The Seattle Police Department for the first time revealed its Real Time Crime Center has access to hundreds more cameras than it previously reported.
Since launching last year, the number of surveillance cameras feeding live footage into the center has swelled to 427, even as concerns and debate over surveillance technology intensified. Those cameras comprise 308 installed by the Police Department, 96 operated by the city’s Transportation Department and 23 owned by three unidentified business owners in the East Precinct, police officials said Wednesday in a phone call.
An additional 893 privately owned cameras are registered with the crime center, allowing analysts to see the cameras’ locations and contact their owners to request footage when responding to a 911 call or during an investigation.
The Police Department's use of private cameras caught the attention of Lisa Judge, the city's inspector general for public safety, who flagged concerns in an annual review of police surveillance technology.
“(The Seattle Police Department's) position now is they’re going to try to integrate cameras from anywhere in the city privately,” said Dan Pitts, an audit supervisor for the inspector general's office. “They need to have clearer structure around the organization and criteria and retention.”
The 1,320 cameras registered with or integrated into the Real Time Crime Center represent a far higher number than ever reported by the city or police officials. Many of those devices are located outside of downtown Seattle, the Chinatown International District and Aurora Avenue North — the three areas where Seattle police were allowed to install surveillance cameras under an April 2025 pilot program.
The number of cameras installed by Seattle police is also five times higher than the 62 previously reported.
The agency has installed five cameras in each of 62 locations, with each location — or “cabinet” — having cameras facing east, north, west and south and one pan-tilt-zoom camera. Police shut down two cameras at one location on Aurora Avenue North over concerns about its view of a reproductive health clinic, Real Time Crime Center technology director Nick Zajchowski said in a phone call.
Not included in the count are 105 inactive cameras installed in 21 locations throughout the stadium district ahead of this summer’s FIFA Men's World Cup games, which Mayor Katie Wilson turned off after the tournament.
Meanwhile, Seattle police have said little about the growing number of privately owned cameras it has access to through Connect Seattle, a program the agency quietly launched last April without any public announcement or seemingly any discussions with the City Council.
The program is not identified or described anywhere on the city’s or Police Department's websites, including a webpage about the Real Time Crime Center and closed-circuit television camera program. Mentions of the program have appeared in passing on local technology and neighborhood blogs.
For the last 18 months, residents and business owners have been able to register their cameras with the Real Time Crime Center, or make their cameras’ live feeds accessible within the system.
Business owners can volunteer to give the crime center access to their cameras’ live feeds, which analysts can access 24/7 without the owners’ permission. To provide such access, the owners must buy and install an Axon device into their camera, which allows artificial intelligence to search their footage for objects like an article of clothing or a vehicle.
An October 2024 policy allows Seattle police to integrate private cameras into the Real Time Crime Center's pilot program if they provide a plan on how they would do so to the city’s Public Safety Committee.
Brian Maxey, who at the time was the Police Department's chief operating officer, emailed such a plan for Connect Seattle on March 31, 2025, to Councilmember Bob Kettle, chair of the committee. The cameras, Maxey wrote, would help police and Real Time Crime Center analysts pinpoint the location of crimes, suspects and victims and reduce the time needed to collect evidence.
The plan included 11 privacy protections, including only using cameras facing public areas, not using facial recognition tools, and restricting access to the footage to authorized personnel. To get people signed up for the program, crime-prevention coordinators would speak to community groups, while patrol officers would distribute business cards with a QR code linking to the program’s website, the plan stated.
No part of the plan mentioned publicly announcing the change to the Real Time Crime Center, or requesting feedback from the public on any potential impacts on privacy or civil liberties. The plan did not need to be approved by the City Council or mayor to be implemented.
The inspector general's report released Wednesday said police policies allow using private cameras as a “future possibility,” but they do not offer a criteria for how they should be used. Based on Seattle’s 2017 surveillance ordinance, the criteria should “at minimum” include guidance on where in the city they can be located, how long their footage can be retained and how to respond if an owner moves their camera to face a nonpublic space, according to the report.
Judge, the inspector general, recommended the Police Department and city leaders adopt policies and procedures for accessing privately owned cameras. Seattle police agreed with that recommendation and said it would propose such policies and procedures by March 15, 2027, the report states.
The report came two days after a separate review by the city auditor, which found Seattle police had accessed some nonpublic city traffic camera streams for months, despite a policy barring the cameras from being used for law enforcement purposes.
It remains unclear how much Mayor Wilson knows about Connect Seattle. A representative for her office responded to an inquiry, but did not agree to an interview or provide a statement.
In a phone interview Wednesday, Seattle police spokesperson Sgt. Patrick Michaud said the agency did not publicly announce the launch of Connect Seattle because it did not want to advertise for Axon. The police technology vendor’s products power the Real Time Crime Center and the devices plugged into private cameras that are accessed by the system. The city paid Axon nearly $3.5 million last year for its technology, according to the inspector general's report.
“It’s a bad use of city resources to be advertising for a private company,” Michaud said. “We need people to be able to trust that they can come to Seattle Police Department pages or blotter for news, rather than advertising.”
Michaud said the city published a webpage about its CCTV cameras and Real Time Crime Center but not Connect Seattle because the former two involve city-owned cameras, not private property.
Responding to questions about the level of transparency around Connect Seattle, Kettle said in a phone interview that he could “do more in terms of oversight.” He plans to speak to police officials and the city’s public safety director to get a “status check” on the program, which should balance public safety with privacy and civil liberties.
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