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| Video cameras already watch the north end of Pike Place Market; the Parks Department is planning to install video monitors across the street in Victor Steinbrueck Park and in three other parks downtown and on Capitol Hill.
Photo by Revel Nt. |
First came the automated snapshots at traffic lights. Now the City of Seattle is moving to install surveillance cameras in four of its public parks.
The city plans to install one stationary camera as soon as possible at Cal Anderson Park, the site of the Capitol Hill reservoir, because of an emergent problem with drug dealing and prostitution, says Marty McOmber, a spokesperson for Mayor Greg Nickels.
One to three rotating cameras per park are also slated for Hing Hay Park in the International District, Occidental Park in Pioneer Square, and the Pike Place Market’s Victor Steinbrueck Park as part of a one-year pilot program for which the City Council approved $600,000 last fall.
That’s on top of the $482,000 the council approved for six new park rangers that the Parks Department will hire shortly to patrol the city’s downtown parks.
The cameras won’t go in, however, until Parks gives the council a full briefing on the operating protocols that the city plans to use. During the budget process in November, councilmembers passed a proviso prohibiting Parks from spending any of its 2008 allocation for the cameras until the council approves the protocols and passes a separate ordinance allowing the installation.
The cameras intended for Hing Hay, Occidental, and Steinbrueck are part of a one-year pilot program created by an interdepartmental surveillance camera team established by Mayor Nickels. Kathy Sugiyama, public information officer at the city’s Department of Finance, the lead agency for the team, says she’s not sure when Parks staff will return to brief the council. Council staff expect the briefing in the next few months.
Sugiyama says the Cal Anderson camera is not part of the $600,000 pilot program that the council put on hold. Nor is another camera to be installed shortly at the playfield behind Yesler Community Center.
According to a draft policies and procedures document obtained from the Parks Department, the pilot was to include up to 12 cameras in four downtown parks, which originally included Freeway Park, located behind the Washington State Convention & Trade Center.
The convention center operates three cameras adjacent to Freeway Park. Besides two pole-mounted cameras at the Volunteer Park Conservatory, the cameras would be the Parks Department’s first. Six of the city’s community centers already have outside cameras, which, like the one intended for Yesler, are monitored from inside the center.
The pilot cameras “will operate 24 hours a day in passive mode, capturing and recording video, without anyone monitoring the images in real time,” the policy document states. “However, when warranted by a ‘triggering event,’ such as a 911 call for service, an officer witnessing a crime in progress, or a Parks Department or… [another agency’s] report of possible criminal activity, the City may actively monitor in real time the images being captured by the cameras.”
“The City may also monitor in real time during periods of heightened alert, such as an act of terrorism or serious public disturbances,” the document states – but in no case will the system’s operators engage in racial or other profiling or target anyone for the exercise of free speech.
The policy paper indicates the cameras — which will not record audio — will have feeds to the Parks Department and the Police Department’s Communications Center and its West Precinct, with tape kept for 90 days — longer if it becomes evidence in the prosecution of a crime.
Prior to expanding the system, the documents state, the city will seek public comment. Doug Honig of the American Civil Liberties Union finds that cold comfort.
“We’re concerned by the proliferation of government surveillance cameras in public areas,” Honig says. “Overwhelmingly, they capture innocent conduct by law-abiding citizens and, despite the claims of their advocates, they don’t reduce crime.”
“If you’re a drug dealer or a prostitute, you just move someplace outside the camera range,” he says.
“I’m not 100 percent in favor of them and I’m not 100 percent against them,” says Tim Burgess, a new councilmember and head of the Public Safety Committee that’s likely to review the protocols. “I think [cameras] have an appropriate role to play, but what’s important are the circumstances and how they’re going to be used.” |
