Inside Wilmington’s ‘STING Center’

Through a public-records request, DeFlockILM obtained Wilmington Police Department Directive .07.17, titled “Fusus Operations & Public Safety Camera Network.” It is the city’s own rulebook for a real-time camera hub run out of a unit the department calls the STING Center. We’re working from the actual document, not a brochure — so we can be precise about what it authorizes and where it goes quiet.

One clarification first, because accuracy is the point: this directive is the Wilmington Police Department’s, not the Sheriff’s. The New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office runs its own, separate Fusus program (“Connect New Hanover Sheriff”). Two overlapping real-time camera platforms, two different agencies, one county.

The Sheriff’s own network: 2,147 cameras, and an AI riding on top

Start with the Sheriff’s parallel program, because it is far larger than the one the public is arguing about. “Connect New Hanover Sheriff” runs on Axon Fusus, and its own public site keeps a live tally. As of August 24, 2026, it reports 2,147 registered cameras and 716 integrated cameras across the county. (connectnewhanoversheriff.org.) Set that against the 36-camera Flock contract the commissioners are finally debating. The camera program the public is arguing about is the small one.

The Sheriff’s site describes two levels. Level 1 — registration puts a business’s or resident’s camera on a map only the Sheriff’s Office can see; deputies know it is there and can request its footage. Level 2 — integration goes further: the owner plugs a small Axon FususCORE device into their camera system and gives the Sheriff’s Office direct access to the live feed — in the Office’s own words, “access to your camera feed… all your cameras or some of them.” 716 cameras are already at that level.

And there is a brain on top of it. In the Sheriff’s own privacy FAQ, Axon Fusus “utilizes artificial intelligence to rapidly search video” and can “automatically recognize weapons, vehicles of interest, etc.” The integration hardware line markets AI “CORE Elite” devices that “put a brain inside your camera network,” pre-loaded with “dozens of search and analysis variables” and automatic alerts the moment a match “appears on any camera in the designated area of interest.” This is not a shoebox of tapes pulled after a crime. It is a live, AI-assisted watch layer stitched together from private and business cameras.

To their credit, the FAQ makes real privacy commitments, and we state them fairly. The Office says it cannot access a private camera without the owner’s written permission; that access is “strictly one-way” and cannot be overridden remotely; that the owner controls the settings; that the registry data is non-public; and that Fusus “does not employ facial recognition.” Those are meaningful, and we take them at face value.

But the scale and the silence are the story. Whatever the safeguards, this is a county-run, AI-assisted, 2,147-camera network — growing camera by camera out of local businesses and neighborhoods — and it has never had the public hearing, the recorded vote, or the debate the 36 Flock cameras are finally getting. The safeguards are promises in a FAQ, revocable by the same office that wrote them, with no ordinance and no outside audit behind them. The right question is not alarm about a facial-recognition tool the Office says it doesn’t use. It is the one the commissioners have never put on an agenda: who decided New Hanover County should build a second, larger, AI-driven camera network — and where was the vote?

What the directive describes

The document defines Fusus, in the department’s own words, as “a camera integration platform that allows the monitoring of video feeds from multiple public and privately-owned sources, all in real time.” That’s the key idea: not one camera, but a single screen that pulls many cameras together. The directive sorts them into categories:

• Agency cameras — the police department’s own cameras.
• Jurisdiction cameras — cameras run by other city departments, integrated into the same system.
• Traffic cameras — the City’s Traffic & Engineering cameras, which STING Center staff “may temporarily move from [their] home position” and view live during an incident.
• Private donor cameras — private businesses or residents who sign a Memorandum of Agreement to share a live feed; the owner sets access.
• Volunteer registry — a location-only list; no live feed, just contact info so detectives can request footage.

The STING Center is staffed, per the directive, by “sworn Intelligence Officers and civilian Intelligence Analysts,” who hold administrator access to “the Public Safety Camera Network in its entirety.”

This isn’t new — and it isn’t small

Public reporting fills in what the directive leaves out. “STING” stands for Situational Tactics & Intelligence Nexus Group, and the center has been operating since early 2017. (City of Wilmington; Port City Daily.) It runs on a video wall fed by a reported 300-plus city traffic and security cameras plus private feeds, staffed seven days a week by officers and analysts who also monitor social media, 911 calls, and intelligence databases. (WECT.)

And the network has reached into places worth naming. WPD has worked to connect Wilmington Housing Authority cameras — Creekwood South, Houston Moore, and other public-housing communities — into the STING feed, concentrating live surveillance in some of the city’s lower-income, disproportionately Black neighborhoods. (Port City Daily.) Fusus is simply the newest layer on a hub that has been growing, quietly, for most of a decade.

Credit where it’s due: the safeguards in the document

We won’t misrepresent it. The directive contains real limits, and they matter:

• Cameras may “never be installed in a location where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy,” and a search warrant is required before any monitoring of a place where that expectation exists.
• Recordings are kept 30 days, then automatically overwritten unless pulled for an investigation.
• Using the cameras “to harass and/or intimidate,” for “any personal use,” or to “infringe upon any Constitutional rights” is expressly prohibited, and misuse can lead to discipline “up to and including termination.”
• Accounts “will be audited regularly,” and use is limited to “legitimate police purposes” while on duty.

Those are meaningful guardrails. A fair reading says so.

The worry isn’t a rogue officer. It’s a citywide real-time network whose map the public isn’t allowed to see.

The questions the directive raises

1. The cameras are hidden from you by design. The directive states the “location of agency cameras is exempt from public records,” and instructs that “employees shall not include exact location of the cameras within their reports” to “protect the integrity of the system.” So the department keeps a complete map of where the cameras are; residents are not permitted to see it. They can watch the public; the public can’t audit the watchers.

2. This is real-time and proactive, not just after-the-fact. STING Center staff “shall monitor agency cameras and may operate them at any time when deemed appropriate,” and “may proactively operate jurisdiction cameras.” Traffic cameras can be panned off their home position during incidents. This is a live operations center, not a shoebox of tapes pulled after a crime.

3. The system can stream live audio. The directive’s mobile features let an officer send “live streaming video/audio back to the staff in the STING Center,” along with “GPS monitoring of the user’s location.” Officer-initiated, on department phones — but audio capture is built into the platform, which is worth noting given the same wiretap questions raised by gunshot sensors and Flock’s new microphones.

4. Two glaring silences: ALPR and facial recognition. The directive never mentions license-plate readers or facial recognition — it neither integrates them nor forbids them. Yet Fusus is, by its own definition, a platform for fusing “multiple sources.” Does Flock’s plate data feed this network? The county Sheriff’s Fusus FAQ at least disclaims facial recognition; this WPD directive is simply silent. Silence in a governing document is not a safeguard.

5. “Opt-in” again belongs to the camera owner — not to you. When a business signs the agreement to share a feed, the business consented. The people walking and driving past that camera never did. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has made exactly this point about Fusus networks nationwide: they expand real-time police access to footage that would otherwise require a warrant and a public conversation. (EFF — “Neighborhood Watch Out”.)

6. “Homeland Security” cameras, never disclosed. The directive specifies that “images from any Homeland Security camera will not be released to the public for any reason.” That single line raises a fair question about what federal cameras or partnerships are wired into a city network — and why their footage is categorically off-limits to the residents who pay for the system.

7. One vendor, the whole stack. Fusus is now owned by Axon — the same company behind police Tasers, body cameras, and the evidence cloud. (Axon.) Concentrating the cameras, the fusion layer, and the evidence storage in a single private company raises accountability questions all its own. (StateScoop.)

The throughline with Flock

This isn’t a separate fight. It’s the same principle, one layer up. A private vendor, always-available feeds, real-time access, a map the public can’t see, and a network assembled department by department — without a public vote on whether residents want their city wired this way. Flock supplies the plates. Fusus supplies the pane of glass. And in New Hanover County, both the City and the Sheriff are building it.

What to ask — in public, before it grows

• How many cameras feed the STING Center today — agency, jurisdiction, traffic, and integrated private — and how fast is that growing?
• Does Flock ALPR data, or any facial-recognition tool, connect to this network? If not now, is it prohibited — or merely unmentioned?
• What are the Homeland Security cameras referenced in the directive, and who controls them?
• Will the City publish the regular audit results the directive promises, and brief the City Council on the network’s scope and growth?

We’re not asking anyone to ignore real emergencies. We’re asking that a citywide, real-time surveillance network face daylight, an audit the public can see, and a vote — the same things we ask of Flock.

This article is public-policy commentary based on Wilmington Police Department Directive .07.17, obtained by DeFlockILM through a public-records request, and other cited sources. Quotations are from that directive. It is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Fusus is a product of Axon Enterprise, Inc. Consult a licensed North Carolina attorney about any particular situation.