City Council, Mayor Harrell, Police, Privacy

Police Roll Out Expansion Plans for Surveillance Cameras

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.

Addiction, Elections, homelessness, King County

UPDATED: Initiative Would Criminalize Sleeping Outdoors in King County
From the website of the King County Quality of Life Coalition

By Erica C. Barnett

Editor’s note: This post has been updated with comments from initiative backer Saul Spady and reposted.

Saul Spady—Dick’s Burgers scion, anti-tax election activist (twice over), and KIRO radio fill-in host—has filed an initiative that would criminalize “unauthorized camping and storage of personal property” in unincorporated King County. The proposal, which Spady has dubbed “the Compassionate Public Safety Act,” would make sleeping outdoors or “storing” property in public a misdemeanor; similar to the total sleeping ban in Burien, the initiative would give police power to arrest people who fall asleep in public.

The ballot language, approved by the King County Prosecutor’s Office, says the measure “would not be enforced when overnight shelter is unavailable,” then lists exceptions to that rule that would allow police to make arrests if they determine the person sleeping “poses a substantial danger to any person, an immediate threat and/or risk of harm to public health or safety, or a disruption to vital government services.”

“I think camping bans are part of promoting better policy, which is a commitment to saying, in our community, we would much rather you go to shelter or rehab or housing,” Spady told PubliCola on Wednesday. “This is supposed to put the fire underneath [elected officials] to open those shelter beds and partner with [groups like] LEAD or The More We Love or Mary’s Place to create a more direct solution.”

The carveouts in the proposed ballot measure are similar to the exemptions included in Seattle’s official policy on encampments, which guarantees unsheltered people 72 hours’ notice before a sweep unless they or their belongings constitute an “immediate hazard or obstruction.”

For years, the city has interpreted that exemption very broadly to allow sweeps of tents in public spaces, including parks, sidewalks, and planting strips—basically, anywhere housed people might complain about the presence of homeless people.

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In a press release announcing the initiative and the creation of a new group called the Quality of Life Coalition earlier this month, initiative supporter and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said, “As an avowed independent and music fan, I know the world is coming to Seattle looking for the soul of our music scene and quite often they find graffiti, addiction and in-action [sic]. … [This is the first step toward making King County safe, livable, and worthy of our incredible cultural legacy I’m proud to be a part of.”

The Quality of Life Coalition also plans to propose an initiative that would force anyone who “commits three crimes linked to addiction, such as OD’ing, theft, or public drug use” (note: overdosing is not a crime) into mandatory six-month rehab, and one that would impose mandatory five-year jail sentences for any drug dealer who “is not an addict.”

Although Spady said service providers have told him there are more than enough available shelter beds for everyone experiencing homelessness in unincorporated King County, he added that the coalition’s long-term plans include “adding 2,500 short-term beds across the region.”

Spady acknowledged that it’s hard to discern which people selling drugs are addicts, versus “somebody who’s sober doing something that kills people,” but noted that a mandatory five-year minimum sentence for dealing drugs is less than the 10-year minimum proposed by the Trump administration.

Asked about the probably astronomical cost of funding mandatory long-term residential treatment for every person who overdoses or commits addiction-related misdemeanors three time, Spady argued that addiction, crime, and the cost to send firefighters to reverse overdoses create “costs to society that are spiraling. If you want the [reason] why I’m doing this, my fear is that Seattle is a lot closer to Detroit in the 80s and 90s than we think, and our  magic economic spaceship that never runs out of money could break.”

The ideas Spady is proposing—three-strikes laws for overdoses, punishing public drug use through what amounts to involuntary commitment—may seem out of step with King County values. But they aren’t much different from the policy City Attorney Ann Davison endorsed toward drug users last year, saying that anyone who overdoses three times should be arrested and thrown in jail.

Spady’s group is collecting signatures now. They’ll need around 6,800 valid signatures to get the measure on a future ballot.

City Council, Elections, human services, Taxes

Business Tax Plan Moves Forward, Larded With New Exemptions and Spending Categories

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council moved a heavily amended proposal to raise business and occupation taxes on larger companies one step closer to the ballot on Wednesday, approving the measure in the budget committee while leaving open the possibility that it could be amended further next week, when it goes to a full council vote.

The proposal would exempt all gross business revenue up to $2 million from local B&O tax, raising taxes on the highest-grossing businesses to offset the small-business tax relief and pay for programs that might otherwise be cut due to a projected $241 million budget deficit.

The potential ballot measure, proposed by City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Mayor Bruce Harrell late last month, was originally supposed to raise about $90 million a year to fund programs that support food access, gender-based violence services, small business supports, emergency shelter, homelessness prevention, workers’ rights and protections, and housing stability.

Rinck has been calling the proposal the “Seattle Shield” bill, because it’s meant to shield Seattle from the worst impacts of federal cuts to critical, life-saving services.

Thanks to amendments piled on Wednesday afternoon by Rinck’s colleagues Maritza Rivera, Joy Hollingsworth, and Rob Saka (plus a potential future amendment from Dan Strauss), the proposal is on track to bring in about $11 million a year less than originally estimated. The council’s amendments also broadened the measure so it can fund programs far outside its original scope.

Introducing two amendments that will exempt Seattle Children’s Hospital and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Care from the tax, at an estimated annual revenue reduction (or cost) of more than $9 million, Rivera argued that funding for cancer treatment and pediatric care represented “the very problem this bill is claiming to address—that is, impacts to our residents, including our kids, based on federal cuts and policy changes attacking those who need these critical services.”

Rivera added that when Rinck and Harrell first proposed the tax, “it was not clear that that nonprofits pay B&O tax.” In Washington State and in Seattle, most nonprofits are taxed exactly the same as for-profits, except that some of their fundraising activities are tax exempt. “These are nonprofits, these are not businesses,” Rivera said of the two hospitals she singled out for exemptions.

Strauss plans to propose an additional tax exemption for stevedoring—companies that load and unload cargo from ships—on the grounds that maritime trade is critical to Seattle. That exemption, which Strauss said he’d introduce on Monday, would reduce the proceeds from the new tax by another $1.5 million a year. In all, the new exemptions could reduce annual revenues from the tax by almost $11 million, or around 12 percent.

The city doesn’t have precise revenue estimates because businesses—including hospitals structured as nonprofits—don’t have to report their revenues publicly.

After voting for the two exemptions, Rivera and Nelson blanched at the idea of increasing the size of the tax to make up for lost revenue, saying they hadn’t had a chance to thoroughly study the impact of such a rate increase. “It’s unfortunate that this was sort of—that this landed in our laps at the sort of the last minute,” Nelson said. “It just feels rushed to me. … It’s unfortunate that this didn’t come to us earlier in the year.”

Rinck countered that the only reason she brought up the idea of increasing the tax rate was the last-minute amendments from Rivera and Strauss; had they not introduced new tax exemptions in the last week, she wouldn’t have proposed increasing the tax to offset the losses their exemptions would cause.

“If we had known about any tax credits coming sooner than on Monday, I think we would have worked quickly to try and understand what an adjusted rate would look like,” Rinck said.

In addition to the exemptions, the council also adopted several amendments expanding how the new tax, if it passes, can be used. The changes will allow this council, and future councils, to spend the so-called Seattle Shield dollars not just on human services and homelessness programs but on “transportation projects” of all kinds, arts and culture programs, anything related to public health, business workforce development, storefront repairs, and substance use treatment, among other new spending categories.

Rinck, and others who opposed expanding the proposal so far beyond its original purpose, noted that the city already has dedicated funds that pay for arts (the admissions tax), workforce development (the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise levy), and transportation (the recently renewed transportation levy, which is the biggest in the city’s history). Saka justified including transportation on the potential spending list because Trump has threatened to pull transportation funds from cities, like Seattle, that have low marriage and birth rates.

The impact of adding so many new spending categories to the legislation is unknown. Public commenters, including advocates for people at risk of going hungry in Seattle, expressed concern about spreading the “peanut butter” of limited funding too thin by using the tax proceeds as a slush fund for individual council members’ priorities.

The committee also approved an amendment from Councilmember Bob Kettle, who was absent, that will require the mayor’s office to come up with high-level balanced budget proposals for two years beyond the scope of the biennial budget. Last year, Harrell proposed a budget that was balanced through 2026 but fell out of balance in 2027, with a total projected deficit of $158 million between 2027 and 2028. Another Kettle amendment passed that would remove a sunset date of 2033 (with the possibility of a four-year extension) and lower the tax rate beginning that year.

The full council will take up the proposal next Monday, just before the August 5 primary election that marks the deadline to get it the measure on the November ballot. On Monday morning, the city’s Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts will present its latest revenue projections, which will reveal whether this year’s budget deficit is smaller or larger than the $241 million shortfall projected in April.

City Council

Council Finally Seats Renters Commission, New Council Rules Allow Longer Public Comments

1. After an overload of drama last week, the Seattle City Council quietly approved all 14 nominees to the Seattle Renter’s Commission—an advisory body that has had just five members (all of whose terms are now expired) for the past 18 months. The appointments were part of the council’s consent agenda, and all seven council members who were present (Maritza Rivera was excused) voted to approve them, along with several other nominees to unrelated commissions.

As we reported last Wednesday, Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Rob Saka skipped out on the housing and human services committee meeting at the last minute, depriving the committee of a quorum and wasting the time of the nominees who showed up in person and online expecting to finally receive their long-delayed confirmations. Solomon and Alexis Mercedes Rinck held a “community discussion” of the appointments and other business on the committee agenda in lieu of the scheduled committee meeting.

Nelson told Solomon she wouldn’t attend the meeting on Tuesday, after receiving an email from former councilmember Moore urging her to not let the appointments move forward.

Saka, who was cc’d on a late-night email from Moore touting her proposed alternative to the renters’ commission, which would have added seven landlords to the mix, told Solomon he wouldn’t be attending the meeting just minutes before it started, citing unspecified personal matters for his unexcused absence.

During a council briefing meeting on Monday, Saka told his colleagues that “right before that meeting, on the bus to City Hall, I got some uncomfortable calls and and that really impacted my ability to to show up in a public meeting … and so in any event, I make no apologies for the decision.” Saka dismissed suggestions that he sat out the vote in order to deprive the committee of a quorum as a “grand conspiracy” with no factual basis.

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2. Also Tuesday, the council passed a new rule that will effectively prevent the council president and committee chairs from cutting public comment short just because they feel like it.

Currently, the person who’s chairing a meeting can decide, based entirely on their own feelings in the moment, to restrict comments to one minute instead of the standard two and to limit the amount of time allowed for public comments, depriving people of the opportunity to speak to their representatives.

This broad discretionary power has caused major problems in the recent past, as Council President Nelson has repeatedly shut down public comment and closed down the council chambers after would-be commenters have loudly protested being cut off. (Moore, who often took umbrage at critical public comments, once suggested that a group of people who had been locked out of council chambers planned to rush the dais and assault the council because they were pounding on the walls.)

The new public comment rule, proposed by frequent Nelson antagonist Dan Strauss (who will, if Nelson isn’t reelected this year, be the council’s most senior member and a contender for council president), increases the minimum time allotted for public comment from 20 minutes to an hour and stipulates that if there are fewer than 30 commenters, they will each get two minutes to speak. If the number of commenters is between 30 and 60, they’ll get a minute, and if there are more than 60, they’ll still get a minute unless the council president or committee chair sets a lower time.

Addiction, Elections, homelessness

Initiative Would Criminalize Sleeping Outdoors in King County
From the website of the King County Quality of Life Coalition

By Erica C. Barnett

Saul Spady—Dick’s Burgers scion, anti-tax election activist (twice over), and KIRO radio fill-in host—has filed an initiative that would criminalize “unauthorized camping and storage of personal property” in unincorporated King County. The proposal, which Spady has dubbed “the Compassionate Public Safety Act,” would make sleeping outdoors or “storing” property in public a misdemeanor; modeled after a similar total sleeping ban in Burien, the initiative would give police power to arrest people who fall asleep in public.

The ballot language, approved by the King County Prosecutor’s Office, says the measure “would not be enforced when overnight shelter is unavailable,” then lists exceptions to that rule that would allow police to make arrests if they determine the person sleeping “poses a substantial danger to any person, an immediate threat and/or risk of harm to public health or safety, or a disruption to vital government services.”

These carveouts are similar to the exemptions included in Seattle’s official policy on encampments, which guarantees unsheltered people 72 hours’ notice before a sweep unless they or their belongings constitute an “immediate hazard or obstruction.” For years, the city has interpreted that exemption very broadly to allow sweeps of tents in public spaces, including parks, sidewalks, and planting strips—basically, anywhere housed people might complain about the presence of homeless people.

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Spady did not respond to a request for an interview. In a press release announcing the initiative and the creation of a new group called the Quality of Life Coalition earlier this month, initiative supporter and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said, “As an avowed independent and music fan, I know the world is coming to Seattle looking for the soul of our music scene and quite often they find graffiti, addiction and in-action [sic]. … [This is the first step toward making King County safe, livable, and worthy of our incredible cultural legacy I’m proud to be a part of.”

The Quality of Life Coalition also plans to propose an initiative that would force anyone who “commits three crimes linked to addiction, such as OD’ing, theft, or public drug use” (note: overdosing is not a crime) into mandatory six-month rehab, and one that would impose mandatory five-year jail sentences for any drug dealer who “is not an addict.”

Sounds nuts to you, maybe, even logistically impossible—how are dealers supposed to prove they’re addicted, exactly, and how would King County jails handle the influx of low-level dealers who’d get swept up in such a law? But it’s not much different from the policy City Attorney Ann Davison endorsed toward drug users last year, saying that anyone who overdoses three times should be arrested and thrown in jail. Spady’s group is collecting signatures now.

Addiction, homelessness, podcasts, Trump

Seattle Nice: Is Trump’s Executive Order the End of Housing First?

By Erica C. Barnett

Freaked out about the Trump Administration’s latest executive order, which calls for “ending crime and disorder on America’s streets” by ending Housing First, arresting people with addiction and mental illness, and punishing people for sleeping outside?

Our guest on Seattle Nice this week, Lisa Daugaard, says people should read past the scary headlines and the tough-guy hyperbole of Trump’s press release and look at what the executive order actually does. Daugaard, the co-executive director of Purpose Dignity Action (formerly the Public Defender Association), is a longtime proponent of housing first—the theory that stable housing is a prerequisite for long-lasting recovery. After reading the order, she told us she believes it was written by people who knew what they were doing.

For one thing, the order doesn’t explicitly call for defunding anything, except (entirely theoretical—that is, nonexistent) federally funded programs whose purpose is “only [to] facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm.” Although the order does call for more civil commitment, it doesn’t change the law in places like Washington State, which already has laws allowing involuntary commitment in some circumstances. In some circumstances, Daugaard said, the order holds out the possibility of more funding for evidence-based programs.

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“They’re certainly trying to accomplish some turning of the ship, and I think in most respects … this is not terribly problematic, if maybe not problematic at all, and maybe holds out the prospect of increased resources in areas where we really need those,” Daugaard said. “So I think in general, people are responding to the politics and not to the language of the actual order, and that that’s understandable, but maybe not wise.”

I pushed back a bit on Daugaard’s apparent optimism—which, to be clear, does not apply to the entire Trump Administration and its policy apparatus—noting that even if smart people who care about health and human services wrote it with the intention of making it as harmless as possible, the Trump Administration is unpredictable and has a history of not following the law. Sandeep added that right-wing activists are already portraying the order as a devastating loss for “the homelessness industrial complex.”

Daugaard said left-leaning activists and leaders shouldn’t take the bait. “We need to define ourselves as largely aligned with the values that this order enunciates and lower the temperature by saying that’s the [what the order calls for is] the work we want to do,” she said. “We don’t want to leave people camping in public. We don’t want to foster lifelong drug use with a low ceiling on people’s recovery capacity. And we need additional resources to make that a reality.”