1. Highlighting a Monday update to last week’s story about the settlement between the city and SPD officer Denise “Cookie” Bouldin, who filed a lawsuit in 2023 alleging racial and gender discrimination: The city will pay Bouldin $750,000, according to the settlement agreement. 
SPD has settled a number of discrimination lawsuits in recent years, for amounts ranging from around $200,000 (paid to SPD sergeant John O’Neil, who was himself the subject of multiple discrimination complaints) to $3 million (paid to police captain Deanna Nollette, who claimed former chief Adrian Diaz discriminated and retaliated against her by demoting her and moving her to overnight duty after she alleged discrimination.
Bouldin, best known for her chess club for students in Rainier Beach, claimed in her lawsuit that her fellow officers and SPD officials subjected her to “race and gender discrimination on a daily basis that had “been ongoing and continuous throughout her entire career.”
2. Citing concerns about potential attempts by ICE and other federal agencies to access camera footage and data, Mayor Katie Wilson said last week that she’ll hold off on expanding the Seattle Police Department’s camera surveillance program until an audit into the privacy and security of SPD’s camera operations is complete.
Some council members, including Maritza Rivera and Bob Kettle, expressed concern on Tuesday that the audit will take too long, arguing that Wilson needs to turn on the cameras that will be installed around the stadiums in advance of the World Cup games in June. Wilson said the city will not turn the cameras on unless there’s a “credible threat.”
Committee chair Kettle, a former Navy intelligence officer, said this was inadequate, given how often major terrorist attacks have not involved a credible threat.
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“As somebody who worked in the intelligence security world, I think about 9/11. I think about being in European Command and Germany during the East Africa bombings, we were well aware of al Qaeda and bin Laden. … I was one of those people that read the chatter in the leadup to 9/11 and on 911 was there a credible threat, warning that al Qaeda was going to use planes as weapons to go into buildings? No. No, there wasn’t.”
“And it should be noted too,” Kettle continued, “that we’re in a heightened threat environment especially because of the Iran war. And it’s important to note that Iran was scheduled to play here on Pride weekend. And I think it’s important, among different other reasons, to also look out for LGBTQ+ community.” (Iran’s participation in World Cup games in the US remains up in the air.)
Kettle also chided camera opponents who “think they know the program” but, according to him, don’t. “They think they know all the decisions that went into the program, to include incorporating Seattle values, incorporating the idea that we’re not going to include facial recognition.”
Later in the meeting, the committee approved a “pause” on SPD’s use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) on patrol cars and parking enforcement vehicles, which will put Seattle in compliance with a new state law banning the use of ALPRs near places of worship, food banks, immigration facilities, schools, and health care facilities that provide reproductive or gender-affirming health care.
Long before Trump was reelected, the city’s own Surveillance Working Group strongly recommended against installing the cameras at all, based on concerns about privacy and the risk of “disparate impacts … on minority communities.”
3. One of the oddest things that routinely happens at Seattle City Council meetings these days is that Councilmember Rob Saka refuses to refer to his committee by its actual name. For three years running, Saka has headed up the transportation committee, which was expanded this year to include arts and the Seattle Center, giving it the acronym TASC.
But Saka doesn’t use that acronym. Instead, he insists on referring to his committee as “STEPS,” short for “Safety, Transportation, Engineering Projects, Sports and Experiences.” He uses this not-quite-acronym consistently across all platforms—from the City Council dais to his Instagram, where he recently shortened the name to “Sports and Experiences, otherwise known as STEPS.”
Saka’s committee does not deal directly with public safety, engineering (beyond transportation projects), sports, or general “experiences.”
Saka has reportedly been asked more than once to refer to his committee by its actual name. Nevertheless, he persists. He even announced the “informal name” in a formal press release earlier this year.
Kettle is WRONG! Between 1994-2001, the US intelligence community received at least 12 reports suggesting terrorists might use planes as weapons. One report in 1998 specifically mentioned Al Qaeda might fly a plane into the World Trade Center. The infamous Phoenix Memo in July of 2001, a couple of months before the attack, warned that Bin Laden was sending student to U.S. civil aviation schools to conduct terrorist activity. And the August 6th President’s Daily Brief was entitled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the US” warned the president that “suspicious activity consistent with preparation for a hijacking” by Bin Ladin. All of this is detailed in the 9/11 Commission Report in December of 2002.
Like many in law enforcement and the intel community, Kettle wants to ‘play on our fears’ to cause up to give up our constitutional right to privacy. Katie is doing the right thing – be judicious in the use of the cameras and reserve them for REAL, tangible threats.