By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council, which includes six new members who campaigned on the premise that the city spends too much money and isn’t “data-driven”, just approved new $50,000 hiring bonuses for police who transfer from other departments, along with a new video surveillance pilot that will cost millions of dollars a years, and require the city to hire 21 more officers to monitor the cameras, just in its initial, “pilot” phase.

The city has never conducted a study to determine whether its existing hiring bonuses, which began in 2019 and have been expanded several times since then, have been effective at recruiting qualified officers. Hiring fell, then stagnated, during and after the 2020 COVID pandemic, and bounced back only after the police union negotiated a minimum starting salary of $103,000, suggesting that high pay, not one-time bonuses, is an effective recruitment incentive.

By shoveling more money at transferring officers without any data to back up this new spending, the new council is contradicting its promises to engage in fiscal responsibility by, for example, “auditing the budget” of every department to identify waste and misused funds. In contrast, the council has placed intense scrutiny on programs designed to help disadvantaged communities, like the Equitable Development Initiative, which provides funds to community organizations for capital projects.

Earlier this year, eight councilmembers voted for a budget amendment, sponsored by Councilmember Maritza Rivera, that imposes special reporting requirements on EDI projects. (The amendment was a downgrade from  Rivera’s original plan, which would have gutted EDI by pulling funds from dozens of projects). But police hiring bonuses, and programs to expand the police department in general, are rarely subject to any kind of fiscal scrutiny, usually on the explicit grounds that hiring police is more important than how much the city spends or whether specific incentives are working.

The council would probably disagree with this assessment. Councilmember Rob Saka, for example, insisted that the hiring bonuses are “data driven.” (He did not cite any data.) Council president Sara Nelson said she was confident the bonuses are “working” and that the city should build on that success by making them bigger, clarifying that “it depends on how you look at what ‘working’ means. To me, ‘working’ means the number of people who are applying here. … We do have proof that this is attracting more officers, and so we should keep it going to continue our success.”

Councilmember Tammy Morales was, as usual these days, the only voice of dissent. “I’m concerned that this legislation privileges SPD over every other city worker, by increasing their hiring bonus to the amount of about a down payment on a house, in this city where too many people can barely afford rent,” she said. Then the council voted 6-1 in favor of the bonuses (Councilmembers Cathy Moore and Joy Hollingsworth were absent).

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The vote was similarly lopsided on the surveillance pilot, which will allow the city to install cameras in several “high-crime” neighborhoods and create a “real-time crime center” to monitor these cameras 24/7, at an estimated cost of more than $6 million over the biennium. The legislation directs SPD to come up with an expansion plan for placing other parts of city under police surveillance, but does not require the department to collect data or report back on the cameras’ effectiveness at reducing crime.

The bill also takes as a given that SPD will provide camera footage in response to subpoenas and records requests, leaving open the possibility that out-of-state activists—those seeking to prosecute women for leaving the state for an abortion, or anti-immigration activists, for example—will be able to use SPD’s surveillance footage to harass or prosecute people caught on camera in Seattle.

The only concessions to this concern are various notice requirements; a clause asking SPD to require its private surveillance vendors to notify SPD if they receive a warrant or subpoena, and retain legal council “to challenge any such warrant or subpoena”; and an amendment requiring SPD to follow its existing redaction policy when providing surveillance videos to people who request it.

Council members argued that 24/7 live camera surveillance will make it possible for ” desperate” people and business owners in the International District to feel safe again (Tanya Woo); that the cameras are an “automated” technology that will help SPD do more with less (Rob Saka, inaccurately); and that people are already under constant surveillance, due to technologies like FaceTime, so shouldn’t see this expansion as a big deal (Cathy Moore).

Councilmember Bob Kettle, who sponsored the legislation, lashed out at the city’s Office for Civil Rights whose director, Derrick Wheeler-Smith, wrote a memo to the council saying there had been “insufficient outreach to pilot communities” and suggesting more community engagement before deploying the cameras.

“I read the letter from OCR, Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights… [which mentions] ‘insufficient outreach to pilot communities,'” Kettle began. “Really? Do you know how many times I’ve been in [District] 7, all over the place, talking to community?” Kettle added that he’d talked to “a couple dozen people, each one expressing their challenges in public safety” and ultimately supporting the cameras.

Raising his voice, Kettle continued: “Do you think we’re not engaged with the pilot communities? Who’s gonna be more engaged than council member Moore on Aurora? Seriously? ‘Expand outreach to pilot communities’? I say expand your outreach to the Seattle City Council and talk to us, who are representatives of our districts! Again, back in 2012 there was no [council] district representatives. Now we do [have them]. Last year, [this] cohort ran on public safety. We know our communities. We know our districts.”

OCR’s memo was part of a mandatory Racial Equity Tool Kit analysis of the surveillance proposal, and—in contrast to Kettle’s tirade—is written in dry, bureaucratic language. The memo, Wheeler-Smith wrote in his summary, “highlights SOCR’s concerns about the [surveillance pilot] and offers suggestions for limiting the technologies’ harm, should they be implemented. We also offer suggestions for reaching impacted communities and focusing on racial equity in stakeholder engagement.”