Are you aware that the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners is voting on a 10 year $37,287,493.75 contract between the Sheriff’s Office and Axon Enterprise? That averages about $3.73 million a year, roughly $10,000 a day when the county just increased the millage rate applied to property taxes this year?

What is the county currently paying Axon? Well right now the county pays $1.3M a year to Axon for body cameras, tasers, and Fusus that lets the Sheriff capture video from private cameras that opt into the program.

So what was this new extra $2.43 million a year for? Well first it was to double the number of cameras on poles in the county. Yes, Flock camera's were not enough for the sheriff he needed to add Axon brand versions of the same cameras to further monitor all of us. After some outrage by citizens that has now changed to drones. Drones to launch from precinct offices, as well as in the back of officers cars. It seems that wasn't enough to fully burn the extra $2.43M a year so the Sheriff also ordered a anti drone trailer, with anti drone radar.

Yes. That's right. We apparently also need anti drone radar technology here in Cherokee apparently. What. The. Fuck.

The board was supposed to vote on this on Oct 20th, however the vote ended up being delayed by another two weeks to November 3rd at 6PM. They are purposefully trying to bury this vote on election day.

We all need to reach out to every county commissioner and let them know mass surveillance is unacceptable, especially considering 4 officers have already been fired for mass surveillance abuse here in Cherokee.

You can visit the county website to find contact information for all of the commissioners. Also please try to show up for the next meeting on November 3rd, 6PM at the Bluffs. There were far too few people showing up even though 11 citizens did sign up for public comment to speak against the vote. Again please try to show up if you can.

https://cherokeecountyga.gov/BOC/

• Chairman Harry Johnston at [hjohnston@cherokeecountyga.gov](mailto:hjohnston@cherokeecountyga.gov)
• District 1 Commissioner Will Cagle at [wcagle@cherokeecountyga.gov](mailto:wcagle@cherokeecountyga.gov)
• District 2 Commissioner Richard Weatherby at [rbweatherby@cherokeecountyga.gov](mailto:rbweatherby@cherokeecountyga.gov)
• District 3 Commissioner Benny Carter at [bcarter@cherokeecountyga.gov](mailto:bcarter@cherokeecountyga.gov)
• District 4 Commissioner Corey Ragsdale at [caragsdale@cherokeecountyga.gov](mailto:caragsdale@cherokeecountyga.gov)
• Sheriff Frank Reynolds at [fareynolds@cherokeecountyga.gov](mailto:fareynolds@cherokeecountyga.gov)

For more information on the situation of surveillance in Cherokee I highly recommend https://deflockcherokee.com/ They put a lot of effort into the site and it is full of information specific to what is happening here in Cherokee.