By Erica C. Barnett
Just weeks after rolling out live camera surveillance in the Chinatown/International District, downtown, and along Aurora Ave. N, the Seattle City Council took up legislation this week that would expand the surveillance zones to include Garfield High School in the Central District and a section of Capitol Hill that includes the Pike-Pine corridor and Cal Anderson Park, a residential area that police have dubbed the “Capitol Hill Nightlife District.”
The purpose of the cameras, according to SPD, is to reduce and help solve major crimes in places where “gun violence, human trafficking, and persistent felony crime is concentrated.”
SPD Captain Jim Britt, who heads up the Real-Time Crime Center, the division of SPD that’s overseeing the implementation of the cameras, said the department hopes to incorporate camera footage from other city and regional departments, such as the Parks Department, the Seattle Public Library, King County Metro,, Sound Transit, and “anybody that has a camera in the Seattle area.” (SPL confirmed it does not have surveillance cameras, and SDOT director Adiam Emery said the department already shares its camera footage with SPD).
Attached to the legislation, almost as an afterthought, is a mandatory Surveillance Impact Report analyzing the potential impact of widespread camera surveillance, which was not yet finished when the city deployed the first cameras earlier this month. The report includes more than 110 pages of comments submitted by Seattle residents over a two-week feedback period, most of them opposing increased police surveillance of their neighborhoods. Many of the commenters argued that police cameras foster an environment of fear and control and violate civil liberties, particularly for marginalized groups.
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During Thursday’s meeting, council members attempted to dismiss these concerns by suggesting that people who support the cameras, such as homeowners and business groups, are underrepresented in public comment. District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth said most of the people she has talked to on Capitol Hill and around Garfield High School support the cameras, but are afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation from opponents, including the media.
“Many people don’t feel safe to come down to City Hall to tell us they don’t feel safe [in their neighborhoods] because of the backlash that they get from online media, from reporters, from people … because they’ll be a target,” Hollingsworth said. “They’re scared to come down to say that because of what they feel the backlash is going to be at their business.”
Defending their push to expand camera surveillance so soon after the initial pilot began, officials from SPD and Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office said the cameras have already demonstrated their usefulness.
However, a video SPD produced to show that the new cameras are already achieving their goals didn’t include any examples of gun violence, human trafficking, or major felony crimes.
In the first video, a man in a car chased down a driver who had stolen his truck, allegedly shooting out the window of the car he was driving without hitting or injuring anyone. According to Britt, SPD used the footage to track down the vehicle and return the car to the driver, making one arrest.
The second video shows a man with a visible knife that a 911 caller said he was using to “threaten” people in the area; the man wasn’t arrested because the 911 caller declined to cooperate, according to Britt. The third video showed a driver hitting a pedestrian; however, Britt said, the video was too blurry to register the license plate, so “the investigation is ongoing.”
Council members who support the cameras assured their constituents that they’re already common in other cities, and won’t be used to violate anyone’s privacy. “This is not the People’s Republic of China,” Councilmember Rob Saka said, “where we have social scores that have facial recognition technology built in, on top of the CCTVs on every block, and they’ll track if you don’t do something for the party or the state, and they’ll monitor you and assign you a score. This is not that.”
SPD has said it will not provide camera footage to federal authorities seeking, for example, to track down women seeking abortions, trans people seeking gender-affirming care, or immigrants.
Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who was sitting in on the committee, asked what would happen if a court ordered Axon, SPD’s out-of-state camera contractor, to hand over footage to the federal government. SPD Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey said the city, not Axon, owns its camera footage, and that “under federal law, any request falls to us,” not the company. Citing a case in which Axon defended another city’s right to control its own footage, Maxey said it was unlikely (though not impossible) that the company would violate its commitment.
Beyond cracking down on so-called crime hot spots, the surveillance impact report includes another, more generalized justification for the cameras: As of January 2024, according to the report, the city only had 913 deployable officers, hindering the department’s “effectiveness in solving cases and holding violent criminals accountable,” according to the report. But January 2024 was more than a year and a half ago, making it an odd date to include in a July 2025 report; since then, city officials, including Police Chief Shon Barnes and Mayor Harrell, have repeatedly taken credit for what Harrell called “record-breaking” police hiring numbers.
If hiring remains on pace and SPD brings on 250 new officers this year, it will be well on its way to addressing the “staffing crisis” used to justify the cameras in the first place. Undoubtedly, if that happens, the city will come up with another reason to add more cameras to more neighborhoods. But it’s certainly worth asking why the city is celebrating its success at hiring more police, while simultaneously claiming that anemic police hiring means Seattle residents must submit to indefinite police surveillance.
Business owners are VERY REPRESENTED!
They are profiting monetarily directly from the kiosk company.
This is ALL about profits and surveillance 2/7 with face recognition.
They said NO CAMERAS AT FIRST. Now it’s cameras everywhere.
They are also doing it because someone in the chamber of commerce has a connection to that company and has been desperately pushing these eyesores that take up OUR ROW!
The excuses are not worthy of this invasion. :It’s in other cities”???? IT IS ANOTHER CITY!!! Not Seattle! The most livable place in the USA!!!!!!!
This so ticks me off. It’s senseless greed and control at the populations expense.
Our beautiful city is going to be Times Square with cameras and lights and NO COPS! The camerass will do that work for us so we don’t have to get our hands dirty. Pampered snowflakes who can’t even police themselves get mass surveillance and “our assurance” nothing will go wrong with your data.
If you believe the council on this?I got to wonder. It’s like the land deal at the shipyard for ONE person. Clawing back wages. Stealing tax revenue for housing to pay for cops. Then use Homelessness as a reason for control and political points. The 76 station is a nuisance business in Capitol Hill SODA they NEVER enforce. Check the records. How come they are not shut down? Monitored? I see open dealing and drug use. But no cops handing out citations and banning them from “The Nightlife Area”. BTW NOBODY on the Hill calls it that so I am not sure why they use it. Making it a party means we need to crackdown on those people? I think it might be.