Sometimes, when members of the commentariat like myself are confronted with society's complex problems, we rise to the occasion with solutions, inspiration, and aggressive optimism.
Other times, like today, we are tired. We are tired of things always getting worse. We are tired of the people who are supposed to make them better being big, big parts of the problem. We are tired of the increasingly large divide between those who shape the world and those who shoulder it.
Yes, I am talking about the Sept. 9 City Council vote to unleash a massive expansion of police surveillance on our city. Sorry … Sept. 9's two City Council votes to do that.
The first vote, which was 7-2, approved the installation of surveillance cameras in three new areas, massively expanding what was supposed to be a two-year pilot program (it's been five months) that uses CCTV cameras to monitor high crime areas. The locations they picked are almost tailor-made to subject people who are Black, Brown, queer, or poor to more scrutiny from the police than they already endure. Not to mention the risk these cameras pose to immigrants in our community, who already face what the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington (ACLU-WA) described in a statement opposing the ordinances as "unprecedented attacks." The second vote allowed the Seattle Police Department (SPD) to access footage from our city's 145 existing traffic cameras.
The goal of all of this is to create something like a budget version of Minority Report. All the footage will be monitored by Big Brother the staff of SPD's new Real Time Crime Center (RTCC), which is currently a part-time panopticon but will soon run 24/7. Indeed, SPD expressed its aim to include private cameras and cameras from a slew of other city departments in the RTCC, putting them well on their way to creating a round-the-clock feed of a large slice of public life.
Ostensibly, they are doing this to target felony crimes and improve public safety. But as the ACLU-WA pointed out in their statement, "research shows CCTV cameras do not reduce violent crime or make our communities safer. Instead, they violate people's privacy and civil liberties, harm communities where they are deployed, and waste police resources."
Don't threaten this City Council with a good time, apparently. What's more, though, footage from the cameras is extremely likely to be used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"Once surveillance data is collected, it is notoriously challenging to protect against federal misuse," ACLU-WA cautioned. "Despite commitments from Washington state to guard this data, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE have successfully accessed data from the Washington Healthcare Authority and the Washington Department of Licensing. Seattle should not line up to be next."
As if on cue, headlines on Sept. 10 brought a story about President Donald Trump's Department of Justice attempting to obtain Washington State voter data.
That's all very bad, and we should be very, very alarmed. Even more alarming is that pretty much no one asked for this, while plenty of people asked — nay, begged — for the council to not do this. But that did not deter District 7 Councilmember Bob Kettle, sponsor of both bills, or his fellow business-backed, pro-police councilmembers. Only Councilmembers Dan Strauss and Alexis Mercedes Rinck, of Districts 6 and 8, respectively, voted no.
While Strauss has caved in the face of some ginned-up panics about public safety before — see his vote on criminalizing public drug use and possession — it tracks that he and Rinck are the no votes here. They are also the only two sitting councilmembers to have the honor of not being endorsed by the conservative Seattle Times and not receiving support from the city's business community — historically a very pro-cop lobby — in their most recent races.
That's great and all, but the unfortunate reality we live in is that seven of nine councilmembers is more than enough to ram any legislation through, no matter how unpopular. There is something incredibly undemocratic about them listening to more than 100 public commenters plead not to expand our city's surveillance network; hearing from nearly two dozen of their fellow electeds about the folly of this; reading a joint statement against it from the ACLU-WA, OneAmerica, and the Asian Counseling and Referral Service; and then saying, "Screw it, we're doing it anyway." But that's exactly what the current council does, time and time again.
If I weren't so tired, I might say that we shouldn't let them. That we should fight harder, build bigger coalitions, bring funnier signs to hold up in council chambers, or, ideally, vote them out. But we're poised to do exactly that in two districts: District 2, where longtime SPD staffer Mark Solomon is keeping a seat warm for one of two progressive candidates, and District 9, where Council President Sara Nelson looks sure to lose her seat to progressive nonprofit executive Dionne Foster. Soon after, we'll get a shot at putting a progressive in District 5, when the special election triggered by Cathy Moore's resignation takes place.
In the near term, that leaves us with a council that's 5-4 in favor of whatever the Seattle Chamber of Commerce says is good, and one that hasn't met an expensive piece of tech it wasn't slavering to buy for SPD. Sure, the polls also point to Mayor Bruce Harrell being replaced with progressive phenom Katie Wilson, but do you think that diminished majority will be shy about blocking bills it doesn't like?
They absolutely will not, and those of us who want to see our money go toward root-cause public safety solutions — permanently housing homeless people, fighting poverty, bolstering early childhood education, etc. — will be left, as always, waiting for one more election to save us. But even when that election rolls around, I don't think we'll be able to put this toothpaste back in its tube. The cameras are going to go up, and there is no way that SPD is going to give them up once they've got them. Losing civil liberties is easy. Clawing them back is nearly impossible.
And that's why I'm tired. Over it, even. I can't muster up the energy to write something impassioned about "voting them out" because, even if we can do it, the damage is done.
But that doesn't mean I'm without hope.
Got something *political* I should know? Tell me about it: Tobias.CB@SeattleEmerald.org.
Tobias Coughlin-Bogue is a writer, editor and restaurant worker who lives in South Park. He was formerly the associate editor of Real Change News, and his work has appeared in The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, Vice, Thrillist, Thrasher Magazine, Curbed, and Crosscut, among other outlets.
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