Seattle PD gives false statements to city council before surveillance tech vote, again

The Seattle Police Department (SPD) commanders continue to disseminate false information to the public and elected lawmakers. That conduct may be criminal under Washington State Law. However, the arbiter of whether or not their conduct should be referred for criminal charges is SPD themselves. A top SPD executive now says no lies were told. 

On September 19, 2024, SPD Captain James Britt testified to Seattle city council members at city hall during a briefing regarding the potential authorization of new surveillance technology to be used by the SPD.

Britt told council that SPD’s Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) is “a very impressive space, but it's not receiving any information,” and that SPD had “built the room but never really turned on the technology.”

Both statements are easily disproved through documentation obtained through public record requests, which reveal SPD’s expansive use of the RTCC in 2020 to surveil Black Lives Matter protests. 

The use of SPD’s RTCC was so well known that it was written into consolidated action plans and operations checklists for the city’s Emergency Operations Center. Office of Emergency Management staff were even previously given a tour of the RTCC to “look at the systems and technology used by the RTCC along with how the center provides direct support to SPD field operations.”

Officers working within SPD’s RTCC surveilled protests, including watching for city council members, monitored national events and social media, monitored precinct CCTV cameras,  received and processed tips, directed officers in the field to stop a vehicle, prepared bulletins, identified and tracked a woman to be arrested by SPD, helped other SPD units investigate, and overrode Cameleon control to SDOT’s live street cameras to watch protesters. Reporting by Real Change showed that SPD utilized the RTCC to watch King County Sheriff Guardian One helicopter’s live aerial surveillance feed of the protests. 

In multiple SPD Incident Action Plans from 2020, the department indicates that SPD’s Criminal Intelligence Section staffed the RTCC each weekday and that the “RTCC will operate 0600-2300 hours.”

Despite all of this, SPD’s Captain Britt told sitting lawmakers that SPD’s RTCC is “not receiving any information.”

Under Washington State Law RCW 9A.76.175, “A person who knowingly makes a false or misleading material statement to a public servant is guilty of a gross misdemeanor. ‘Material statement’ means a written or oral statement reasonably likely to be relied upon by a public servant in the discharge of his or her official powers or duties.”

In a written statement provided to HardPressed, SPD’s Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey wrote, “There was no false statement. Captain Britt was referring to the types of surveillance technologies being discussed - specifically the lack of cameras that he went on to explain are necessary for a functioning real-time crime center.  The point that the RTCC doesn't have the technologies it needs to serve our communities suffering from gun violence and human trafficking seems to have been clear to our elected officials.”

Gross misdemeanors are prosecuted by the Seattle City Attorney’s Office (SCAO), who reviews cases after they have been referred to the SCAO by the SPD. An SCAO spokesperson told HardPressed that no criminal referral has been made related to Captain Britt’s misleading comments to council members.

Real Change has previously reported that immediately prior to a vote to expand another SPD surveillance technology, Maxey also made statements to council members that were not true.

Seattle city council is now slated to vote on whether to approve SPD’s surveillance technology request to install real time CCTV camera systems throughout the city and to expand SPD’s RTCC surveillance capabilities. The cost of these proposed systems has ballooned into the millions of dollars, as Amy Sundberg recently covered in The Urbanist. 

In a statement provided to HardPressed, Seattle Solidarity Budget wrote that “SPD and the Mayor’s office have been misleading the public from the start regarding this massive expansion of surveillance. They’ve misled the public on cost, how the technologies will be used, and whether or not SPD already has the technologies."

Solidarity Budget went on to say, “this dishonesty by SPD along with all of the harms surveillance creates are why dozens of organizations including the Rainier Beach Action Coalition, the CID Coalition, Strippers are Workers, Massage Parlor Outreach Project, Friends of Denny Blaine, Casa Latina, Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocate, ALCU-WA, CAIR Washington, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Community Surveillance Working Group [CSWG], have asked City Council to reject these technologies. Our city’s leaders are asking us to trust a contemptuous police force, who have repeatedly lied to the public, with surveillance technology that inherently invades privacy. This will only further exacerbate the harms and inequities suffered by the most vulnerable in our city while failing to produce true safety for all.”

Lt. Britt’s council testimony was made in front of council members Joy Hollingsworth, Rob Saka, and Robert Kettle. None of the council members responded to requests for comment.

The full Seattle city council will vote today October 8, 2024, at 2pm on Council Bill 120844 and 120845 which would dramatically expand SPD surveillance throughout the city against the recommendations of the city’s own CSWG, the ACLU-WA and numerous community organizations.