vendor unconfirmed; the Board of Aldermen publishes no meeting video at all: minutes only.

Pipeline and watch items

County commission video: Haywood County, NC Government on YouTube, captioned, with agendas. No organized local opposition exists yet, and no renewal or budget decision is currently scheduled, which means the next natural pressure point is the FY28 budget cycle (spring 2027) and any candidate willing to ask why a mass-surveillance network never received a vote.

Related: WNC and NC · Getting Flock Out

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