‘You can’t do that’: Gee and Ursula call out Seattle police access to restricted traffic cameras

A new report found Seattle police had access to a larger camera network than previously reported, according to KIRO 7.

For Gee Scott and Ursula Reutin, co-hosts of “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio, supporting police cameras does not mean giving the city a pass when it fails to follow its own rules.

“Yeah, you can’t do that,” Gee said.

Ursula explained that while many SDOT traffic cameras are public, police also received access to internal feeds that are not available to the public. Police could view those feeds through the Real-Time Crime Center starting last November, and the system automatically recorded them. Most recordings were deleted after 24 hours unless officers saved the footage as evidence.

But SDOT had not updated its policy or created a formal agreement explaining how police could use the cameras or recordings, raising concerns about privacy and oversight. Ursula noted the department attributed the inclusion of some nonpublic cameras to a mistake and was working to remove police access. Those cameras accounted for about 20% of the traffic camera feeds used by the center.

Gee questioned why the city had not established the rules before providing access.

“You can’t give access without updating the policy and updating the rules,” he said. “You got to do things the right way. And by the way, we’ve been really having a problem with transparency, ain’t we? What’s going on?”

Ursula on cameras: ‘The protections have to be very real’

Ursula argued that the findings illustrate why privacy concerns persist, even among people who support using cameras to help police.

“Yeah. But this is exactly why there are persistent concerns about privacy and how police are going to use these cameras,” she said. “And like you said, you and I are both totally in favor of using cameras in law enforcement. But the rules have to be very clear, and the protections have to be very real.”

Both hosts worried that the city’s handling of the feeds gives camera opponents more ammunition.

“You are giving proof that if the city can’t follow its own rules, that is the reason why Mayor Katie Wilson and critics are saying we need to study this more,” Ursula said. “Or we need to slow this down before we talk about any kind of expansion. And this is the kind of thing that helps make their argument.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.