The mayor’s office has revealed details of its proposed expansion of the Seattle Police “Real Time Crime Center” surveillance camera system to include the Capitol Hill nightlife core and a major swath of the Central District from E Cherry to Jackson it says it necessary to prevent gun violence near Garfield High School.
Maps and details of the proposed expansions were presented last week to the Seattle City Council’s public safety committee as the mayor’s office hands off legislation to expand the existing Real Time Crime Center camera pilot currently operating along Aurora Ave, 3rd Ave, and in the International District.
“Analysts are supporting ongoing investigations by pushing video and incident data directly to
patrol units and detectives,” a city council analysis of the proposal reads. “Analysts can also provide live updates and still images of suspects, a capability SPD says helps support its ‘precision policing’ model.”
CHS reported last month on the proposal that would expand the 24×7 surveillance program while also expanding the overall program to allow SPD “to view and record SDOT traffic cameras at select intersections and along major arterial roads in the city.”
The proposed SPD camera expansion would include adding the installations to the city’s Stadium District around Lumen Field and T-Mobile park.
The city already operates more than 350 traffic cameras across its streets. SPD’s current three-location system includes 57 cameras, the city says.
The proposed SPD expansion comes as Mayor Bruce Harrell and new Chief Shon Barnes have touted the early success of the RTCC and the pilot creating the new SPD surveillance system combining Closed-Circuit Television Camera systems above the city’s streets with “real-time crime center” software.after only two months of operation.
The city says the new system “integrates various video and data streams for enhanced analysis and investigation of crime incidents.”
Since its launch in May, the upgraded center has played a role in investigating 600 reported incidents and was currently supporting 90 active criminal investigations, officials said in July.
According to the city, RTCC analysts provide patrol officers and detectives with incident details, video images, and other relevant information, “often as incidents are happening.”
The Harrell administration says privacy concerns should be a matter of policy. Part of the legislation being proposed this summer would make changes in line with the city’s data retention policy that automatically deletes the files “30 days after date of recording, or until determined that no incident occurred that had evidentiary value.” The new “SPD-owned” cameras in any expansion would also be part of a mandated evaluation funded as part of the pilot program.
The mayor’s office claims it has buy-in from community after “public engagement efforts included conversations between the Garfield-Nova neighborhood and the Seattle Public Schools.”
“Camera installations for the Capitol Hill nightlife area were discussed at a community forum and through individual meetings with business leaders,” the city says.
The proposed Capitol Hill boundaries would 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.
The Nagle extension would cover an area troubled by nighttime violence, camping, and street disorder and represents a de facto inclusion of Cal Anderson Park’s western edge including Bobby Morris Playfield and the skate area, dodgeball and tennis courts, and basketball court. The city hasn’t said if cameras would be installed in the park but any Nagle cameras would be in range of the park.
In the Central District, the Harrell administration is pushing 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 would include 20th Ave and the eastern edge would extend along 26th Ave. The zone would include Garfield’s 23rd Ave campus, the Garfield Super Block area including the Garfield Community Center and sports fields, and the troubled parking lot at 23rd and Jackson.
How the program handles private property like the 23rd and Jackson parking lot around businesses like AutoZone and Walgreens and public areas like the Garfield campus isn’t clear.
The extension to Jackson would allow the SPD system to monitor the area around the Vulcan Real Estate-owned parking lot and surrounding area where multiple incidents of gun violence have erupted including this 2023 drive-by shooting that damaged a nearby daycare and sent one man to the hospital.
The Capitol Hill system will 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.”
CHS first reported on the expansion plans in December as Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess included the proposal during a public safety meeting with the neighborhood’s business community sparked by ongoing challenges around street crime and drug use around the Broadway-Pike/Pine core and Cal Anderson Park.
The mayor’s office is also backing expansion of the surveillance program to include the area around Garfield High School where the city and the district are spending thousands on security upgrades and community services to counter deadly gun violence that has marred the campus.
Garfield is also being considered for a pilot program beginning this fall that would pay for a Seattle Police School Engagement Officer on the campus.
The Capitol Hill and CD systems are currently not funded and will require a funding source to be identified. The mayor’s office says the $200,000 Stadium District expansion will be paid for out of the city’s 2026 FIFA World Cup spending.
The proposed expansions come as Harrell and city officials say there has been a turnaround in Seattle Police hiring as they push for a goal of growing SPD’s ranks from the just under 1,000 officers on patrol in 2022 to nearly 1,500 by 2027.
Meanwhile, crime stats show a downward trend for the city after spikes in reports of violent and property crime coming out of the pandemic.
The council’s public safety community is expected to finalize debate and vote on the proposals at its meeting next week.
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Used to be against this type of surveillance, but I’m so sick of all of the crackheads and open air drug use constantly going on. Nobody seems to care and nobody will do anything about it. So now we will lose some freedom in order to remove these attics who will not take support from anyone.
Is crack the problem?
lol
And the cameras a just gonna pick up jaywalkers and mid-day parking violations.
Stay in your “attic”.
Clearly you haven’t read the article – cops don’t sit and watch it LOL they use it to investigate crimes. Maybe try educating yourself.
You are wrong on so many levels.
wowww…you sure it’s not you man? you sure?
@fajita have you had bullets get lodged in your bedroom window? how about finding one in your frying pan via a hole in your kitchen window?
no, you haven’t? then maybe have a little sympathy for those who have.
I have one lodged in my shoulder. Been there since 2009. Yunno, when Capitol Hill was great right? Ya just never know when a round travels 100 yards from out of nowhere. They “wizzzz” and it hurts. It burns a hole like a worm until it stops. Then bleeds like crazy.
No on the cameras man. Hard no. Too much can be abused. They always do too. How much for the lawsuits after the fact? Cops stalking domestic and business partners. That never happens. Homeland will never get their hands on it cuz Bruce said so. The same Bruce who won’t be in office forever. Yet another ridiculous claim and promise he can’t keep.
“Crackheads” is shorthand for the drug addicts. Perhaps fentanyl zombies is a more accurate description.
why not drug addicts? because you want to use pajoritives and denigrate and other instead of communicate in a normal manner. It’s a MAGA trait. It’s the only way they cope with their feelings. To put others down and boost themselves.
This system would comprise hundreds of camera feeds, and will be “monitored” by at most a small handful of people. It’s simply too much information to process. It will most often be used after an incident has occurred to collect information about a suspect’s movements and identity.
If you think it’s going to be cops spending all day watching for someone to maybe do drugs in view of the camera and that they’re going to call a patrol car to rush over and apprehend the horrible addict, I think you’re going to very much disappointed. If they’re all really bored, or they need to drum up some positive publicity for the department they might proactively use the system to find someone to arrest.
But I think we all know that the most likely Real Time use case is going to be cops “changing the channel” until they see someone interesting and/or hot and then following them down the block.
In the meantime the thousands of people who live in the CD will have to contend with having their entire lives outside their homes being monitored by the police.
Not sure where you’re getting the “hundreds” but, camera location is destined to be just another skill set.
I’m totally for white people being spied on. Who else is gonna be watched in the CD? And Capitol hills soda zone needs prayer and vigilance like never before.
you have a lot to say about issues everywhere but do not live or go there.
I just get tired of the authoritarian lite ideology you spew.
So? Be tired.
that’s all you got? it’s getting worse. you should have that looked at.
Let’s hope they do more than just look at these tapes after the fact.
Real time remote surveillance only works on cop shows.
That seems…unlikely. According to this, operating cost for all of the cameras in the Capitol Hill area will be 35k annually. That’s not gonna cover the cost of 24/7 surveillance.
what’s the current cops salary? That’s the labor costs. Unless amatures monitor it? She what I’m saying. The millions it will cost is hidden.
Weird that the CD map covers more than like 4x the space shown on the Capitol Hill map but they supposedly cost roughly the same to install/operate?
CD has more black people that’s why. This crap is racist, and Harrell loves doing constant shit that is bad for minority neighborhoods. He’s a traitor to the CD.
I think higher rates of crime and gun deaths are what is actually bad for minority neighborhoods.
that’s crap. these areas are where the shootings are happening.
are you ok with that?
they are happening everywhere actually. RED states are the worst crime rates in the nation by in large. Seattle is not an unsafe city. If cops would enforce current laws we’d not need cameras everywhere.
Harrell, the black and asian mayor, loves doing bad things to minority neighborhoods? And for the record, the CD has a pretty small black population at this point. Less than 20 percent, if I recall correctly. So making this a race issue really doesn’t fly very well.
have you talked to any Black residents in this city to hear what they think of the mayor? or is that just supposition on your part?
Yup. My friends generally like him. Next question.
because of his race, he won’t go against minorities? LMAO!
He’s a POLITICIAN!!! He’ll be whatever you want for the right donation.
As a longtime Black resident of this city, the CD’s Black population has been dwindling. However, many Black residents of this city actually want the cops to do their job and arrest the gang members firing off guns on residential streets. We’re tired of gun fire in the city. Just ask the daycare on 23rd and Jackson that got a bullet in the window in Oct 2023 when a guy on the street got shot several times while the daycare was in operation and had kids inside. We also don’t want homeless encampments popping up in the city. Many of those in the encampments and RVs are racist white drug addicts who just feel too damn entitled to trespass on people’s property and steal people’s stuff.
One more thing, many of us who are Black in this city are tired of white people, especially white progressives, trying to say what is good for Black Seattleites. Let us, the Black community, be the ones voicing our concerns in mass of what we want and don’t want for Black Seattle residents. We had cameras in the CD within the last 15 years and that helped bust and jail gang members. Sawant had them removed of course.
Well said!
wow…fact is it’s bad everywhere. But, we are safer than most cities. The city is the most livable in America and people like you pick apart single incidents and broad statements w/o basis one to support it.
That’s all you’ve done here. Nice to know ALL the black people talk behind my back. I’ll stop helping the lady next door and the dude who likes my cookies every Friday. They don’t appreciate it. Here I thought I knew them…Sad to know I am hated.
And yet played the race card when a group protested him at city hall a while back claiming it was because he is the first bi-racial mayor. I hate to tell him it was the more conservative vote that got him elected.
BOOOO I dislike
Good, remove all hard drug users from streets and apply the law.
Good.
Sorry buddy, the rule of law no longer exists in this country. “Law and Order” conservatives saw to that.
Hopefully they use them to bust and prosecute the drug dealers that blatantly deal drug in Capitol Hill.
Yes! Actual arrests should focus on the dealers. I’m sure the cops know who at least some of them are. Once the dealers are in jail, the addicts will be more inclined to accept help/treatment, and that will make a big difference in the homelessness problem on our streets. Do it now!
This is a scandal/lawsuit waiting to happen. Mass surveillances are ALWAYS abused.
This is insane.
Drug dealers are not dealing drugs out in the Open that fuel the problems with the night life crowd. 💃”Cha” 🕺”cha” 👯♀️”cha” 🍕☠️🥃 please.
More over, the drug addicts are too turnt to be anything other than an eye sore. the problems are a matter of population size and cultural incompatibility. The homeless are gonna Happen as population grows to close to a million people. These are just big city problems that a lot of median to above median income earners believe they should not be dealing with. It might be easy to gentrifying enclaves of working below median income earners, but it’s not easy for the displaced to cope. Or to recover.
@tim – you’re wrong about drug dealers- they’re very much in the open.
And there are many obvious counterexamples to your comments about population size. Homelessness and addiction are not inevitable.
Paris has 2.5 times the population we do, and 1/6th the number of homeless, despite a median income that’s just over half of seattle’s
Yeah Paris Texas is quite the place I hear.
To add a little context: These new cameras are being proposed by the Mayor’s office and SPD just a few months after the previously approved cameras in the C-ID, Downtown, Belltown and North Aurora were started-up. This first round of cameras was intended to be a two-year pilot program. University criminologists and Seattle’s Office of the Inspector General are studying the camera’s effect on “gun violence, human trafficking, and other persistent felony crime”.
These are the three areas SPD identified as the reason for the cameras. This first round of cameras was framed a 2-year pilot project because there was much skepticism from experts that the cameras could reduce serious felony crime rates. Evidence from other cities strongly suggest that CCTV cameras can have modest reductions in property crime — but have no effect on serious felonies.
So, two months into a two year pilot, the Mayor and SPD are now coming back to the City Council and saying, yes we know these are effective tools and we want more cameras! The examples they gave the Council last week of the successes of the program so far have nothing to do with “gun violence, human trafficking, and other persistent felony crime”.
The key question is: are there any benefits of this tech that outweigh the impact it will have on civil liberties? During the approval process for the first round of cameras, the Mayor’s own Community Surveillance Working Group recommended not approving the cameras because the risks were too high. Washington ACLU was opposed, the City’s Office of Civil Rights was opposed, as were hundreds of residents who submitted public comments to the Surveillance Impact Report.
These cameras particularly put at risk immigrants, trans folks, and activists who we know are being targeted by the current Federal Government. The thirty days of camera recordings are being stored in out-of-state servers run by Axon, a for-profit company headquartered in Arizona. There is no reason to think that Washington State’s Shield Laws, or the values professed by Seattle politicians, will keep that data out of the hands of Federal agents who we now know do not think much about violating due process or the law.
Just like the Kiosks. Ram it down our throats city wide. For a 30 year contract.
The hubris is off the charts.
Hey, how about getting your “real time” butt in a patrol car. That would do the same thing, and likely deter even MORE crime. Fucking morons.
This entire paragraph is one sentence.
If the cops and Bruce say it’s so? Then it must be sooper effective right? No need for scrutiny. We’ll put these everywhere and be even more successful. Reminds me of Trump making false claims to get what he wants. Like L.A. is out of control and enter the USMC. It’s an authoritarian govt. folks. Anything surveillance will be abused. It always is even w/o Trump. Cops stalk people allll the time. Especially domestic partners. Nevermind Homeland who will print out warrants like counterfeit $100’s by the truck loads. They can get info via Verizon, At and T and so forth. These are honest facts well documented.
So this line here is total bullshit. It’s nothing but control. No need for cops visibility. We got cameras watching everyone. All they want is “to see crime in real time.” Uhuh, then what? Start scanning cameras all over the city for them? That’s nice. Waddabout all the spots where you push the same crime? Follow these folks around with more cameras at that place and push them to where? Then cameras there too right? The cops have never been so phoney as to incite riots with MAGA and “the libs” over the open police channel right? Now they want encryption and masks. And huge bonuses and pay raises!
What could possibly go wrong? Bruce and the cops say it’s amazing!. So it must be right?
“The proposed SPD expansion comes as Mayor Bruce Harrell and new Chief Shon Barnes have touted the early success of the RTCC and the pilot creating the new SPD surveillance system combining Closed-Circuit Television Camera systems above the city’s streets with “real-time crime center” software.after only two months of operation.”
In 2 months they’ve revolutionised crime fighting right? Where’s the hard stats vs. cost? We seem to have no real issues finding these people. Even when we have cameras we can’t identify them sometimes. It takes a while. You ask for a phone a friend and ask the entire city if they know them.
The whole thing is unnecessary. Enforce the SODA laws first. Get cops on the streets first. THEN we’ll see if we want to spend more on this boondoggle. We’ve already went into debt and raised taxes for cops. How about using them? For real police work. Not some “Judge Dredd” version of policing. “China Lite”
Bye Bye Bruce!!!