In two important measures — the city budget and public safety — Mayor Katie Wilson showed she is able to make decisions that defy narrow ideology in favor of practical policy.
That is a mark of leadership.
By announcing on Tuesday that she would move ahead with expanding police surveillance cameras, Wilson disappointed many in her campaign coalition that wanted them all turned off for good. Indeed, getting to this point wasn’t easy.
Cameras are currently operational along Aurora Avenue North, in the Chinatown International District and downtown. Late last year, the Seattle City Council voted to expand closed-circuit television surveillance to the Capitol Hill nightlife area, the Stadium District and the Garfield High School neighborhood.
Back in March, Wilson ordered a privacy and data audit before moving forward. Civil liberties advocates and others expressed concern that the cameras could be used by the Trump administration in immigration enforcement or to interfere with reproductive rights or gender-affirming care.
Unlike Capitol Hill and Garfield, cameras are in place near the stadiums, and Wilson wanted them off during the World Cup — which made little sense. Eventually, the mayor said there was enough of a credible threat to turn them on during the games. Afterward, they were shut off again. This back-and-forth did not generate confidence that a rational outcome to the camera debate was in the works.
The audit Wilson ordered, completed this month by The Policing Project at New York University School of Law, revealed gaps where practices and policies could be tightened in the police department’s Real Time Crime Center, which operates the cameras.
In the end, Wilson announced she would follow the direction set by the Seattle City Council and expand cameras to the additional neighborhoods.
“I do believe from my conversations with RTCC staff and officers that the cameras are helpful, both in open investigations and responding to real-time incidents,” she said at a Tuesday news conference. “I believe that a targeted, limited kind of system is a good investment.”
Earlier this year, members of the King County prosecuting attorney’s office team that handles homicides told the editorial board that cameras were important tools. “We could see that having surveillance cameras around the city made for much stronger cases, from our perspective, on homicide,” said Mary Barbosa, senior deputy prosecuting attorney.
That simple metric — do the cameras capture information that leads to successful prosecutions? — loomed large in the surveillance camera debate, and appropriately so.
On the budget, Wilson’s proposal, announced in September, closed the city’s deficit mostly through spending cuts and ruled out new taxes on big business. It reduced nearly $50 million in general fund spending each year and eliminated 128 full-time positions.
This came just three years after Wilson, as executive director of the Transit Riders Union, outlined 27 potential new taxes for the city to consider, stemming from then-Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Revenue Stabilization Work Group.
On both cameras and the budget, Wilson did a hard thing: She disappointed her friends, for the good of the city.
For that, she deserves credit.
