Seattle

Updates on the U.S. surveillance state

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Local News:

I wrote a piece about Seattle’s efforts to pull together a coordinated gun violence prevention strategy, which took some doing given the focus on Chief Barnes’s resignation during the time I was trying to research and write it. 

I also wrote about new Seattle legislation to ban algorithmic price discrimination, or surveillance pricing based on personal information, for Seattleites buying groceries. The committee vote on amendments to the ordinance will be on September 18. 

Speaking of Seattle’s police chief saga, here are a couple of interviews with interim Chief Andre Sayles. PubliCola reported on how much time Barnes spent out of the office (almost 40% of the time this year) and on how much his payout will be. And two of SPD’s command staff brought in by Barnes are leaving SPD.

Meanwhile, councilmembers are still angry that the press conference after the Bite of Seattle shooting was delayed for five hours, and the Mayor’s Office has asked the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to conduct an independent after-action review about communications. The review won’t be completed until mid-December.

In other news, there’s another hunger strike at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, and the conditions there continue to be terrible and shocking. ICE will be spending up to $20 million on torture gloves that deliver a painful shock at the press of a button. 

In better news, the Washington State Department of Revenue has performed a new analysis on the millionaires tax and thinks it will bring in more revenue than expected. The new estimate expects $3.1 billion in its first year (instead of $2.7 billion originally predicted) and $8.3 billion in the 2029-2031 biennium (instead of $6.9 billion).

Surveillance news:

The Community Not Cameras coalition toured SPD’s Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) this week, and it didn’t go so well. Coalition members left with many concerns in spite of a Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce poll that shows strong support for cameras. Reading the questions asked in the poll is instructive as to how seriously to take it.

Flock Safety’s PR disaster continues, with 404 Media reporting that they pitched a plan to put their license plate readers in the vehicles of Uber and Lyft drivers. In fact, the press around Flock has gotten so bad they’ve announced some changes, including shortening their standard data retention window from 30 days to 7 days. Their efforts at damage control aren’t stopping many cities from switching from Flock license plate readers to Axon license plate readers, which doesn’t permanently address the concerns many residents have about these cameras and the expanding surveillance state. 

Today Wired published a new story reporting that Flock has built an AI system/tool that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, facilitated by the large network of Flock cameras across the country. It appears that the tool is currently in the testing phase. As Wired wrote:

“Privacy and legal experts say Flock’s tools already raise serious constitutional concerns by giving police broad, often warrantless access to a vast record of people’s movement. But the prompts WIRED examined go further, turning a tool for finding a known vehicle into one that casts suspicion on drivers based on where and how often they drive, regardless of whether they are wanted for a crime.”

Meanwhile, the federal government has gotten in on the act by monitoring viral anti-Flock social media posts and surveilling protest gatherings and meetings. And DHS has been using Clearview AI facial recognition to help infiltrate activist groups.

Google’s AI Overview, while gutting newsrooms left and right, is spreading false information about the amount of valuable gold and copper that are inside Flock cameras, thereby accidentally encouraging users to vandalize the cameras for profit.

And people are going around cutting down and destroying Flock cameras, acts of civil disobedience that appear to be receiving significant public support.

Andrea Pitzer, who wrote a book about the global history of concentration camps, wrote an analysis that looks at what the new electric-shock gloves being obtained by ICE and the proliferation of Flock license plate reader cameras tells us about how the concentration camp regime/institutionalization of the police state in the US is going

Housekeeping:

I’m going to be taking some time off starting next week, so you won’t be hearing from me for a little while. But never fear, I’ll be back on the beat in time to cover Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed budget. 

Recent Headlines:

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Washington State Supreme Court justice races remain ones to watch in November

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Washington State Temple of Justice. Photo by Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The initial results of the Washington state primaries shed some light on how the races are shaping up for the five all-important state Supreme Court justice positions up for grabs in November. While later returns tend to favor progressives, the early numbers make clear that at least some of these races will not have a foregone conclusion in the general election. 

These justice races are always tricky because candidates are not allowed to say how they would rule on specific questions. Instead, they can be asked more general doctrinal questions, and their past records can be combed through. Most observers rely on a combination of endorsements and contributions to determine in which lane a candidate is running. 

There is already big money in these justice races, with candidates reporting raising almost $2.5 million so far. And that number is sure to grow in the next three months.

As I reported this spring, money spent on state Supreme Court justice races across the country has surged over the last few years, while the use of dark money in elections has greatly increased since the Citizens United ruling in 2010. 

For the two candidates appointed by Governor Bob Ferguson since he began his term, there is an assumption – whether warranted or not – that they would likely rule in favor of the millionaires tax, which Ferguson has staunchly supported. The millionaires tax would levy a 9.9% tax on incomes above $1 million, and should it survive the legal and electoral challenges against it, it would be likely to be seen as a cornerstone progressive achievement for Ferguson and the state Democratic party.   

The safest justice seat in this election cycle is clearly that of incumbent Debra Stephens, who has served on the court for almost 20 years. With a commanding 54.53% of the initial drop, Stephens is running far ahead of her closest challenger, Todd Bloom, who garnered about 27% of the vote. 

For justice position 5, Ferguson appointee Theo Angelis is neck and neck with more conservative Dave Larson: Angelis has 34% of the early vote and Larson a bit more than 32%. However, candidate Sharonda Amamilo, who is considered to be more progressive than Angelis, received 21% of the vote. It’s difficult to imagine an Amamilo voter pivoting to vote for Larson in the general election, which means the results of this race might rest more on turn-out. 

It’s worth remembering that Larson lost narrowly to state Justice Sal Mungia in 2024. Mungia, who was backed by progressives, won by only 0.7 points or about 20,000 votes. 

While Angelis has raised $350,000, Larson isn’t that far behind at $296,000. 

On the surface, the justice position 1 race looks pretty clear-cut, with recent Ferguson appointee Colleen Melody taking 51.20% of the vote. However, third place candidate Laura Christensen Colberg, who currently has 18.19% of the vote, ran on an explicit anti-appointee platform, which means many of her voters may instead opt for second place candidate Scott Edwards, who currently has 30.31% of the vote. If so, this race could end up being much closer than it currently looks. 

On the other hand, Melody has currently raised more than double the donations of Edwards, which should help her maintain her lead. 

Conservatives have criticized the two appointee candidates for state Supreme court, calling out the electoral benefit granted by their appointments leading to “incumbent” status as well as their perceived political ties to Ferguson. We can expect to see more attacks along these lines going forward into November.  

The justice position 3 race, with no incumbents, is much too close to call. We have three candidates with similar numbers of votes; conservative David Stephens with 35.79% of the vote is followed closely by both candidates to his left, Jaime Hawk with 32.92% and Mike Diaz with 30.94%. In a Stephens-Diaz match-up, it seems likely many of Hawk’s voters would go to Diaz, but in a Stephens-Hawk match-up, it’s possible some of Diaz’s voters would opt for Stephens instead. 

Both Hawk and Diaz – at $218,000 and $275,000 respectively – have significantly out-raised Stephens, who has only raised $40,000 thus far. 

Finally, we have justice position 4, which with only two candidates, didn’t go through the primary selection process. Moderate candidate Sean O’Donnell is facing progressive candidate Ian Birk, and both candidates have accumulated large war chests, with O’Donnell at $281,000 and Birk at $364,000. 

At one point, Full Court Press, a dark-money group that focuses on supporting and recruiting conservative judge candidates in Washington state, operates under the umbrella of Project 42, one of whose founders is Brian Heywood. Let’s Go Washington, Heywood’s political action committee (PAC), is bankrolling a ballot initiative against the millionaires tax as well as two anti-transgender initiatives.  

Full Court Press featured Larson and O’Donnell on a now-deleted “prospects” page on their website. O’Donnell told me back in April that he had asked to be removed from the website as soon as he learned about it, but the association with the conservative group might still impact his chances in the general. 

The current Washington state Supreme Court is considered to be one of the United States’ most progressive – especially when it comes to matters of civil rights – and most influential courts. While the legal question of the millionaires tax is expected to be heard in front of the court in the next year or so, that is only the tip of the iceberg when considering the large impact the court has on the lives of Washingtonians. 

The court is one of the most crucial institutions safeguarding the state from what many see as an increasingly threatening federal government. 

Articles on the Bite of Seattle shooting and SPD Chief Shon Barnes’ resignation:

Recent Headlines:

 

Washington State Supreme Court justice races remain ones to watch in November Read More »

SPD police chief loses his cool

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Seattle News:

I’ve been closely covering the debate around universal school meals for students in Seattle, which you can read about here and here. Right now it looks like Seattle might get both universal school meals starting this fall and a voucher-based food program for weekends and school breaks. Today, Mayor Katie Wilson and the Seattle City Council released a joint statement indicating both branches of government are on board with the plan.

The City Council will be voting on a proposal to fund the universal school meals through the general fund on August 4 as part of their mid-year supplemental budget deliberations. 

I’ve seen a lot of speculation that one or more Seattle city councilmembers might have purposefully blocked Mayor Katie Wilson’s universal school meals proposal in order to tank her political capital and have a more successful mayoral run against her in 2029. I cannot say what lies in the hearts of the councilmembers, but something else to consider is the fact that the council isn’t particularly politically aligned with the mayor and might not be worried about crossing her in the same way they might have feared crossing Mayor Bruce Harrell, who helped many of them get elected. 

In the last few weeks, I also wrote about both the D5 Seattle City Council seat race and the 46th LD state representative race.

I’m sure you’re all aware of the tragic shooting at the Seattle Center during the Bite of Seattle food festival on Sunday. PubliCola reported that SPD Chief Shon Barnes was out of town at the time of the shooting, and indeed, was scheduled to be out of town until mid-August, in spite of summer tending to be a time of increased violence overall, and gun violence in particular. 

At a press conference about the shooting on Monday, Barnes snapped at a reporter from The South Seattle Emerald who was asking about his traveling habits, and his chief of staff Alex Ricketts had to step between Barnes and the reporter and escort Barnes away. You can watch the video clip here.

At another press conference today, Barnes was asked about the incident with the reporter and said it merely illustrated his passion for being a police officer. Someone has filed a complaint with the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) about the incident. Barnes was also asked again about his travel schedule, a question he tried to dismiss as quickly as possible.

Other News:

ICE is still getting Washington state data to assist in their immigration enforcement efforts, according to KUOW, meaning the state’s sanctuary law isn’t being fully enforced. This is in spite of the state denying tens of thousands of requests from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and Customs & Border Patrol. According to KUOW’s article:

““The records we’re getting show that the rejection doesn’t stop them from getting the data,” said Angelina Godoy, director of the UW Center for Human Rights. “They get rejected using one [Originating Agency Identifier] and then just submit their request under another one. There are thousands of still-open [Originating Agency Identifiers] they can use.””

Leaked video from the San Francisco Police Department’s drone program has shown one of the privacy risks of this surveillance technology. Ben Werdmuller, the senior director of technology at ProPublica, wrote an essay on his personal site about the more inherent problems with such ubiquitous surveillance. Furthermore, Werdmuller wrote that the police drones in San Francisco have had no impact on crime. 

Meanwhile, LAPD announced they will be letting their contract with Flock Safety expire. As 404 Media reported, “Notably, the decision came after an audit of ALPR technology found that, in a two-month period, the LAPD had improperly “investigated” 161 people whose cars were flagged as stolen in the LAPD’s ALPR system but were not actually stolen.” Here is that audit. 

Last week, the Renton City Council voted to continue to pause their use of Flock Safety stationary license plate readers in the city. However, they voted to resume use of in-vehicle license plate readers (these readers are from Axon, not Flock). It became clear during the councilmember discussion that in practice, the in-vehicle license plate readers will also not be used at present since they are not compliant with the new state law regulating the use of license plate readers (the same issue faced by the City of Seattle). While a technical fix might be possible to resume use of the Axon in-vehicle license plate readers, it is unclear if and when that will happen. 

Recent Headlines:

SPD police chief loses his cool Read More »

The U.S. is no longer a liberal democracy

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My reporting:

Right before my vacation, I wrote about the two WA state anti-trans initiatives that will be on the ballot this November. 

This week, I wrote about the news that Seattle and King County will be drastically downsizing the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) by taking back all their homeless provider contracts. I also wrote a bit about the new 2026 Point-in-Time Count report that shows that homelessness in the region is continuing to grow, albeit more slowly (meanwhile, unsheltered homelessness is growing more quickly).

In related news, PubliCola reported today that KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison might have been trying to avoid the public disclosure of some of her emails.

Stay tuned next week as I turn my attention to the FEPP levy and some interesting local election news. 

Other news:

Marcus Harrison Green has an insightful column out today about the news that Seattle didn’t have any homicides during the month of June. 

Once the World Cup was over, Mayor Katie Wilson did indeed turn off the surveillance cameras in the Stadium District. Their final fate is TBD depending on the all-important results of the audit she ordered earlier this year. At a rally this week, anti-surveillance activists demanded the removal of all the SPD surveillance cameras in the city. 

Speaking of surveillance, a former police officer from the Puyallup Police Department who retired in 2022 wrote an op-ed against the surveillance state and the use of Flock license plate readers in Puyallup. I think it is telling when even former police officers are speaking out against surveillance technology. 

And in Renton, the council voted to postpone their decision regarding their Flock license plate readers, which means for now, the cameras remain off.

Washington State will be on the hook for large penalty fees to the federal government (due to H.R. 1 from last year, what else?) if the state doesn’t improve its accuracy rate when dispensing food stamps. The Washington State Standard reported it could owe more than $90 million, a number that could increase due to the new SNAP work requirements, which could cause more errors as the state works to adapt.  

Yesterday, a judge ruled that the Northwest Detention Center, operated by the GEO Group, must allow Washington state Department of Health inspectors inside the facility. However, the inspectors do not need to be allowed to inspect areas of the facility operated by ICE, which immediately made me think of the recent reporting that CoreCivic sold two of its detention facilities in California to DHS in a move to avoid oversight. 

The injunctions ordered by the judge won’t go into effect for two weeks, giving the GEO Group time to appeal. 

And the U.S. lost its long-term status as a liberal democracy for the first time in over 50 years.

 “The scale and speed of autocratization under the Trump administration are unprecedented in modern times,” reads the V-Dem 2026 Democracy Report. “Within one year, the USA’s LDI score has declined by 24%; its world rank dropped from 20th to 51st place out of 179 nations.” 

Recent Headlines:

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SPD’s overtime spending has more than doubled in four years due to SPOG contract

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Local News:

I wrote a piece last week about new data out of King County’s DCHS showing that permanent supportive housing in the area is reducing jail bookings…and I attended the opening of DESC’s newest permanent supportive housing building, Birch Grove, located in Lake City. DESC isn’t moving forward on future building projects due to federal funding uncertainties. 

Lime is going to equip their scooters in Seattle with cameras. About half of their scooters have been fitted out with cameras so far, and all of them are planned to have cameras by the end of the year. The idea is it will make scooter riders behave better, but it also ups the surveillance on Seattle streets. 

HardPressed News reported that SPD was waiting for the mayoral election results last year with the belief that if Bruce Harrell won, he’d greenlight a police drone program. 

For more than two years, the Seattle Fire Department has been using an artificial intelligence program to listen to 911 calls and decide which callers won’t receive a rapid response and instead be routed to a nurse line located in Texas. What’s really amazing about this story, broken by The Seattle Times, is that the program has had no public review, wasn’t disclosed to any 911 callers, and has no apparent mechanisms for measuring how well it’s working. It also didn’t go through a surveillance impact review process.

“SFD will be open from now on about its AI use, said Lombard, the assistant chief.” This sentence in the article carries a lot of weight. It implies SFD will be open about their AI use in the future because they got caught. Not exactly the sort of thing that builds public trust. 

DivestSPD reported that SPD Chief Shon Barnes has received 47 OPA complaints since he began his job as Chief early last year, which is a very large number. Most of the complaints appear to be nothing burgers. They sometimes have interesting timing, suggesting a possible SPOG-coordinated attack against the Chief. 

Barnes is on track to receive more OPA complaints than his predecessor, Adrian Diaz.

Seattle City Council’s public safety committee received their SPD 2026 Q1 sworn staffing, overtime, and call time report on Tuesday. SPD’s Q1 2026 actual deployable number of officers is 939, only 13 officers more than in Q1 of 2025. 

The rate of hiring, along with the slow-down of officer separations, means SPD might be on track to overspend their salary budget by $1.7 million this year. Chair Bob Kettle said he and Councilmember Dan Strauss had told SPD not to slow down their hiring to account for this potential overspend. I reached out to Strauss’s office, and he said he has no plans to introduce an item in the mid-year supplemental budget to account for the $1.7 million. 

We also got to see how expensive SPD overtime has become due to the new SPOG contract. In 2022, SPD spent $26.3 million in overtime. In 2026? Their overtime budget stands at a whopping $55.8 million. 

King County’s new Point in Time Count for 2026 came out this week, showing that the region’s homelessness numbers continue to grow, albeit not as rapidly as they did between 2022 and 2024. While the overall number of homeless people grew by 9% in the last two years, the unsheltered population of homeless people grew by 21%, highlighting the urgent need for more shelter spaces. 

Finally, The Economist, that bastion of progressive thought, published an article this week entitled “American police killings are rising, even as murder rates fall.”

From the article: “Killings by police have yet to reignite the broad outrage that followed Mr Floyd’s death, but each day, unfortunately, brings the chance of a grisly event that might. Shootings by sheriffs, who operate mostly in rural areas, have risen especially fast in recent years, countering improvements in some big cities.”

Recent Headlines:

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Surveillance cameras don’t prevent violence, or why I feel like a broken record

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Seattle News:

Yesterday several elected officials – Mayor Katie Wilson, Council President Joy Hollingsworth, Councilmembers Debora Juarez, Bob Kettle, Maritza Rivera, and Dan Strauss, and Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans – along with SPD Chief Shon Barnes, held a press conference about the gun violence along Aurora Ave N. 

Mostly those named above talked about solving the problem with police and prosecutions, as well as by the strategic blocking of certain streets. Kettle touted the importance of the real time crime center and license plate readers, although there is no evidence that shows these technologies prevent violence. Interestingly, Aurora Ave N is one of the zones where CCTV cameras have been installed and operational in Seattle, and yet somehow there is still gun violence happening there. Hmm. 

Kettle also spoke of the importance of hiring more police officers. 

Evans said her office has asked for funding for a dedicated Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) prosecutor, which she says would help get guns off the streets. Her office is also aggressively pursuing businesses and properties that break chronic nuisance laws. 

Lastly, her office is working to have a dedicated, dually-deputized prosecutor in their office that will work on felony trafficking cases on Aurora in partnership with the King County Prosecutor’s office. I’m not really sure why having this prosecutor work in the Seattle City Attorney’s office (CAO) versus the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office (KCPAO) makes a difference. Traditionally CAO only prosecutes misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, while the KCPAO handles all felonies. It could be that this might improve collaboration between the offices or it might be solely an issue of money (who’s going to pay for this prosecutor’s salary). 

Evans stated unequivocally that SOAP and SODA orders do not work and that she will be pursuing other strategies. 

Not mentioned were the environmental changes made to Aurora Ave in Shoreline that seem to have helped deter violence there. Solutions such as increased social supports, a coordinated gun violence prevention strategy, and legalized sex work were also not emphasized. 

That being said (see below), Wilson is reportedly working on a gun violence prevention strategy, but unfortunately the details still haven’t been announced. 

Meanwhile, The Seattle Medium reported that Black girls represent between 44% and 52% of child sex trafficking victims in King County. 

Earlier this week, the Seattle City Council passed the one-year data center moratorium and related resolution, after which Washington AI resistance (WA-AIR) held a press conference announcing a new campaign for their People’s AI Bill of Rights, which will be a package of bills regulating AI introduced during the 2027 state legislative session. The campaign will begin with a state-wide listening tour. 

Wilson announced that the City would be turning on the CCTV cameras located in the Stadium District due to “general but credible threats to security during the games” provided to her during briefings with SPD and the FBI. Two days before the announcement, she publicly defined a credible threat in more narrow terms, that being the standard she had originally announced she was planning to use to inform her decision as to whether to turn on the cameras. To read more about it, check out the op-ed by Phil Mocek published by PubliCola.

The Seattle Auditor’s Office released a status report on implementation of their recommendations covering the time period through December 2025. Of note:

  • Re their 2024 Annual Surveillance Technology Usage Review (released in September 2025), SDOT has implemented two out of eight recommendations.
  • Re their Four Recommendations to Better Understand and Address Current Gun Violence Patterns in Seattle (released in March 2025), all four recommendations remain pending: “The Mayor’s Office reported that they have begun development of a comprehensive gun violence reduction strategy that will build on work begun by the Human Services Department and be led by the Mayor. Specifically, the Mayor’s Office has begun to assess existing gun violence reduction programs, identify gaps, and build a comprehensive strategy sponsored by the Mayor.”
  • Re their Addressing Places in Seattle Where Overdoses and Crime are Concentrated: An Evidence-Based Approach (released in July 2024), two out of eight recommendations have been completed: “The Mayor’s Office reported that components of the Downtown Activation Team’s (DAT) work, including its place-based problem-solving methodology, are moving forward under the Stabilize, Activate, and Invest (SAIL) Subcabinet. The Mayor’s Office indicated they will tailor crime and overdose strategies, and the corresponding deployment of resources, to more specifically defined and localized problems, beginning with implementation of the Phố Đẹp safety plan in Little Saigon and the expansion of the Seattle Police Department’s Neighborhood Resource Officer program to 12th & Jackson and 3rd & Pine. The Mayor’s Office also indicated that the current administration does not intend to evaluate the preceding administration’s work of the DAT and Seattle Restoration Framework, but will instead collaborate with public health, public safety, and community partners to establish agreed upon metrics for success for each location and reporting expectations.”

A quick update on an earlier item regarding the possibility of a special fire district tax: PubliCola has reported that the firefighters’ union is opposed to the idea so the Mayor’s Office isn’t pursuing it this year. This means one fewer tool to address the $175 million deficit for 2027.

In SPD lawsuit news, two gay SPD officers are suing the department alleging discrimination and being passed over for promotion. The City of Seattle is paying a $2.6 million settlement in the lawsuit of four female SPD officers alleging sexual harassment from former Chief Adrian Diaz. The Seattle Times reports that three of the four women remain employed at SPD. 

For more uplifting news, I wrote about the soil-turning and future plans for a new health center in Rainier Beach. If you want to read about community members coming together to make a difference, this is the article for you. 

Other news: 

I wrote about an inmate who died of an overdose last year while in custody at SCORE jail. I really encourage you to check this one out because the ongoing issues at SCORE are for the most part not being covered by mainstream media like The Seattle Times or the local news networks. I dove deeper into the quality of healthcare being offered by jails and prisons in general, and it’s an ugly story that has parallels to how people detained by ICE are being treated. 

I also dove into last year’s King County DCHS audit with an update on what’s been found and what measures are being taken to ensure accountability and transparency as DCHS goes about their work. 

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay gave his State of the County address this week and committed to investing “nearly $5 million” in the Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention. I’m not clear on how much of this is additive, but as an important office that is perennially under-funded, this is good news. 

The City of Edmonds unanimously voted to cancel the City’s contract with Flock Safety for automated license plate readers.

Finally, Jeff Asher wrote that large police departments are beginning to grow their ranks again, after a contraction after the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020. 

Asher wrote, “The hiring environment still isn’t great for police officers, but it is far improved from where it was three or four years ago. Most medium and large police departments will likely be stuck at considerably smaller levels than they were pre-COVID, but the evidence suggests they might see slow and steady growth over the next few years.”

Recent Headlines:

Surveillance cameras don’t prevent violence, or why I feel like a broken record Read More »

Will Seattle run a ballot initiative next year to unleash the CARE team?

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Seattle news:

I wrote about the imperilment of the Graham Street and Boeing Access Road light rail stations. The Sound Transit vote on the issue took place on Thursday, and the Graham Street station is back on track, mostly because Seattle stepped up to make it happen. Unfortunately, Boeing Access Road and three Ballard stations didn’t fare as well. 

I also wrote about the obstacles facing the CARE team. Yes, I’ve written about it before, but 1.there still seems to be confusion about it, and 2. I wanted to present a few new options on the table to address it. 

As we all know, Seattle is facing a significant budget deficit for 2027. One option on the table, reported on by PubliCola, is a special fire district tax that would move much of the Seattle Fire Department’s budget out of the general fund by raising property taxes to pay for it instead. Interesting idea, and only possible because of a law change earlier this year in the state legislature. 

Residents along the Aurora Ave North corridor have been putting up makeshift barricades to address the gun violence in their neighborhood. Mayor Katie Wilson has directed SDOT to replace these barricades with temporary traffic calming treatments expected to be installed sometime this weekend. 

Meanwhile, the Council will be considering a bill that would allow SPD and SDOT to close streets for public safety reasons.

At the same time, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office reports that deadly gun violence incidents in Seattle and King County have continued to drop. As Capitol Hill Seattle Blog reports: “In her office’s latest updates, Manion says the first quarter of 2026 marked a new milestone in the return to safer levels as deadly shootings dropped to “single digits” for the first time in nine years.” 

AI/Surveillance/Immigration news:

A new report from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights found that “without deliberate and outcome-oriented interventions, AI will likely amplify the racial wealth gap rather than narrow it.”

I reported on the large data center moratorium currently being discussed by the Seattle City Council. Committee votes are expected on Wednesday. 

404 Media reported that the FBI wants to buy nation-wide access to automatic license plate reader data. The most likely vendors for this would be Flock Safety and Motorola Solutions.

Meanwhile, the city of Renton suspended their Flock contract and the city of Edmonds cancelled their Flock contract, following in the footsteps of Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood. Everett and Stanwood have ceased their pause of their Flock networks, however, and are back to using them . 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation analyzed millions of police searches of Flock license plate data and found that “law enforcement agencies have moved beyond specific investigations to use these surveillance networks for virtually any whim.” Their analysis looked at police use of this surveillance for school district residency checks, background checks, and noise complaints. 

I reported on the temporary contract between the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma and ICE, which has lowered the standards for the facility. I also covered the new lawsuit the Washington State Attorney General filed against the GEO Group, who operates the center, to allow the state department of health to perform inspections of the facility.. 

Last week The Stranger reported that ICE transferred leaders of a hunger strike at the detention center away from the Tacoma center in what advocates say was retaliation.

Recent Headlines:

Will Seattle run a ballot initiative next year to unleash the CARE team? Read More »

Seattle looks to tighten its budget belt for 2027

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Seattle News:

I wrote about how Seattle’s new drug ordinance is going about two and a half years in. It’s not good, to put it mildly. Drug arrests are up, LEAD referrals are down. Even Councilmember Bob Kettle thinks it’s a failure. Be on the lookout for a revamped drug ordinance later this year. And District 2 only had 2 LEAD referrals in a one year period. I checked in with Councilmember Eddie Lin’s office after the public safety committee presentation, but he hadn’t yet received any answers as to why that is the case. 

SPOG made an interesting X post last week, calling Kent Loux, SPOG’s new president, “Seattle’s top cop union boss” and blaming “what’s gutting downtown” on socialism. But hey, at least Loux hasn’t started up his own SPOG podcast…yet. 

Mayor Katie Wilson and her Budget Director Ali Pennucchi sat down with Brian Callanan on the Seattle Channel to discuss Seattle’s budget. 2027’s budget now has a $175 million deficit. Wilson has asked all city departments to prepare models for 5% and 10% cuts, and has said she wants to address the deficit through a combination of cuts and new revenue. 

Wilson said there’s no “silver bullet” when it comes to a new progressive revenue source that could provide a permanent fix for Seattle’s structural budget problem. 

Wilson also said she didn’t foresee winding down the work of the United Care Team anytime soon. 

You can read my live-posting of the budget presentation here. It’s worth noting that $175 million is close to 10% of the total $2 billion General Fund. 

PubliCola wrote about an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) audit on the practice of retiring SPD officers going on extended leave to take advantage of accumulated sick leave. A new policy requiring officers to provide verification for taking sick leave is supposed to go into effect later this year. 

Looking at this coming Tuesday’s public safety committee agenda, the OIG will also be doing an audit on SPD overtime usage in the future, so that should be interesting. 

PubliCola covered what appears to be some communication issues between the new Mayor’s Office and the City Council. The land use committee still ultimately approved Wilson’s shelter expansion proposal. 

Surveillance News:

The City Council of Shoreline cancelled a planned meeting with Flock Safety after residents expressed their dismay.

Both Tukwila and Renton had Flock Safety/ALPRs on their agendas for their Monday, 5/4 meetings. 

Issaquah has Flock on the agenda for their Monday evening meeting on 5/11. 

WA State News:

Last week I published a story all about the Washington State Supreme Court elections, with a majority of the seats on the Court being on the ballot this year. I spent a lot of extra time on this piece because I think so much is at stake with these elections, so I hope you check it out and pass it along to others. 

Oh, election season! The filing deadline for this year was Friday, May 8 at 5pm. In addition to the 5 state Supreme Court justice seats, all 98 state House seats and 24 of the 49 state Senate seats are up for grabs. 

Governor Bob Ferguson and Attorney General Nick Brown have filed a suit against The GEO Group, the private operator of the immigrant detention facility in Tacoma, and the GEO Group recently signed a six-month extension of their contract with ICE. I have a new piece covering this news, including concerning details about this new contract, that should be published any time now. 

Speaking of Ferguson, his tight rules on government agencies and departments’ communications with the press have led to delays on important communications to the public, such as bridge repair updates, public health vaccine guidelines, and the like. Agency officials have been repeatedly complaining about the impacts of these strict guidelines. 

The press also has less access to the Governor in general, with Ferguson holding fewer press conferences and general press availability periods. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Seattle looks to tighten its budget belt for 2027 Read More »

PROTEC17 moves to help the CARE team do their jobs

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Seattle and King County News:

This will be a short edition of Notes From the Emerald City, as I don’t have a lot to say about many of the recent headlines. This may well be because I am in the middle of writing a very intensive piece that is taking up most of my brain bandwidth at present, but in any case, today I’m going to keep things short and sweet. 

I’ve been covering some election news in the past few weeks. I was able to sit down and have a long conversation with Jaelynn Scott, who is running to become a Washington state representative for the 37th LD. If you’re interested in learning more details about Scott and her policy positions, this one is for you.

Also in election news, Toshiko Hasegawa and Rebecca Saldaña–both running for the District 2 seat on the King County Council–released their public safety platforms last week. I spoke with both of them, and while the platforms are similar in many ways, I tried to tease out the differences in both platforms and experience. 

And this week, environmental justice group Got Green released a report alleging that the Seattle Housing Authority’s public housing is “unsafe and unhealthy.” I read through the report and attended the rally about it so I could give you the most important details.

In the latest addition to the CARE team saga, PROTEC17, the union representing City workers, has filed an unfair labor practice against the City and SPOG saying that the section in the new SPOG contract regulating crisis response should be thrown out since the CARE workers’ union was not engaged with about their scope of work. 

The other headline I want to call to your attention is PubliCola’s recent article about the new forensic report on the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), which shows their finances in pretty rough and messy shape. 

Earlier today, Erica Barnett attended the KCRHA meeting discussing the report, and I’d like to highlight some information she posted about the meeting. 

“This presentation, which sheds more light on the concerns the auditors raised, is more devastating than the audit themselves,” Barnett wrote. “What Nurse is describing is what “would be required” for stabilization—a complete overhaul of the entire organization.”

Other important details reported by Barnett: the KCRHA has a negative cash balance of $63 million as of March 2026, and addressing the issues uncovered in the report could take a year or more and cost millions of dollars. There was also no evidence found of corrective action taken by KCRHA after their negative audits from 2023 and 2024. 

 Recent Headlines:

PROTEC17 moves to help the CARE team do their jobs Read More »

What’s going on with the SPD CCTV camera near Planned Parenthood

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Discerning readers may have noticed it’s been a bit longer than usual between updates. Unfortunately, I suffered from a lacerated finger earlier in March, and the healing has been a process. In the meantime, I was taking as much of a break as possible from typing. But I’m now on the mend, so here we are!

Seattle and King County News:

First off, we have Mayor Katie Wilson’s big announcement about her surveillance plans a couple weeks ago. I wrote about it here, as did many other outlets adding other details about NYU’s Policing Project and Axon’s contracts with ICE, among other issues. 

Wilson met with volunteers from her campaign who are against surveillance on Tuesday evening. Looking at Erica Barnett’s live posts of the event, it doesn’t appear that Wilson’s stance has changed since the town hall she did on March 27, when all but one commenter spoke against surveillance in Seattle. 

Local group Stop Surveillance City received footage from a public record request for the CCTV camera that films a Planned Parenthood in North Seattle. This is the camera Wilson said would be turned off. 

I reached out to the Mayor’s Office, and spokesperson Sage Wilson said the following:

“The cameras the mayor announced would be turned off have in fact been turned off as of March 19th, the day the mayor made the announcement. We have confirmed they are still turned off.

The point of confusion is that the PDR release contained video footage from three other cameras that are fixed, cannot be moved, and do not capture any activity at the sensitive location.”

Basically, each of the Seattle Police Department’s CCTV “cameras” is actually a cluster of five cameras: four that are fixed in a certain direction and one that can pan, tilt, and zoom (PTZ). The Mayor’s Office had the PTZ camera and the camera facing in the direction of the Planned Parenthood turned off, but not the other three fixed cameras. 

A possible problem with this approach is that the remaining cameras are still filming people and vehicles who might be going to or leaving from this Planned Parenthood location. There wouldn’t be footage of folks actually entering the building, but footage could still place them in its vicinity.

I also wrote about some public record request results I received pertaining to the siting of the new crisis care center in the old Polyclinic building in Capitol Hill. It appears that a few property and business owners located in Capitol Hill lobbied hard against the new location. One of them was developer Liz Dunn, who Capitol Hill Seattle reported sparked the new safety plan at Pike and Pine last fall. Several of the involved parties were also involved in trying to remove the bus lane in Capitol Hill last year.  

King County Assessor John Wilson is awaiting trial on two charges of violating a no-contact order obtained by his ex-fiancee. In the meantime, he has to wear an ankle monitor. Wilson has thus far refused to resign from his elected position of assessor even though the King County Council demanded his resignation last year. If nothing changes, he’ll stay in office through the end of the year. Meanwhile, all the County employees who work under him continue being forced to have him as their boss if they want to keep their jobs. 

Immigration and Other Surveillance News:

I’d like to share three recent headlines about federal immigration enforcement in Washington State:

What’s going on here and how can all three of these headlines be true? 

The answer is the time frame of the data being discussed is quite important! In my piece, I was writing about the University of Washington Center for Human Rights’s data from October through December of 2025, when detentions in the state were definitely increasing. The Washington State Standard was writing about data from October 2025 through March 2026. And The Seattle Times was specifically calling out data from January and February 2026, when the national number of detentions fell. 

The Washington State Standard noted that detentions here in Washington State appeared to drop after Alex Pretti’s murder in late January. 

The Seattle Times also reported on a new data point provided by Rep. Suzan DelBene, that the Tacoma detention facility’s population has dropped and is at 919 as of Friday, April 3. This is in spite of a new contract between the GEO Group, who operates the facility, and the federal government. The contract began in late March and runs until October 27 and increased the total number of detainees the facility can house from 1,575 to 1,635. Given how bad conditions were at the old maximum, I don’t like to think how an additional 60 detainees could further deteriorate things. 

Meanwhile, the GEO Group is still doing its utmost to prevent Washington state health inspectors from getting inside the facility and conducting an inspection. 

In surveillance news, Seattle isn’t the only jurisdiction that had to shut off its license plate readers due to the new state law regulating their use. Renton had to do the same.

The UW campus is getting more security cameras installed, according to the Daily UW: “Wilson confirmed that UWPD plans to install more cameras in public areas throughout campus, but that the Montlake Cut is not planned to see new surveillance footage.” 

(Note: The Wilson in the above excerpt refers to the UWPD Chief Craig Wilson, not Seattle’s Mayor.)

The Newcastle City Council voted to terminate their contract with Flock this week due to concern over potential liability from the state’s new license plate reader bill. Newcastle is one of the King County Sheriff’s Office’s (KCSO’s) contract cities, and there is worry the City would hold liability instead of the County. This is a legal issue that would probably only impact cities who are contract cities, meaning they outsource their law enforcement services. 

WA State News:

The millionaires tax passed the state legislature and was signed by Governor Bob Ferguson, and of course I wrote all about it. 

Last week, the Washington State Supreme Court granted Brian Heywood’s request to review his case in trying to file a referendum against the millionaires tax. The Court is expected to consider the question on April 30. 

A lawsuit against the tax was filed yesterday.

Last week, Ferguson signed the new state budget, which relies on a heavy withdrawal from the rainy day fund and includes cuts, cuts, cuts. There will be another $878 million deficit to deal with during the next legislative session for 2028. Proceeds from the millionaires tax are not expected to be collected until 2029, assuming it survives all the challenges against it. 

The Stranger had a write-up this week about the importance of the Washington State Supreme Court races this year. I did include a short discussion of this race in my millionaires tax piece above, but I really can’t emphasize enough what a big deal it is that the court will have five seats (out of nine) on the ballot this year. I hope to write more about this sooner rather than later, and I encourage you to watch these races closely. 

Recent Headlines:

 

What’s going on with the SPD CCTV camera near Planned Parenthood Read More »