(Image: City of Seattle)
(Image: City of Seattle)
The Seattle City Council’s public safety committee is debating legislation Tuesday morning that will open the way for the creation of a new Seattle Police Department surveillance system combining Closed-Circuit Television Camera systems above the city’s streets with “real-time crime center” software.
The proposed $1.8 million pilot will be limited to public spaces and sidewalks at three locations in the city: Aurora Ave N, the International District including Little Saigon, and the 3rd Ave corridor downtown,
CHS reported here this summer as the Harrell administration initiative was stripped down, eliminating efforts to include gunshot detection technology in the pilot and limiting the test to neighborhoods outside Capitol Hill and the Central District.
CHS reported on the latest debate over ShotSpotter and similar detection systems as the pilot’s plan was debated during a District 3 public safety meeting hosted by Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth in February.
While it won’t include gunshot detection, the pilot program legislation will allow SPD to deploy “real-time crime center (RTCC) software technologies integrating multiple data sources for improved analysis and investigations,” Harrell’s office said.
The proposed legislation includes a structure for evaluating the program and the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety will retain “outside academic subject matter experts to develop and manage an implementation and evaluation plan related to the use of the technologies to ensure they are effective and deliver the expected results.”
The city has said the first evaluation will be completed after year one of the pilot with a final evaluation for possible citywide rollout produced after the pilot’s second year.
The new camera areas in the pilot will have some overlap with the newly created “Stay Out of Drugs Areas” and “Stay Out of Area Prostitution” zones established earlier this month by the council.
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This will be great for seeing the crimes they can’t prevent. Then they’ll have videos to show the public when they ask for our help. When is the part where they address poverty, drug addiction and banning guns so they can reduce instances of crime before they occur? That would render America a little less exciting. I genuinely think people don’t want that.
I think you are asking for a lot from just one city that is becoming increasingly unfriendly to the working class family. Single adults and pet parents are not really motivated to make the changes you are suggesting when they are busy being on MTV. And considering the fact that night life culture depends on drug users, what are we really calling criminal activity? It’s not like we are gonna be able to stop the flow of non-fentanyl substances being wiffed up in the bathrooms of our most popular night clubs.
Yunno Tim…”working class families”??? You say it. But what IS it?
Tim, as a supposed Seattleite, you have some of the lowest expectations of your city and elected representatives that I’ve ever seen. I think asking for police accountability within the department is one of the lowest possible bars we could clear…it’s just politically unpopular with the business-backed city council. I’m a “pet parent” and property owner and I think the police should have their salaries halved. Then they could know what it’s like to work in any other department of the city government.
Also, MTV???? Is it 2004?? Touch grass, man!!
Haha… MTV
“Police salaries halved”? You have GOT to be kidding! The SPD is already down about 500 officers (reports vary), and your proposal would make things MUCH worse.
Salaries halved? I guess you really want to wait forever while some deranged lunatic is breaking down your door threatening o kill you. Cause so many cops will leave that the governor would have to call up the national guard to keep order in the streets. No thanks!
Genuine question – do you think the Council can ban guns?
Depends on your perspective.
The council thinks it can do anything. Then get smacked down. Then try it again and again. Thusly, proof they fool themselves into thinking they can do anything. Repeatedly.
We need a federal law/laws. Lots of them.
“This will be great for seeing the crimes they can’t prevent.”
It will preempt crime. It’ll be known that cameras are there. They will claim victory. Then want to budget millions for more.
Just like SODA. Push the problem to the next district. Just get it out of MY district. Then once it’s a SODA? Gripe about having to pay taxes when there’s no crime.
This would be more effective if council weren’t “banning crime” in those same areas, lol.
You caught that too.
The deal is to say “see? It werkd!” Let’s install them throughout the city!
We need more of these to make it easier to prosecute violent criminals and get them off of Seattle’s streets.
Yes! Add these cameras to 23rd and Cherry, the 23rd and Union and 23rd and Jackson intersections, which are plagued by gunfire. We have folks shooting on foot and idiots who use the same car in multiple drive-bys. Employ the facial recognition technology out there to catch them.
Bah…Up here at Call aAndy and Pine/Pike and Broadway makes your little gangster love fests look like Headstart for criminals.
Up here? They smoke show/shoot then book. Not just the garden variety drive bye. You get like a 5-10 minutes of donuts in the intersections.
There were photos of last spring’s shooter at Garfield high school practically in real-time, kids were circulating them while in lockdown. And they were on the news. Crickets from SPD regarding apprehension of someone who killed a boy in broad daylight.
Hopefully cameras help as a deterrent because SPD doesn’t seem equipped to solve crimes utilizing photographic evidence.
Time for more gangstalking. Great, just great.