Community groups descended on Seattle City Hall Friday as the Mayor marked 100 days in office.
SEATTLE — Community groups descended on Seattle City Hall Friday, demanding Mayor Wilson permanently dismantle the city’s entire surveillance camera network, including the Seattle Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center, as the mayor marks 100 days in office.
Protesters called on Wilson to scrap all planned camera expansions and shut down every camera currently operating within the Real Time Crime Center network, which has been running under a two-year pilot project authorization since May 2025. Among their central concerns is the fear that surveillance data could ultimately end up in federal hands.
“The main thing is to turn off the cameras. That is really the main message,” said protester Gina Petry.
Demonstrators say Wilson is failing to follow through on commitments she made during her campaign, which they credit as a key reason she won their support.
“She has been in office for 100 days. This was one of her campaign promises. It is time to put it into action,” said protester Matt Payne.
Wilson has taken some steps on the issue, pausing further camera expansion and launching a privacy audit, but protesters say those measures fall short. At a town hall meeting two weeks ago, the mayor acknowledged the complexity of the issue and the need to understand a variety of perspectives.
“This is a controversial issue. There are very, very different opinions about the utility of the cameras, about the risks involved, and about whether this is a direction the city should be going in our approach to public safety,” Wilson said.
Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes has pushed back against calls to shut the system down, pointing to data showing officers make arrests three times more often when the Real Time Crime Center is involved. The department also says the technology helped detectives make arrests in more than half of last year’s homicide cases.
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