Transparency Last updated or reviewed on February 26, 2026 Transparency The Asheville Police Department is dedicated to being open and honest with the people of Asheville. We believe in sharing our data so that everyone can see how the department works. By providing this information, we give you the tools to learn more about how law enforcement operates in our city. Sharing this data helps build trust and a better understanding between community members and the police department. Department policies and directives Public Transparency Dashboard The Asheville Police Department has made most policies easy to find online. If you need to see a policy that isn’t already listed, you can ask for a copy. To request other department policies, please send an email to Samantha Booth at sbooth@ashevillenc.gov. When you are reading these policy documents, keep these three tips in mind to help you understand what you are seeing: Anything written in blue shows where changes were made from the older version of the document. This helps our employees see what is new. If you see numbers like [1.1.1] or [6.01], these are just notes for the accreditation process. They show which official professional standard that part of the policy is connected to. You may see links to other policies inside the text. These links only work for department employees. Public Transparency Dashboard In keeping with our promise to be open and honest, the Asheville Police Department (APD) has created a public data dashboard. This tool takes facts and figures from several websites and puts them all in one easy-to-find place. Our goal is to give our community the information they need to work with us to find ways to make our community safer. The dashboard also includes a list of “frequently asked questions” to help explain how things work. You will also find a new customer survey there. We created this survey to better understand how our officers and staff are doing when they interact with the public. 2024 Internal Affairs Statistical Summaries CALEA Public Comment Portal The Asheville Police Department takes part in an accreditation program called CALEA (Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies). This is a way to prove that our department meets high professional standards. As part of this process, we invite you to share your thoughts through an online public comment portal. The goal of the portal is to hear from you about how we are doing in meeting the accreditation standards. You can share both praise (commendations) and concerns. We want to know about: How well we follow professional law enforcement standards. How we interact with the Asheville community. How well we provide public safety services. Whether you think we deserve to stay accredited. What the Portal is NOT for It is important to understand that CALEA is not an agency that investigates specific crimes or officer misconduct. Please do not use the portal to report a crime or file a legal complaint. CALEA will only look at your comments to see if they relate to their official standards. You will not receive a personal reply to your comment, though the system will send a message to show they received it. You can view the list of different standards on the CALEA website if you would like to see the specific rules we follow. The CALEA public comment portal can be accessed at this website: http://cimrs2.calea.org/719
