CCTV

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:

Updates on the U.S. surveillance state Read More »

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 »

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 »

‘A horrific stain on our state:’ on Tacoma’s Northwest ICE “Processing Center”

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Tacoma Detention Center:

I wrote about the recently filed lawsuit against the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWICP), aka the immigration detention center in Tacoma. In addition to the lawsuit, I cover other reports that have found human rights violations and abuses within the facility, going back to 2008, as well as new legislation proposed by Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck to put a year-long moratorium on new or expanded detention centers within Seattle city limits. 

It’s worth noting that The Geo Group, the company that runs the private and for-profit NWICP, is making huge amounts of money right now, reporting an almost 700% increase in profits in 2025 compared to 2024. 

It’s also worth noting I was unable to determine the status of the contract between The Geo Group and the U.S. government. The last contract was set to expire last fall. 

State Senator Yasmin Trudeau told me she didn’t see what else we could call this detention center besides a concentration camp. She brought up that detainees are often held indefinitely, with no right or ability to contact their family or for their family to know where they are. She discussed the possibility that they can be deported to a country that isn’t even their country of origin. She talked about conditions in which people are starving, have feces in their food, put in solitary confinement (which I go into more detail about in the article). She talked about the lack of due process and basic rights.  

While it is horrifying to sit with the reality of what’s happening in this camp in Tacoma, and in concentration camps being stood up and already extant across the country, I urge all of us to refuse to look away. As Trudeau told me, the NWICP is “a horrific stain on our state.”

Seattle News:

I attended DESC’s grand opening of a new permanent supportive housing building called Clover Place. It’s just south of Woodland Park on 99/Aurora Ave. N.

I also sat down and chatted with Julie Kang, who is running for the open D5 seat this November. 

I heard from the new Seattle City Attorney’s Office that City Attorney Erika Evans issued a memo officially ending her predecessor Ann Davison’s policy of seeking blanket affidavits of prejudice, which Davison had instituted to prevent elected Judge Pooja Vaddadi from hearing most criminal cases at the Seattle Municipal Court. The ACLU of Washington and Evans have jointly moved to dismiss the litigation around Davison’s policy. 

The City of Seattle settled with the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, who was killed in January 2023 when then-SPD Officer Kevin Dave ran into her at 74mph while she was in a crosswalk. The City paid the family $29 million plus the $11,000 that then-SPD Officer Daniel Auderer joked about. Both Dave and Auderer were fired from SPD.  (Note: I originally incorrectly said the payment was $110 million, which was the original amount being asked for in the lawsuit. My apologies.)

In January, the City was found negligent in the death of Antonio Mays Jr. in the CHOP in June 2020 and instructed to pay $30.5 million. 

Ben Noble of Council Central Staff is officially retiring in March and will be replaced by Lish Whitson. Whitson’s new deputy director will be Calvin Chow. 

HardPressed has been doing a steady stream of investigative reporting this month, revealing the existence of a secret CCTV camera belonging to SPD that sits on top of the 12th Avenue Arts building in Capitol Hill and another major step taken in SPD’s mission to launch its own drone program. HardPressed also documented SPD’s assistance in providing arrest records for an ICE detention. 

An Office of the Inspector General (OIG) sentinel event review was conducted for the SPD response to counterprotesters at an anti-trans rally held by an extremist group in Cal Anderson Park last spring. The report found that SPD had multiple failures in their response to the counterprotesters. The review process was cut short because DivestSPD published an article about a specific event at the rally with information from the panel, which was supposed to be confidential. 

This leak not only cut the process short, but apparently deeply upset SPD, putting the future of sentinel event reviews in question. However, PubliCola reminds us that SPD has a history of ignoring the recommendations from these reviews, which means their value remains debatable. 

As Glen Stellmacher said on Bluesky, “The specific underlying purpose of the Sentinel Event Review process is to “enhance police legitimacy.” It is not a method of accountability, that’s why it’s conducted in secret. Its whole purpose is to manufacture recommendations that enhance police legitimacy.”

WA State News:

I wrote about why civil rights, privacy, and LGBTQ+ advocates are concerned about the current societal push for age verification systems for social media platforms. In particular, I focused on HB 1834, a bill designed to protect kids from “addictive algorithms” that are common in social media platforms. There was a legal argument about whether the wording in the bill would encourage big tech companies to implement age verification systems in order to avoid liability. 

In an update on Monday, the Attorney General’s Office has said they’re going to stop trying to pass the bill this session. Because HB 2112, another bill that explicitly called for age verification, is also dead for the session, privacy advocates can take a little breath. SB 5984 seems to be avoiding pushing for age verification for now, although it still bears watching. 

Also on Monday, the Senate passed the so-called ‘Millionaires’ tax, which will now head to the House. Governor Bob Ferguson had some additional requirements for the new tax, which he’d like to see implemented before signing. 

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen and Rep. Shaun Scott–who represent the same Seattle district–had a public spat in the middle of a Stranger article. Scott said his Well Washington Fund, which would levy a statewide payroll expense tax, could be implemented and start being assessed by 2027 or possibly even late 2026. Pedersen said this wasn’t true. 

So The Stranger checked with The Employment Security Department, who said Scott was correct. Oops. Both lawmakers are up for election this November. 

State Democrats are also considering backtracking on an increase to the estate tax they passed last year, with the proposal passing the Senate on Monday. 

The new state revenue forecast came out on Monday, and in pleasant news, it’s not looking quite as terrible. The state’s revenue is up $1.855 billion from the last forecast in November. This forecast covers the bienniums of 2025-2027 and 2027-2029. 

Finally, in surveillance news, Amazon-owned Ring canceled its contract with Flock Safety after a controversial Super Bowl ad. However, it seems like their contract with Axon might still be on, at least for now. 

Recent Headlines:

About ICE:

About Everything Else:

 

‘A horrific stain on our state:’ on Tacoma’s Northwest ICE “Processing Center” Read More »

The City of Seattle is watching you

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Surveillance News:

First off, I’ll share my piece on Seattle’s surveillance expansion. City Council passed the legislation to implement this expansion on a 7-2 vote on Tuesday. Yesterday I heard about a website that some concerned citizens put up with a good round-up of media coverage of the vote.

Lavender Rights Project, Seattle Pride, and the Seattle DSA have made social media posts against the expansion. Lavender Rights Project wrote, “Lavender Rights Project is located directly within the zone of this projected surveillance expansion. Yet no impact analysis was conducted, nor was robust effort made to engage with our staff, or the communities we represent–those who will be most affected by these decisions. This disregard highlights exactly whose safety is prioritized, and whose lives are put at risk.”

This flier was also spotted in Capitol Hill:

In other surveillance news, DivestSPD found that state and federal law enforcement officers are sharing license plate data on obscure Seattle police email lists. 

The Intercept reported on how the company Fusus connected City of Seattle officials, including Claudia Gross-Shader from the Auditor’s Office, to a man, Marshall Freeman, who they introduced as the deputy chief administrative officer of the Atlanta Police Department. What Fusus neglected to tell the City was that Freeman is a member of their board and owns a small share of the company. The City didn’t find out until recently; in the meantime, Seattle bought Fusus’s real-time crime center software for an estimated price of $1.8 million. 

The kicker? “Gross-Shader also noted that the city had not seen research demonstrating the ability of Fusus’s technology to play a significant role in reducing retail theft, the issue that originally brought her to look into the company.”

Flock Safety, known for its extensive nationwide network of license plate readers, has rolled out a new feature that analyzes driving patterns to determine “suspicious” behavior and flag people as potential participants in organized crime. The ACLU writes about several reasons why this is concerning.

Forest Park, a city in Illinois, gave U.S. Customs and Border Patrol access to their license plate data. This example is noteworthy because Forest Park doesn’t use Flock Safety license plate readers, which have been garnering a lot of press recently. Their license plate readers are provided by Motorola Solutions, showing the dangers of this technology aren’t a matter of a single problematic vendor. 

Finally, Waymo self-driving cars are now being tested in the Seattle area. I know self-driving cars are a controversial issue and there are many big fans of the technology out there, but I would be remiss not to point out the surveillance capabilities of these vehicles, with LAPD and other police departments obtaining surveillance footage from these cars and using it as evidence. You can read 404 Media’s reporting about that here.  

Seattle News:

Earlier this month, I wrote about the opening of the new post-overdose stabilization ORCA center across from the King County courthouse. DESC, the organization that runs the new center, is also pioneering a different medicine treatment protocol for opioid addiction that thus far seems to be easier for people to tolerate. 

Last week, Seattle’s long-lasting consent decree finally came to an end. Mayor Bruce Harrell also announced he expects to finish negotiating a new contract with SPOG by the end of the year, about which he is very optimistic. We’ll see what he trades away to keep the CARE responders in existence. 

Harrell announced that as of the first day of school, the City has now hired more than 40 additional mental and behavioral health professionals across Seattle Public Schools (SPS) middle and high schools, for a total of over 60 mental health staff. You can read the press release about safety measures at SPS here.

Speaking of SPS, there will be a key board meeting on Wednesday, September 17 at 4:15pm where school board members are expected to vote on a pilot bringing a police officer back into Garfield High School.

Today Harrell announced $1.7 million in awards to expand services for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation (CSE). Organizations that received awards are the Organization for Prostitution Survivors, the Seattle Indian Health Board, Real Escape from the Sex Trade (REST), and Consejo Counseling and Referral Service. Notably absent from the list is one of former Councilmember Cathy Moore’s favorite providers, The More We Love.

King County and Washington State news:

This week, the King County Council voted in favor of moving forward the process of buying and opening a crisis care center in Capitol Hill. 

Washington Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu announced her retirement at the end of the year. Governor Bob Ferguson will appoint a replacement to serve until an election next year, where candidates will run to finish Yu’s term, which goes until the end of 2028. 

Washington Supreme Court justices are required to retire the year they turn 75 years old. Associate Chief Justice Charles Johnson will be turning 75 in 2026, and Justice Barbara Madsen will be turning 75 in 2027. With three Supreme Court seats up for grabs in the next few years, these upcoming judicial elections will shape the future of Washington state. 

Recent Headlines:

The City of Seattle is watching you Read More »

Seattle budget season is oh so political

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Seattle News:

It’s been a busy week, and I have three new stories to talk about. 

First off, I wrote about Seattle’s proposed surveillance expansion for The Urbanist, which would give SPD access to 365 SDOT cameras as well as permission to purchase many more cameras to place in three more areas of the city. That the City is trying to push forward with this plan right now, given what’s happening at the federal level, is particularly concerning. 

The public safety committee will be discussing this expansion again (and voting on it)  on Tuesday, August 12 at 9:30am. There will be the opportunity to give public comment at the beginning of this meeting. 

Next up, as I reported at The Urbanist, the Seattle Shield Initiative passed this week, which means Seattleites will be voting on the B&O tax restructure in November. While the council watered the proposal down, it passed with an unanimous vote, which is something I wouldn’t have expected as recently as a month ago. The fact that Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck was able to get this passed in time to be put on the ballot in spite of not having any strong allies on the council is notable. It seems like having Mayor Bruce Harrell on board helped to smooth the way. 

The city received another revenue forecast this week, which was a bit less bad than the one in April. However, the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts’ interim director Jan Duras said it’s likely the next revenue forecast, due in October, will be worse.  

This is interesting maneuvering on the part of Harrell, who now gets to base his proposed budget, due at the end of September, on a better forecast than is likely to be true by the time the council actually has to pass the budget. Since his budget team is assuming the Seattle Shield Initiative will pass in their formation of the budget, it’s possible he won’t have to make many unpopular cuts in his proposed budget before the election at the beginning of the November. 

This also means the council will be left with the football when it comes time to grapple with any necessary budget cuts later in October, should the revenue forecast worsen. 

It seems like Harrell might not be overly eager to introduce the public safety sales tax hike after all. If the City doesn’t need the revenue to bridge a deficit gap, he can play it safe with public opinion and postpone implementing such a regressive tax. Even if a councilmember decides to go for it, it will leave Harrell with clean hands.

Councilmember Rinck was also able to add $300,000 to the city’s supplementary budget this week to pay for legal defense for unaccompanied children facing detention and deportation. This money was taken from underspend from Seattle’s much criticized SCORE jail contract. Councilmembers Rob Saka and Martiza Rivera were the sole “no” votes.

My third piece, at Bolts Magazine, covers the renewal of Seattle’s democracy voucher program this week. The City is supposed to convene a workgroup in early 2026 to look into possible improvements to the program, including strategies to better deal with independent expenditures in local races. This will be an opportunity for stakeholders to participate in figuring out what’s next for the program. I’ll also be very interested to see how the combination of democracy vouchers and ranked choice voting in 2027 pans out. 

More Seattle news:

We had a primary! Progressives in Seattle did very well. There is a ton of analysis available to read, none of which I am going to link to. My observation, for what it’s worth, is that many more people appear to pay attention to national news than to local news, so I tend to think the Trump effect is one of the main factors at play here. 

As I was writing this, the news dropped that Katie Wilson, who is running against Harrell for mayor, has broken 50% of the primary vote. Wilson is more than 15,000 votes ahead of Harrell at this time. 

The next consent decree hearing has been set for Wednesday, September 3. This could be the last hearing of Seattle’s consent decree. 

Seattle is paying $3 million to settle the lawsuit brought by SPD’s Deanne Nolette, who alleged wage, job and gender discrimination. She also alleged that former Chief Adrian Diaz had retaliated against her since she had also been up for the Chief job, and that he “has a history of misogyny.” 

Housekeeping:

I’ll be out on vacation the next few weeks, but never fear, I’ll be back at it before the end of the month. Close followers of local news know that the fall tends to be a particularly busy time, and this year should be no exception. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Seattle budget season is oh so political Read More »

Seattle Mayor’s Race Remains a Dead Heat in Polling

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Seattle and King County News:

First off, I took a closer look at the upcoming Seattle City Attorney election, with a particular focus on incumbent Ann Davison’s signature policies, for Bolts Magazine.

For The Urbanist, I wrote about the nuisance property and graffiti legislation recently passed by the Seattle City Council, as well as Council President Sara Nelson’s proposal to allocate some of a not-yet-proposed sales tax bump to pay for addiction treatment. I also gave an update on how Donald Trump’s recently passed budget reconciliation package, which includes large cuts to Medicaid (Apple Care) and SNAP, will impact Washingtonians, and how Seattle and King County are responding to the current national funding and policy threats.

We have a primary election coming up next Tuesday, August 5, which means it’s time for some new polls. The two frontrunners for Seattle Mayor, Bruce Harrell and Katie Wilson, are still statistically tied. In the Seattle City Attorney’s race, incumbent Davison is ahead, closely followed by Erika Evans. 

And a recent poll on Washington Governor Bob Ferguson’s job performance found that only 32% of voters think he’s been doing an “excellent” or “good” job during his first six months. 

We also have a new Seattle councilmember, the returning Debora Juarez, who has been appointed to fill Cathy Moore’s empty D5 seat. That seat will not be up for election until November of 2026. 

Coming up this week, we have a select budget committee meeting tomorrow morning with a possible vote on the Seattle Shield Initiative, which has picked up a whopping 17 proposed amendments. Then on Thursday morning, there will be a special public safety committee meeting to discuss the proposed expansion of CCTV cameras to three new locations, which will cost over $1 million. The updates would also allow SPD to view and record footage from SDOT traffic management cameras.

Guy Oron recently published a great piece about the ballooning settlements the City of Seattle has had to pay related to SPD actions. He includes some illustrative graphs as well, and I recommend taking a look. Overall, the City spent nearly twice the amount it had budgeted over the last ten years (2014-2024) on SPD settlements etc. The most recent figure: in 2024 the City spent $15.1 million on police litigation. 

The Urbanist has a piece from Carolyn Bick documenting the poor public record practices of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). 

The Seattle City Attorney’s Office is still refusing to allow Seattle Municipal Court (SMC) Judge Pooja Vaddadi to hear domestic violence and DUI cases. SMC Judge Damon Shadid vigorously criticized this decision in open court earlier this month.

The King County Prosecutor’s Office has paused youth felony diversion due to a limited analysis that showed a recidivism rate of 53% for youth being referred to Restorative Community Pathways for felonies. Some of these cases will instead be referred to court-supervised diversion programs, but these programs are currently lacking in capacity and also lack other benefits provided by community-based programs. An audit of Restorative Community Pathways is due later this summer. 

Last week, a meeting of Seattle’s housing and human services committee was unable to convene due to a lack of quorum after both Nelson and Councilmember Rob Saka didn’t show up. Nelson apparently gave a day’s notice about her absence, and Saka was reportedly in his office at City Hall at the time of the meeting. 

As a result, the committee was unable to vote on many appointments that would finally fill the City’s renters commission, which former committee chair Cathy Moore appears to have deliberately let languish as she pursued the idea of including landlords in a body meant to advocate for renter rights. The committee was also supposed to report on accepting $16 million in federal HUD grants. 

Neither Nelson or Saka has given much explanation for what happened. If they deliberately skipped the meeting in order to thwart the renters commission appointments, doing so would be an undemocratic act, the seriousness of which is only magnified by the active erosion of democracy right now at the federal level.

The committee’s business is now supposed to be heard at the full City Council meeting later today, when the renters commission vacancies will hopefully finally be filled. 

Recent Headlines:

Seattle Mayor’s Race Remains a Dead Heat in Polling Read More »

Local surveillance is ramping up in tandem with federal surveillance

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Seattle News:

First up, I wrote about the new proposed crisis care center site in Capitol Hill. 

One detail I hadn’t remembered is that the King County crisis care levy doesn’t provide any funding for involuntary treatment. Now, there is an important distinction here, because the first crisis care center, Kirkland Connections, does have involuntary beds, and when I interviewed them earlier this year, that involuntary capacity was mostly full. So it’s not impossible for crisis care centers to have involuntary treatment space, but none of that is funded by the crisis care levy dollars. 

New SPD Chief Shon Barnes was sworn in last week. PubliCola reported that Barnes was out of town most weekends during his first four months as SPD Chief. A side note from that reporting is that Barnes met with Sound Thinking Technologies on March 17, when he’d been chief for less than two months. Sound Thinking is known for their Shotspotter gun shot detection technology that Harrell has proposed a couple of times, only to have community reject it. 

Mayor Bruce Harrell and Chief Barnes are celebrating SPD’s real time crime center (RTCC) so I finally got to enter the room where it happens. It did not, in fact, feel like I’d entered the control center of a science fiction movie. The RTCC is staffed by two analysts 19 hours a day, seven days a week. 

The cameras SPD are installing include five cameras in each deployment: a 360 camera with a pan tilt zoom camera mounted below. So each camera actually gives out five feeds, four of which are static and facing all four directions, the last of which is a pan tilt zoom that can move and focus. The cameras record for five days at a time. They don’t use facial recognition or gait analysis, but they do have an AI overlay within the camera systems that allows the police to look for things such as “blue shirts, black pants,” to use SPD Captain James Britt’s example. 

57 cameras have been installed so far in the three zones: Aurora North, the downtown core, and the CID. 

Britt said, “​​We’re looking to add a couple of new locations in coming legislation, which will include the Capitol Hill nightlife area, the area around the stadiums, and the area around Garfield High School. We’re working with council right now to work on that legislation. The ability for the real time crime center has also to pull in private video from businesses and other places that are willing to give their video. We’re working on getting that rolled out, but we’re not quite ready to go there just yet. We’re also working, as part of the legislation, to be able to pull in other government-owned cameras, which would include DOT cameras and cameras from other city facilities around the area.”

By DOT cameras, Britt is referring to traffic cameras operated by SDOT. 

Britt assured me that the RTCC doesn’t connect with any federal agencies with its data or equipment. SPD is also planning to have random audits of their analysts to make sure they’re following policy. Britt said it would be illegal to use RTCC data to assist ICE. However, in recent months we have been seeing many of these protective laws being bent or broken across the country, including close to home in Pierce County.

You can read articles about the RTCC center from The Seattle Times and PubliCola. The Times article in particular does a good job covering some of the civil rights concerns related to the use of these cameras and the RTCC.

At the same press conference, Harrell announced that SPD has hired almost 100 new officers as of July 1. 

Seattle is also asking to leave its federal consent decree after more than 13 years. My guess is that Judge James Robart will schedule a hearing in the fall, possibly in September.

This week the city council passed new graffiti and nuisance property legislation, which I will be writing more about in the near future. 

The applicants for Cathy Moore’s council seat have been made public, and rumor has it that former Councilmember Debra Juarez might be a shoo-in for the position. The final vote on the councilmember appointment will be on July 28. 

Surveillance news

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and reading about surveillance since President Donald Trump signed his big budget bill on July 4. The bill gives ICE a whole lot of money, and as a result, we can expect to see large investments in building out surveillance systems. These will be nominally for the purpose of helping to deport illegal immigrants, but there is always the potential for an existing surveillance system to be used for other purposes. 

Right now, here’s some of the data we know is being shared with ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP):

I’d recommend caution when thinking about laws such as Washington’s Shield Law that are designed to protect immigrants or California’s law regulating the sharing of ALPR data. While it is good to have these legal protections, we are currently seeing the limit of these laws in action, including in California, Illinois, and here in Washington. Assurances that a surveillance behavior and/or data sharing would be illegal are not sufficient to ensure safety at this time. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Local surveillance is ramping up in tandem with federal surveillance Read More »

SPD wants to stop calling its surveillance program a “pilot” 3 weeks after implementation

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We have more news than usual in this edition because I took a vacation, and then it’s taken a long time to catch up from being on vacation. So let’s get to it!

Surveillance News:

First off, I have a new story out this week about the expansion of Flock license plate readers (ALPRs) in WA state…and how the data is being used to assist ICE/DHS and search for people who have received abortions. I received a tip last week about an audit of the King County Housing Authority’s Flock data that shows it’s likely been accessed for both purposes. I know this is a somewhat technical story, but in my opinion it’s also one of the bigger stories I’ve reported on. 

In important and actionable news, SPD has proposed material updates to its SIRs on CCTV cameras and its real time crime center. You might remember that these cameras and the crime center went live on May 20th of this year. SPD asked for permission to stop calling this program a “pilot” three weeks after everything went live. I don’t know about you, but when I think pilot, I don’t think three weeks of testing is sufficient. 

SPD is asking to add more CCTV cameras to the network in three NEW locations:

  1. Areas around Lumen and T-Mobile Field, including parts of the southern portions of Pioneer Square. 
  2. Areas surrounding Garfield High School between S Jackson St. to the South, E Cherry St. to the North, 20th Ave. S to the West, and MLK Jr. Way to the East.
  3. The Capitol Hill Nightlife District – E Union St. to the South, E Pine St. to the North, Broadway to the West, and 12th Ave. to the East. In addition, Neagle Pl. between E Pine and E Denny Way.

SPD is also asking to integrate SDOT’s traffic-monitoring cameras into its real time crime center, expanding its surveillance scope yet again.

Comments on the two surveillance impact reports (SIRs) for these changes are due on Monday, June 23. To comment on the addition of more CCTV cameras and making the surveillance program permanent after 21 days, click here. To comment on the addition of SDOT traffic cameras to the real time crime center, click here. 

In other surveillance news, the Seattle City Council approved Starchase for SPD use. Washington State Patrol has started using cell phone data to predict where people will practice unsafe driving habits, such as speeding and texting while driving, to increase patrols in those areas. Florida Highway Patrol appears to be taking advantage of Flock’s database to hunt immigrants, and law enforcement agencies in southern California have been breaking the law and sharing license plate reader data with out-of-state and federal agencies.

And when it comes to data privacy, I’d be remiss not to highlight reporting that federal Medicare and Medicaid data, including immigration status of patients, has been shared with the Department of Homeland Security. As the Seattle Times wrote, “The shared information includes protected health data from every Apple Health enrollee in Washington, state officials said, totaling about 1.7 million people. Among them are tens of thousands of immigrants, including undocumented immigrants and lawful permanent residents, who receive state-covered health services.”

Seattle News:

The big news as I was leaving on vacation at the beginning of the month was that Cathy Moore is resigning from Seattle City Council. Her last day will be July 7, and the council will be appointing a replacement to serve until the November 2026 election. Applications for the appointment will be open July 2 through July 9, with a public forum scheduled for July 21 and a final council vote scheduled for July 28. 

The tentative budget season calendar has been released, with Harrell’s budget proposal expected on Tuesday, September 23 and a final vote expected on November 21. That final vote is scheduled a little earlier than usual because the general election results are expected to be certified on November 25, meaning Councilmember Mark Solomon will be replaced by whoever wins the D2 general election. 

There are two public hearings for the budget, one on October 7 and one on November 6. The one on November 6 seems a bit tenuous, since the public will only have 48 hours (at most) to review Budget Chair Dan Strauss’s balancing package, and then councilmember amendments are due at noon the very next day. Such a tight turnaround makes it seem unlikely that anything new councilmembers hear during the second public hearing could make it into a proposed amendment unless something similar were already in the works. 

Interim Budget Director Dan Eder also presented to council, saying there is currently a $150 million budget deficit for 2026. That could well get worse, depending on the economy and actions of the federal government. Departments supported by General Fund and JumpStart dollars have been asked to suggest 8% departmental cuts for 2026, except for homelessness and public safety-related departments, which have been asked to suggest 2% cuts. Interestingly the Seattle City Attorney’s Office has been asked to suggest 8% worth of cuts, about which Council President Sara Nelson wasn’t happy. 

One topic of interest that came up was Councilmember Bob Kettle asking if the City is looking into using AI in order to improve city operations. Eder replied that the city budget office and Central Staff started working on this at the end of last year, considering using AI as a tool to compare and contrast some of the support departments as a pilot project to see how efficient the City’s staffing and budgets are for various duties that are common among peer cities. Eder couldn’t share more about a potential timeframe for this effort. 

Interim SPD Chief Shon Barnes is in the process of receiving his council confirmation. You can read his council confirmation packet and his answers to councilmember questions. There’s some interesting stuff in there! He presented before the public safety committee on June 10, making headlines when he said he expected to be jailed under the Trump administration. 

However, later that same day SPD used pepper spray on protesters at the downtown federal building when protesters were trying to prevent ICE from removing immigrants from the building. 

Against the backdrop of the $150 million 2026 Seattle budget deficit discussed above, Barnes has decided to spend $1.38 million annually to hire five new SPD high level staffers from outside the department, including a second deputy chief, another assistant chief, a chief of staff, a chief communications officer, and executive director of crime and community harm reduction. Whew! Thanks to PubliCola for their reporting on this pricey decision.

SPD will also be spending $30,000 for a department-wide training on stratified policing, about which I’ve written here. 

Former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz is suing the City and Mayor Harrell, alleging wrongful termination, retaliation, and wage theft, among other charges. PubliCola and KUOW also received new records about the investigation that led to Diaz’s termination, showing that involved officers feared retaliation (this was also included in the original write-up of the investigation). 

Finally, I interviewed Jeanie Chunn, who is running for the D2 city council seat. 

King County and WA State News:

I wrote a piece last week giving a rundown of the newly released 2024 data for King County’s Health through Housing initiative, which provides permanent supportive and emergency housing. 

The Washington state Supreme Court finally weighed in on caseload standards for public defenders. The new caseload limits take effect on January 1, 2026 and should be implemented as soon as possible, within 10 years. I can’t overstate what a big deal this decision is, and I hope I’ll have time to write a full piece about it sooner rather than later. 

Over at The Stranger, Marcus Harrison Green sat down with state attorney general Nick Brown in an interview that is well worth the read. 

Finally, Jeff Asher ponders why the US murder rate might be falling so much this year, and I want to share his conclusions: “With all of those caveats in mind, when I think about the main factors behind declining murder, a strong investment in communities from private and public sources after the shock of the pandemic stands out as a major cause. There is a wide array of types of support that I would put into the “community investment” basket, including jobs, infrastructure, and programming, but it could be summed up as “we spent a lot of money everywhere on stuff.””

Recent Headlines:

 

SPD wants to stop calling its surveillance program a “pilot” 3 weeks after implementation Read More »

Seattle and King County on a bumpy road due to Trump administration chaos

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What I’ve been working on:

I’ve had four articles out at The Urbanist in the last two weeks, which is more than usual, hence the delay in this edition of Notes from the Emerald City. 

Top of mind for me, I’ve been working on two pieces covering local impacts of the Trump administration thus far.

 Seattle and King County Grapple with Federal Disinvestment and Threats primarily covers the financial and budgetary impacts of the federal administration on Seattle and King County. Long story short, we’ve got a rough ride ahead. 

Seattle Gears Up to Fight Back as Trump Eviscerates Funding, Rights primarily covers the impacts on civil rights and vulnerable communities, including coverage from Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s first meeting of the Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes. I also cover the danger to the Pacific Northwest’s electricity supply and how the University of Washington is being impacted (although there is more recent news on that in the recent headlines below as well). 

I hope these two articles can get people up to speed on what’s going on and prepare for the struggles ahead. 

I wrote a piece about new SPD Chief Shon Barnes, who appeared before the City Council’s public safety committee for the first time at the end of February after being on the job for one month. 

Finally, I covered Mayor Bruce Harrell’s recent proposal to renew Seattle’s democracy voucher program, going over the program’s successes as well as reforms that might be needed. This program is the first of its kind in the country, and after 10 years, we have some idea how it is working. 

Other Seattle news:

This week, there was new coverage of the surveillance pilot starting soon in Seattle, and it includes a map with the proposed locations of 20 CCTV cameras in the CID. 

The CARE department presented to the public safety committee this week. In a testament to how busy I’ve been writing, I haven’t yet watched it, but I heard some councilmembers were criticizing the program. More on this when I’ve had a chance to catch up. 

The City Attorney’s Office is requesting to add more staff to their Federal Response Team in response to President Donald Trump’s chaos. No details yet on how many staff or how much this might cost.

PubliCola reported on a $40,000 two-day media training held by SPD in March and June of 2024, saying, “This is how-to-boil-water stuff: At some point, someone probably has to tell you how to do it, but it probably doesn’t require hiring a $40,000 consultant.”

Prism reported on the backchannel coordination between Seattle’s Federal Monitor for the consent decree, Antonio Oftelie, SPD’s general counsel Rebecca Boatwright, and SPD’s then-Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives Chris Fisher. The article cites conversations between the three at some length. As the article states, “While the Seattle Police Department (SPD) struggled with accountability in 2020, the federal monitor tasked with overseeing police reform was privately seeking input from the very department he was meant to regulate, according to documents obtained by Prism.”

New media analysis

A new Media Matters analysis of online shows found that 9 out of the top 10 online shows they assessed were right-leaning. Right-leaning online shows had nearly five times as many followers and subscribers as left-leaning online shows. 

Over a third of the shows said they were apolitical, but when analyzed, 72% of those “apolitical” shows were found to be right-leaning. Of the top nine right-leaning shows (only one left-leaning show makes the top ten at all), four are identified as news and politics, with the other five being instead called comedy, education, and society and culture. 

As an increasing number of Americans rely on these online shows and podcasts for their news, we can expect the impacts of this disparity to continue to grow. 

Recent Headlines:

Election Season:

 

Seattle and King County on a bumpy road due to Trump administration chaos Read More »