As the Trump administration’s ICE battles are felt in Seattle, worries about how the city’s police — and their technology — respond to federal agents is a top concern at City Hall. A planned expansion of the city’s Real Time Crime Center camera system to include parts of Capitol Hill and the Central District is a key area of worry.
Despite the street disorder and public safety issues the new cameras are hoped to address, calls to put the expansion on hold have the mayor’s ear.
Mayor Katie Wilson shares the concerns and is “currently reviewing options,” the mayor’s office told CHS late Tuesday about a pause.
Wilson says she is sorting out what is possible including a proposal from Seattle City Councilmember Eddie Lin to stop the approved and funded expansion and redirect funding to help immigrant communities targeted in the Department of Homeland Security crackdown.
District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth representing Capitol Hill and the Central District where the new cameras will be located, has supported the Real Time Crime Center growth and joined Mayor Bruce Harrell last year in his push to include the area around the Central District’s Garfield High School in the expansion.
Hollingsworth said Tuesday she is “open to a conversation” about a pause but continues to support the community public safety effort that she says buoyed to Garfield area camera plan in the first place.
“I don’t want people’s civil liberties to be infringed upon,” Hollingsworth told CHS Tuesday, “and I also understand the current public safety challenges right now.”
Hollingsworth said Tuesday she has not spoken to Lin about his proposal and did not have an official timeline for installation of the Capitol Hill and Central District cameras.
In the early process of creating the first SPD Real Time Crime Center camera systems along Aurora Ave, 3rd Ave, and in the International District, the hardware was installed and operational about nine to twelve months after the council’s approval. That would put the expansion on track for implementation this summer or early fall.
The Burner reported here on the plea to Wilson and City Hall from the new South Seattle representative on the council. “We should reconsider increased data collection and consider if these millions of dollars could be much better spent on immigration defense and providing resources to our immigrant communities – residents who are sharing their fear to even leave their homes to go to school or work or the grocery store, all due to ICE’s campaign of terror,” Lin told The Burner.
CHS reported here in September as the council approved SPD’s Real Time Crime Center camera expansion including final debate about data privacy and how SPD says it will handle any potential legal wrangling with outside agencies like ICE.
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The Capitol Hill camera boundaries will cover the core of the Pike/Pine neighborhood along E Pike and E Pine between Broadway and 12th Ave with a mapped 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. The camera zone would stretch to the backside of Pike/Pine along E Union.
In the Central District, the Harrell administration and Hollingsworth pushed for the camera system to be centered around safety at Garfield High School but with boundaries running from a block north of the school along E Cherry all the way to S Jackson. The western edge will include 20th Ave and the eastern edge would extend along 26th Ave.
The additions will expand the SPD Real Time Crime Center surveillance camera system to include the Capitol Hill nightlife core around E Pike and Cal Anderson Park and a major swath of the Central District from E Cherry to Jackson police officials say is necessary to prevent gun violence.
The SPD camera expansion will also include adding the installations to the city’s Stadium District around Lumen Field and T-Mobile park — expected to happen in time for the World Cup.
The city already operates more than 350 traffic cameras across its streets. SPD’s current three-location RTCC system includes 57 cameras, the city says.
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.”
While not yet operational here, East Precinct officers make regular requests of RTCC analysts for information about suspicious vehicles or suspect photographs from the center’s databases. With the Real Time Crime Center’s current limited footprint, most of those East Precinct requests currently go unfilled.
Officials Tuesday were sorting out where SPD and the city’s tech crews were in the installation process.
Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck who was one of two votes against the approved camera expansion in September, says it is her understanding the cameras for the expansion were purchased in December, “but they have not yet arrived.”
The citywide council rep says she hopes Wilson will see this as the right time to pause — delivered or not.
“As someone who voted against the CCTV pilot expansion, I fully support pausing the CCTV pilot program and repurposing those funds to meet our urgent community needs,” Rinck tells CHS.
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