The group is calling for the entire Real Time Crime Center’s network of city cameras to be turned off. Community Not Cameras is planning a Friday rally outside Seattle City Hall.
“This will be Mayor Katie B. Wilson’s 100th day in office, and we are hosting this rally and press conference to collectively call her to immediately stop the surveillance cameras expansion and to turn off all cameras asap,” the group says in its announcement of the noontime rally. “Power is only as good as its accountability.”
Wilson is under pressure from supporters who say she is not living up to promises made last year as she campaigned to oust incumbent Bruce Harrell.
At a Wilson-organized forum on “security and surveillance” in the city held last month on First Hill, the mayor had to shout down the audience.
“I would like everyone to listen,” Wilson said over outbursts from the audience. “What I said repeatedly last year during the campaign was that I did not support the city council’s decision to expand surveillance given the concerns that I was hearing from immigrants rights groups and civil liberties groups about the danger that that data could fall into the hands of federal authorities.”
“That is why we are doing an audit,” Wilson said. “I’m doing the due diligence to try to understand. whether these data security concerns are warranted and take some steps to make sure that the data is as secure as we can have it.”
“I never said I’m going to turn all the cameras off. I never said all the cameras should be turned off.”
CHS reported here last month as Wilson ordered “a privacy and data governance audit” and announced she was pausing the expansion of the city’s Real Time Crime Center camera system to Capitol Hill and the Central District and suspending the use of Automatic License Plate Readers by the Seattle Police Department over concerns about potential misuse of the technologies by law enforcement.
Wilson said cameras already installed for the Real Time Crime Center downtown, in the International District and along Aurora would remain active during the audit. She also gave the go ahead to the expansion of the camera system to the city’s stadium district in time for this summer’s World Cup.
On Capitol Hill, work is on hold on the plan to install cameras in the core of the Pike/Pine neighborhood along E Pike and E Pine between Broadway and 12th Ave with an extension along Nagle Place and Broadway north of the core all the way to Denny/E Barbara Bailey Way and the southern edge of Capitol Hill Station and its Sound Transit security camera installations.
In the Central District, the Harrell administration and District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth pushed for the camera system to be centered around safety at Garfield High School with boundaries running from a block north of the school along E Cherry all the way to S Jackson. The western edge has been planned to include 20th Ave and the eastern edge would extend along 26th Ave.
SPD’s CCTV map shows where the cameras are already in place and where they’re planned to be deployed
The Capitol Hill system is estimated to cost around $400,000 to install and $35,000 a year to operate. The Central District installation has a budget of $425,000 and also an estimated $35,000 in “ongoing annual costs.” Wilson has said SPD has yet to receive the ordered cameras from technology provider Axon but did not say if the orders can be canceled.
While not yet operational here, East Precinct officers make regular requests of RTCC analysts for information about suspicious vehicles or suspect images from the center’s databases. With the Real Time Crime Center’s limited footprint, many of those East Precinct requests currently go unfilled.
SPD says the Center is now staffed 19 hours per day, seven days a week, combining “technology with real-time analysis to improve public safety outcomes.”
Proponents including SPD Chief Shon Barnes and City Council public safety chair Bob Kettle says critics are overstating the risks — and under appreciating the value to safety on city streets. SPD says its analysis shows police are “three times more likely” to make an arrest in a case when working with the analysts who staff the Real Time Crime Center with access to its network of police and traffic cameras across the city, as well as important databases and resources like the license plate reader technology that can be used to identify suspects and vehicles — and sometimes track them across Seattle.
The cameras are sure to be a topic next week as SPD says a planned April 14th community meeting at Capitol Hill’s Miller Community Center will be an opportunity “discuss public safety strategies” and “meet directly with Chief Shon Barnes and SPD Command Staff members.”
Our City, Our Safety Community Meeting
Tuesday, April 14th 6:30-8:00pm
Miller Community Center (330 19 Ave E)
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