Category: Privacy

Mayor Wilson, Privacy, public safety, Taxes

Wilson Backs Down on Tenant Protection Rollbacks, Fire Department Funding Plan Fizzles, Privacy Advocates Push Back on Surveillance During World Cup

1. Mayor Katie Wilson’s office confirmed that Wilson will not be proposing changes to the city’s just cause eviction ordinance that housing developers, including the Housing Development Consortium, had been pushing for months. Tenant advocacy groups opposed the potential changes and met with Wilson the week before last to urge her not to move forward with the changes.

Some affordable housing developers have argued for years that the city’s landlord-tenant protections, which are stronger than the state’s,  have made it impossible for them to evict tenants who don’t pay rent or break the law. Specifically, they wanted Wilson to roll back the city’s roommate law, which allows renters to add roommates without asking their landlords’ permission, and and align the requirements to evict a tenant with three days’ notice with the more landlord-friendly state law.

“The Mayor is not proposing changes to the roommate law or the three‑day notice,” a Wilson spokesperson said. “Her office has received proposals and perspectives on a wide range of economic, health, safety, and operational issues.”

Former City Councilmember Cathy Moore said she would introduce legislation that would have rolled back the roommate and three-day notice provisions but resigned before she actually introduced it.

Had Wilson introduced the rollbacks, tenant advocates argued, it would have given centrist councilmembers the opportunity to reopen the entire just cause eviction law, which includes many other provisions landlords oppose. The optics of Wilson—a tenants’ rights activist before becoming mayor—proposing landlord-friendly legislation that even her predecessor, Bruce Harrell, didn’t support would also be terrible, for obvious reasons.

Wilson does plan to propose legislation, in collaboration with Councilmember Dionne Foster, to curb rental “junk fees” in July, her spokesperson said. Wilson wrote about these fees, which include “notice fees,” fees for going month-to-month, and monthly “billing fees,” for PubliCola in 2023.

2. A proposal to create a special taxing district to pay for the Seattle Fire Department is dead, at least for this year, PubliCola has confirmed.

Creating a fire district would have allowed the city to fund much of SFD’s budget through a new property tax, moving that money out of the city’s general fund and helping to close a budget deficit Wilson recently said would be close to $175 million. The district, authorized by a new state law this year, would have had the ability to levy taxes outside the existing property tax cap of $3.60 per $1,000 of assessed property value, making it an appealing way to offload a big chunk of city spending.

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The firefighters’ union, however, did not get on board, effectively killing the proposal. The plan would have made much of the fire department’s funding subject to regular voter approval; it would have also moved SFD under the direct control of the city council, acting as the fire district’s board; the union reportedly wanted SFD to have direct participation on the board, at a minimum.

PubliCola exclusively reported on the potential fire district proposal last month. At a City Club event last week, Wilson said the city is facing a budget deficit of “about $175 million next year.” Without the fire district serving as a relief valve, Wilson will likely introduce additional taxes this year, including a local capital gain tax opposed by business groups like the Seattle Metro Chamber and Downtown Seattle Association.

3. In response to Wilson’s announcement last week that she will turn on police surveillance cameras in the stadium district for the upcoming World Cup games, the anti-surveillance advocates at Community Not Cameras questioned the mayor’s claim that police and the FBI had presented evidence of a “credible threat” to public safety. Wilson previously said she would not turn the cameras on without evidence of a credible threat, but did not clearly define what she meant by that term; last week, she cited “general but credible” threats to justify activating the cameras.

“By activating an Axon-backed surveillance grid in Seattle, the City is risking this data being handed over to a weaponized federal intelligence apparatus,” the coalition said in a statement.

“[R]egardless of whatever bureaucratic policy or verbal assurances the Mayor hides behind, the City of Seattle does not have the power to stop the federal government from obtaining this data once it exists. Any local safeguards or policy limitations the City claims SPD follows are completely meaningless against the collection capabilities and legal mechanisms available to the federal government.  If you build it, and if you turn it on, they can take it.”

Our Seattle, a group of Wilson supporters who organized to hold the mayor accountable to her campaign promises, requested footage from one of the surveillance cameras, which SPD has maintained is deleted after five days and only accessible to a handful of people. They received and posted the footage on Instagram on May 28.

 

 

Affordability, Mayor Wilson, Privacy

At City Club Event, Mayor Answers Questions Like “Why Isn’t Pizza Cheap Yet”

 

By Erica C. Barnett

FOX 13 anchor Han Kim interviewed Wilson last night at an event sponsored by City Club Seattle, hitting the mayor repeatedly with bad-faith questions such as “why should we increase the sales tax for transit when so many bus seat are empty” and “why is eating out still expensive when you said you would lower the cost of pizza?”

Kim even posed a couple of questions Wilson has answered ad infinitum at this point: Why did she dismiss the idea that rich people will leave Seattle over the statewide high-earners’ income tax (a story that made international news , thanks largely to nonstop, breathless coverage by right-wing local news outlets in Seattle) and is she still boycotting Starbucks (shortly after the election, Wilson appeared at a workers’ rally and said people shouldn’t buy from the anti-union company)?

Wilson did say she bought a disgusting-sounding “blueberry muffin” coffee drink the other day when she went to the Pike Place Market Starbucks to talk to workers about their labor concerns—hardly breaking news. but now we know.

I live-posted the entire event on Bluesky, including questions from a parade of angry audience members who wanted to know why homelessness and crime haven’t been fixed and seem to have gotten worse. Wilson had some nuanced responses to these perennial rhetorical questions, but she also seemed a bit frustrated with her interrogators, who interrupted her repeatedly mid-answer in a way that—I AM JUST SAYING—I never saw the public address former mayor Bruce Harrell.

Kim also spent several minutes demanding that Wilson respond to comments by former reality TV star and current LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, who claimed recently that a third of LA’s homeless population was “bused in from other states” by “body brokers” and would move 1,200 miles north to Seattle once he cracks down on their ability to access social services. Pratt also wants to force people with addiction into 72-hour mental health holds, which he referred to as “mandatory rehab.” None of this is worth dignifying.

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With the World Cup games just a few days away (and City Councilmember Bob Kettle insisting that the mayor had no right to place a “pause” on the new cameras under the camera expansion legislation the council adopted last year), Wilson was asked again about what circumstances would constitute a “credible threat,” which she has said would trigger the city to turn on cameras already installed in the stadium district.

“A credible threat is if we get information, as our law enforcement agencies often do, that someone has the intention to cause harm to people or property… and it is believable that they might be able to carry it out. That is a credible threat for us,” Wilson said.

The mayor also noted that to the extent that surveillance cameras are useful, it’s generally to provide evidence after a crime has been committed, not to stop crimes in progress. And she pointed out, as PubliCola has, that there are already many city-operated and private surveillance cameras around the stadiums.

Camera proponents have generally been more interested in anecdotes than quantitative data. Last year, Kettle opposed an amendment to the police surveillance plan that would have required an analysis to determine whether the cameras were accomplishing their stated goals before any additional expansions. The council approved new cameras just two weeks after the first set was installed.

 

Mayor Wilson, Police, Privacy

Wilson “Pauses” Police Camera Surveillance Expansion But Keeps Existing Cameras On

By Erica C. Barnett

In an announcement that she immediately noted will please no one, Mayor Katie Wilson announced Thursday that she is pausing the expansion of an existing police camera surveillance program until the city gets the results of a “privacy and data governance audit” that will be conducted by researchers at New York University’s Policing Project, a process she said will take a few months. In the meantime, the city will install, but not turn on, 26 new cameras in the stadium district south of downtown, which can be switched on if there is a “credible threat” that warrants their use, such as an attack during the upcoming World Cup games in June.

In addition, SPD will switch off all the Automated License Plate Reader systems installed on patrol cars—about 400—as well as six used by SPD’s parking enforcement division. A recently passed state law prohibits the use of ALPR, which identifies the owner of a vehicle based on their license plate, around schools, places of worship, food banks, and courthouses. SPD’s crime and community-harm reduction director Lee Hunt said SPD is figuring out how to “geofence” these locations so that its license plate readers, made by Axon, can turn off and on as they pass by on the street.

Wilson acknowledged that her half-measures announcement would probably make everyone a bit unhappy.

“For some people, seeing CCTV cameras in a neighborhood where they live or work or attend school makes them feel safer. For others, those same cameras make them feel less safe,” she said. “But precisely because different people and different communities experience the cameras differently, it’s important to base a decision on more than feelings. It’s important to ground our actions in a thorough understanding of how the cameras are being used, of the public benefits they are providing, and of any harm they are causing or could cause.”

The Seattle Police Department is currently waiting for the results of an analysis by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, who are looking into the efficacy of surveillance cameras for solving crimes. The separate analysis Wilson announced today will look into questions like how data is being stored, who can access it, and how secure the footage is once it’s transferred to an offsite server, evidence.com.

“There’s no doubt that these cameras make it easier to solve some crimes, including serious ones like homicides, but also, cameras are not the one key to making our neighborhoods safe,” Wilson said. “And on the other hand, there are legitimate concerns about privacy, oversurveillance and potential misuse of surveillance technologies. But also, these cameras are not the primary threat to immigrants, trans people or people seeking reproductive health care in our country right now.”

Concerns about surveillance cameras are not just about keeping data safe from ICE and other federal authorities. Back in July 2024, the city’s own surveillance working group urged the mayor and council not to install police surveillance cameras, arguing that the cameras raised concerns about privacy and First Amendment rights.

The group also argued that training cameras on “high-crime” neighborhoods—SPD’s current deployment strategy, and one Wilson has praised as a way of targeting crime where it happens—could result in overpolicing and a “risk of disparate impact … on minority communities within Seattle.”

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Wilson said that if the reviewers at NYU don’t raise major concerns about data privacy, she’s inclined to expand the surveillance network.

“I think that if, if the audit comes back and says everything’s totally secure, we’re not at all worried about this data getting into the hands of federal government I think likely my decision at that point would be to move forward with the expansion of the pilot,” Wilson said, adding that it’s “legitimate” to ask whether “we want to live in a society where there’s cameras on every corner.”

Hunt, from SPD, said turning off the cameras on parking enforcement officers’ vehicles will result in lower revenues from parking tickets issued by PEOs using those vehicles.

Police cameras come at a significant cost, at a time when Wilson has asked all city departments to come up with potential cuts to address a budget shortfall of more than $140 million. In 2024, the city added 21 new police positions, at an ongoing two-year cost of $6.5 million, to expand SPD’s police surveillance program; last year, after the city expanded the program, the budget added another $1.3 million to add new cameras around the stadiums and the “Capitol Hill Nightlife District” near Pike and Pine.

podcasts, Police, Privacy

Seattle Nice: Does Police Surveillance Make Us Safer?

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Nice is back after a couple weeks away, and we’re talking about police surveillance in the age of Trump. As PubliCola readers are surely aware, the Seattle council just passed legislation sent down by Mayor Bruce Harrell to install live, 24/7 police surveillance cameras in several new neighborhoods—a rapid expansion of a “pilot” program so new that the city has no data on its efficacy.

Civil rights and privacy groups, immigrant rights organizations, and the city’s own civil rights office, surveillance working group, and Community Police Commission opposed the expansion, as did virtually all of the people who showed up last week to express their opposition before the council’s lopsided 7-2 vote.

In our discussion of Seattle’s expanding web of police surveillance, we debated whether police cameras are effective at preventing and solving violent crimes—the stated purpose of the legislation—and if the loss of privacy is worth it to have a safer city.

You probably know where I come down on all this stuff. I’m not a fan of police surveillance, particularly when it targets so-called “high crime” neighborhoods while allowing residents of “safe” neighborhoods to go about their lives without cameras on every corner .But the potential downsides go much further than standard cop-brain overreach (i.e.: if cameras don’t make you feel safer, maybe it’s because you’re doing something wrong) at a time when the Trump administration and red states are seeking to use footage like the kind SPD is now collecting to target immigrants and people seeking abortions and gender-affirming care.

 

Not surprisingly, Sandeep and David had a somewhat different view—Sandeep says bring on the surveillance state (“I use Clear” at the airport, he said gleefullyy, in perhaps the most shocking revelation on this week’s show), and argued that the council has “built safeguards” into the legislation, like a provision that says the city can turn off the cameras for up to 60 days if the Trump administration issues a subpoena for footage.

David said a lot of people probably feel safer knowing police are watching, and suggested that my headline, “City Expands Police Surveillance Despite Overwhelming Opposition, Concerns About Civil Liberties,” was unsubstantiated, because the people who show up at public comment only make up a small percentage of the population. In other words: There could be a silent, unseen majority who supports police surveillance because it makes them feel safe.

We also discussed the mayor’s recent proposal to use city funding—$20 million a year—to help Black Seattle residents buy houses. Harrell didn’t release any specific details about his proposal at an announcement last week, and it seems likely that the money will come out of existing Office of Housing funds. Sandeep said the proposal is a sign Harrell’s campaign is taking affordable housing seriously; I argued that it’s more important to look at a candidate’s record than their rhetoric—particularly with Harrell, who’s been in elected office for most of the last 20 years but perennially campaigns as the candidate of change and new ideas.

City Council, immigration, Mayor Harrell, Police, Privacy

City Expands Police Surveillance Despite Overwhelming Opposition, Concerns About Civil Liberties

By Erica C. Barnett

After dozens of Seattle residents testified in opposition to legislation authorizing the expansion of 24/7 police camera surveillance on Tuesday—the bill, which PubliCola has covered extensively, passed the full council on a contentious 7-2 vote—several councilmembers used most of their speaking time to chastise and criticize their constituents for speaking out against the bill—apparently more offended by overwhelming public opposition than by the likelihood that federal law enforcement officials will use the camera footage to crack down on vulnerable Seattle residents.

The city just created the surveillance “pilot” last year, but is already expanding it before the city can collect any data about its effectiveness.

The new law, introduced just weeks after the city rolled out live camera surveillance in the Chinatown/International District, downtown, and along Aurora Ave. N, expands the pilot to include a swath of the Central District centered on Garfield High School, the area south of downtown around the stadiums, and a section of Capitol Hill that includes the Pike-Pine corridor and Cal Anderson Park. It also incorporates hundreds of cameras maintained by the Seattle Department of Transportation into the Real Time Crime Center, a facility at SPD headquarters where police monitor the cameras in real time.

Opposition to the new surveillance program is widespread. Candidates who came out ahead in this year’s primary elections, including mayoral frontrunner Katie Wilson and City Council Position 9 frontrunner Dionne Foster, have opposed expanding the pilot program as have the ACLU of Washington, Northwest  Immigrant Rights Project, Asian Counseling and Referral Services, and the city’s own Community Police Commission and Office for Civil Rights.

They argue, with substantial evidence, that CCTV cameras don’t help prevent or address violent crime, that they violate people’s civil rights and foster an environment of fear, and that provide new opportunities for the Trump Administration to subpoena or otherwise obtain camera footage to target immigrants and people seeking abortions or gender-affirming care.

This week, 17 members of the state legislature wrote to the council opposing the expansion of police surveillance at a time when the Trump Administration is targeting blue cities, including nominal “sanctuary” cities like Oakland, with subpoenas for surveillance footage and other data that cities have no authority to deny the federal government.

Seattle, similarly, will have to comply with any federal subpoenas for surveillance footage. The fact that local laws prohibit police from volunteering this information does not make the federal government subordinate to Seattle’s local regulations, any more than it has in other blue cities that have policies prohibiting police from voluntary cooperation with ICE and other federal agencies.

Meilani Mandery, a resident of the Chinatown/International District, said that since the council approved 20 cameras on nearly every intersection in the area, “people can’t enter or leave the neighborhood without being surveilled. You did this to a poor immigrant community that remembers the racist surveillance of the 20th century, when the government surveilled Japanese Americans before sending them to concentration camps, and the cops had books of Chinese mug shots to profile and justify police violence.”

Expanding police surveillance, Mandery continued, “rolls out the red carpet for ICE to kidnap our families, friends and neighbors. Do we not deserve safety?”

Only a few people have spoken out, over numerous public meetings, in favor of the cameras and the expansion of the Real Time Crime Center, and emails to the council have been overwhelmingly opposed to the program. Nonetheless, several council members claimed that they have heard directly from constituents who haven’t provided public comment that they support the cameras, particularly constituents of color who believe surveillance will make their neighborhoods safer.

Debora Juarez, an appointed council member who represents North Seattle, dismissed opponents of the legislation as people “with a lot of god damn privilege.”

“You can go on and on about the Trump regime. We all watch the news. We get it. We know. I’m not going to go with fear. I’m going to go with facts. I’m going to go with subject matter expertise.”

In fact, the city’s own Surveillance Working Group recommended strongly against the cameras and Real-Time Crime Center before Trump was elected to a second term, noting that they had the potential to violate people’s Constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure as well as the First Amendment, which protects the right to protest and assemble in public. Public comments, the group noted in its report opposing the original program pilot, “were overwhelmingly negative and voiced a serious concern and lack of trust within the community as a whole of the Seattle Police Department’s plan to expand the use of surveillance technology.”

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Although the police department has said repeatedly that the cameras are effective tools for preventing crime and solving crimes after the fact—and the legislation itself says the primary purpose of surveilling Seattle neighborhoods “is to prevent crime [and] collect evidence related to serious and/or violent criminal activity”—some council members suggested the idea that the cameras would prevent crime was a red herring invented by opponents of surveillance.

Calling himself  “one of the few people on this dais who understands the technology,” appointed Councilmember (and former SPD crime prevention coordinator) Mark Solomon said, “Cameras are not a crime prevention tool. They’re an investigative tool.”

“I hear folks say this isn’t going to do anything—well, tell that to family whose house has gotten broken into, because while the stats say that things are getting better, stats don’t mean nothing when it’s your house has gotten broken into, or when it’s your neighborhood that’s been shot at,” Solomon continued. “And I hear that from the people in my neighborhood. I hear that from my community, who are the ones who are saying, yeah, if we had cameras that could help.”

Council President Sara Nelson and public safety committee chair Bob Kettle were also quick to dismiss overwhelming public opposition to the surveillance expansion. Kettle said he had just talked to 24 people in Interbay, and “every single one of those 24 people, those two dozen people, would have been happy to have a CCTV program. So this idea that [there is] overwhelming opposition is false.”

The bills the city is passing to expand police surveillance, Kettle continued, “are not standard bills. They do not reflect what you see in other jurisdictions across the country and they are definitely not red state, red county American bills. They are Seattle bills.”

The council rejected several amendments that would have limited the expansion of surveillance to fewer areas of the city and created new evaluation requirements that would help the city better understand the impact of the cameras on civil rights and crime. In a mostly symbolic acknowledgement of public concerns, they did pass an amendment authorizing the city to pause the cameras for 60 days if the federal government issues an order to turn over camera footage for immigration purposes.

Only Dan Strauss and Alexis Mercedes Rinck opposed the legislation. In comments prior to the vote, Rinck said it was reckless to expand surveillance of Seattle residents at the precise time when the Trump Administration is targeting progressive cities and without any data showing that the pilot program has accomplished any of its goals.

In San Francisco, she noted, the police department itself shared data from automated license plate readers with police from red states, “in contradiction to all of their local policies and state laws that purport to shield their citizens.” Similar incidents are occurring across the country, including in Denver, Nashville, Washington, D.C., and cities across California, she noted.

“Sure, no city has done it exactly the way that we have. We have different contractor providers and different companies, and we all have different safety protocols,” Rinck said. “But this is happening across the board. Do we know with 100 percent certainty what happened in each of these cases that caused their systems to fail? Why do we think we’re so special, so across all across the US, in other liberal and blue cities where communities live, hoping that their government that their government will serve and protect them?”

“I do not look forward to the day where we have to sit back up here on this dais and deal with the aftermath of our data being handed over to other actors,” Rinck continue. “I do not want to be sitting up here in the future telling people telling people, ‘I’m sorry we put your community in danger,’ when we could have stopped it today. It is a matter of when, not if, our data will be handed over to the federal government and other actors.”

Rinck, currently the council’s only consistent progressive, could soon be joined by Eddie Lin (District 2) and Dionne Foster  (Position 9). Debora Juarez, appointed to replace District 5 short-timer Cathy Moore, will be off the council next year, and the incumbents who won in the backlash election of 2023—Rob Saka, Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera, and Kettle—will be up for reelection in 2027.

If some of the council’s more conservative members are replaced by progressive challengers that year (and if Wilson defeats incumbent Bruce Harrell, as she seems on track to do), it’s likely that some of some of the heavy-handed police-state legislation passed by this council will be reversed—though not in time to prevent any privacy and civil-rights violations that take place as the result of expanded police surveillance between now and then.

City Council, Elections, Privacy

Mayoral Challenger Katie Wilson Closes In on 51 Percent; Council Moves to Expand Police Camera Surveillance

1. Katie Wilson, the labor organizer and transit advocate who’s challenging Mayor Bruce Harrell, is on target to come out of the August primary with around 51 percent of the vote, with Harrell trailing 10 points behind at 41 percent. It’s a huge political victory—passing 50 percent against an incumbent mayor backed by almost $800,000 in pre-primary spending sends a strong message that voters want change—and puts Wilson in an extremely strong position to win in November.

A look at historical vote totals shows why Wilson is on track to win.

To start with, Seattle has not reelected a single incumbent mayor since 2005, when Greg Nickels defeated a nominal challenge from a UW professor named Al Runte, beating him in the primary by a 35-point margin. (Nickels got his comeuppance in the following election, when two challengers, Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan, nudged him out in the primary).

Additionally, it’s been almost 25 years years since a mayoral candidate has come in second in the primary and won in the general election, which happened most recently in 2001. In that race, the two frontrunners, Mark Sidran and Greg Nickels, were neck and neck, and both advanced to the general after knocking out incumbent Paul Schell. Nickels went on to beat Sidran 50-48.

You have to go back even further, to 1997, to find a comparable gap between the two mayoral frontrunners. In that case, though, the ultimate winner, Paul Schell, won decisively in the primary, beating neighborhood activist Charlie Chong by just under 6 points going into the general. As a weak incumbent, Harrell appears more likely to follow the path of his five most recent predecessors who each failed to win reelection.

2. The city council’s public safety committee unanimously approved bill expanding police camera surveillance into three new neighborhoods on Tuesday, rejecting one accountability-focused amendment from progressive Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and passing an amendment from Joy Hollingsworth that limits the new CCTV cameras around Garfield High School and Playfield, which is in her council district, to three arterial streets—East Cherry, 23rd Avenue East, and South Jackson St.

Rinck isn’t on the committee, so she couldn’t vote; committee chair Bob Kettle sponsored her amendments as a courtesty.

Another amendment from Rinck, aimed at ensuring that police report back on whether SPD had provided camera footage to any outside entity in response to court orders or subpoenas, passed unanimously.

The expansion of camera surveillance is now on a glide path for approval by the full council.

Once the new cameras are up and recording, Hollingsworth said, “I’m going to continue to be listening to community and trying to address a lot of concerns that they have with the cameras and making sure that we are not violating people’s civil liberties.”

An amendment from Joy Hollingsworth restricted surveillance cameras around Garfield high school to the arterials marked by the blue lines on this map.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Council President Sara Nelson asked a staffer if the cameras would ever be trained on “residential streets.” In reality, they already are—because of Seattle’s zoning laws, apartments are heavily concentrated on arterial roads, and streets where Seattle is currently placing most of its new surveillance cameras are no exception. Although SPD has said it will blur out images of residential buildings, renters coming to and from their homes will frequently be caught on SPD’s surveillance cameras, along with anyone who patronizes businesses, goes to (or has kids in) school, spends time in parks, or visits a public library branch in the areas under SPD surveillance.

The committee also rejected two amendments by progressive Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck. The first would have required any future evaluation of the cameras to include a controlled assessment to determine whether the cameras were meeting the city’s stated goals for deploying them—deterring violent crime, human trafficking, or persistent felony crime.

If the assessment found that the cameras were failing to meet those goals, the mayor would “consider” discontinuing them. “We, as an elected body, should be instilling trust in our community and not pushing for expansions of programs before getting data and information about their effectiveness,” Rinck said.

Committee chair Bob Kettle said it was likely the cameras would accomplish lots of other important goals, beyond the ones supporters have used to justify their expansion, such as aiding in prosecutions, reducing response times, and improving the relationship between SPD and the public, much as Saka said body-worn police cameras have. Juarez added that the city “would have a hard time measuring and enforcing whether or not the cameras are actually deterring violent crime, because if we could do that, we would have done that.”

Nelson then piled on the anti-data train, saying that “it’s very difficult to draw causal conclusions based on an evaluation because many things could be impacting the trends that we have seen.”

Nelson, Kettle, and other council members have consistently blamed the previous city council for causing police to leave the city for by demoralizing them with talk of reducing SPD’s budget in 2020, despite the lack of data to support this claim.