SEATTLE — This story was originally posted to MyNorthwest.com
The Seattle Police Department (SPD) announced it will not tap into closed-caption television (CCTV) cameras to monitor the hundreds of thousands of soccer fans expected to travel to the city during this summer’s World Cup, unless an incident is deemed a credible threat.
The decision was announced during a media tour of Seattle’s Emergency Operations Center Monday, following a directive from Mayor Katie Wilson.
“In support of Mayor Wilson’s directive, those will only be activated in the event there’s a credible threat, or there we are responding to an incident in those areas, which is our policy with our Real Time Crime Center,” SPD Captain Daniel Nelson explained during a press conference portion of the media tour. “So that’s how they’ll be leveraged.”Wilson recently took action on the issue of law enforcement’s use of CCTV cameras by pausing further camera expansion and launching a privacy audit.
“This is a controversial issue. There are very, very different opinions about the utility of the cameras, the risks involved, and whether this is a direction the city should be going in its approach to public safety,” Wilson said two weeks ago during a town hall meeting.
Last week, protestors at City Hall demanded Wilson to permanently dismantle the city’s entire surveillance camera network, including SPD’s Real Time Crime Center. Many fear camera footage can be used by federal agents for immigration enforcement or other uses.
SPD chief defends Real Time Crime Center
SPD Chief Shon Barnes has pushed back against calls to shut the system down entirely, citing data showing officers are three times more likely to make arrests when the Real Time Crime Center is involved.
The department also said the technology helped detectives make arrests in more than half of last year’s homicide cases.
The World Cup, which officially starts on June 15 in Seattle with a match between Egypt and Belgium at Lumen Field, is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of fans from all over the globe. During the emergency operations tour, April Putney, the Chief Strategy Officer for Seattle FIFA World Cup 2026, said they’ve seen tickets for games at Lumen being purchased by people in 180 different countries.
Seattle’s Emergency Operations Center will serve as the safety hub for fans and residents alike and will include representatives from 40 agencies, with SPD, the Seattle Fire Department (SFD), and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) leading and coordinating all safety efforts.
Part of SDOT’s role includes establishing an exclusion zone during all six match days in June and July that will stretch about a mile around the stadium — from Yesler Way to Royal Brougham and from 1st Avenue to the Lumen and T-Mobile Park. Also, on match days, no parking will be allowed in that area starting at 2 a.m.
Nelson told KIRO Newsradio that CCTV cameras help police monitor crowds more efficiently than having officers on the ground relay information over radios. Cameras also help avoid confusion surrounding suspect descriptions and locations.
“It gives decision makers a real-time view of what it actually looks like,” Nelson said. “Because you play the game telephone when you’re describing something over the radio that might look very different, or you might interpret it as being very different from what it actually looks like in the field. CCTV is a really great tool, but again, we’re going to be compliant with the direction that is put forth by Mayor Wilson.”
He also said the city has successfully used CCTV at other large events, such as Taylor Swift concerts and the MLB All-Star Game.
“I mean, cameras are great again. It’s a great technology. It’s an efficiency tool for intel gathering,” Nelson said. “At the same time, we want to make sure that there are a lot of privacy concerns around any type of surveillance tool, any type of technology, and so we want to make sure that our response is supportive of that.”
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