The Canton City Council on Sept. 4 voted to approve an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) with the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office to provide Canton Police access to a county-run intelligence-as-a-service (IaaS) software platform.

The action follows a public comment urging caution about use of artificial intelligence and multiple council questions about oversight and data retention. Canton resident Thomas Weaver asked the council to “give it a two-week pause to really contemplate the severity of it,” saying artificial intelligence “should be approached with grave caution.”

Canton Police Chief (title used in transcript) described the county-run system as a centralized repository that collates records-management and CAD data to support analytics and resource deployment. The chief said the platform helps officers answer questions such as how many calls for service occurred in a given neighborhood and cited the system’s role in multi-agency investigations: “All these things were working together. All the law enforcement agencies were working together, feeding information through different real time crime centers,” the chief said.

Council members pressed the chief on oversight and auditability. The chief said Cherokee County’s intelligence center logs requests and that Canton would send requests through the county, which “log[s] everything, and our system…is gonna let us know when we've asked for something.” He said the county and the city would each be responsible for the actions of their personnel and that Canton could request audit reports: “I can request an audit every day, every week, every 30 days.”

On record retention, the chief said retention varies by case type; the county’s system retains some data up to five years before annual auditing for nexus to other crimes, while criminal-history or major-case data can be retained much longer under state minimums. The chief also noted previous audits of criminal-information access had led to terminations when misuse was detected.

The IGA text discussed by council requires the county to provide login credentials and technical access, obliges the city to maintain appropriate IT services at its cost, and limits access to authorized Canton Police personnel subject to the same policies and training as county users. The agreement also requires the city to connect its records-management data to the county’s Peregrine system and for both parties to “abide by all applicable federal, state, and local laws governing the use, sharing, and security of data access via the IaaS.”

After discussion, a council member moved to approve the intergovernmental agreement. The motion was seconded and approved on a voice vote. The council did not record a roll-call vote in the public record of this meeting; the motion carried by voice vote.

The chief agreed to provide follow-up on departmental experience with the system, saying he would include usage information in the department’s annual report and that the department would step back if the system proved not valuable.

Votes at a glance: Motion to approve IGA with Cherokee County Sheriff's Office for intelligence-as-a-service — approved (voice vote; counts not specified).