But more than a month into her term, Wilson has yet to signal whether she’ll take any concrete action to prevent that expansion, promising in recent weeks an announcement that has not yet come.
For a mayor who’s yet to fully define how she’ll govern following a campaign built on populist promises, the question of the cameras is a political litmus test.
On the one hand, she’s pledged to fight any whiff of federal immigration enforcement. Following the operation in Minnesota, she and her office have faced calls to plug any leaks of private information that could be used to detain immigrants in Seattle. Though there’s no evidence the city’s current cameras have ever been used toward those ends, the fear of it has been enough for advocates, including the ACLU of Washington and some members of the Seattle City Council, to oppose their use and urge her to delay further expansion.
On the other hand, since taking office, Wilson and members of her office have heard from residents concerned about public safety in Seattle, particularly in the days following the fatal shooting of two Rainier Beach High School students at a bus stop last month. Parents, and some students, have urged her to allow for more cameras in the neighborhood as the search for the shooter continues. Her police chief, Shon Barnes, has lobbied publicly on the cameras’ behalf.
Wilson, perhaps the city’s most progressive mayor in at least a generation, has made overtures of compromise and coalition building since the election, saying she’s unlikely to make progress on homelessness and public safety without the help of those who supported her opponent.
But now some voices within that broader coalition are competing for her ear, an early test for a new mayor.
Spokesperson Sage Wilson said the mayor continues to have concerns about the cameras, but has also been moved" by the stories she's heard from families affected by gun violence.
"She wants to get this right, not rush to a particular deadline," said Wilson, who is not related to the mayor. "So she and her team will continue to dig in, meet with people who have different opinions, and try to find the best way forward."
Seattle currently has 62 police cameras around the city, on Aurora Avenue, downtown and in the Chinatown International District.
Late last year, before the election, the council voted to expand their use to parts of Capitol Hill, near the sports stadiums and around Garfield High School. The vote was 7-2, and the decision was signed by then-Mayor Bruce Harrell.
Opposition to the cameras largely centered on the current federal administration and how it could take advantage of additional surveillance for immigration enforcement. The city put some safeguards around the cameras, promising to shut them off for 60 days if there was an effort by immigration enforcement to access them, for example, and deleting old footage. But the Police Department has acknowledged that while it does not cooperate with immigration enforcement, it may be compelled through legal avenues to turn over footage.
The ACLU, along with the immigrant and refugee rights group OneAmerica and the Asian Counseling and Referral Service, raised concerns about "federal misuse." And the city’s own office for civil rights penned a memo questioning the cameras' effectiveness and raising concerns about citizens’ rights.
"The most persistent finding is that the evidence is, at best, inconclusive," it reads.
“We are deeply concerned that the expansion of these tools will create an infrastructure where federal agencies can more readily target vulnerable communities, including immigrants and refugees,” said a letter signed by 18 community organizations including the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Washington and the Church Council of Greater Seattle.
For backers, though, the benefits outweighed the risks. Harrell touted them as an easy win to help police address gun violence, and Councilmember Bob Kettle said the city could put enough protections in place to keep them from being used for unintended purposes.
Barnes, in a recent “state of public safety” address, called them “invaluable.” A spokesperson for the Seattle Police Department said that since they went live in May, the current cameras have played a role in nearly half of the city’s homicide investigations and more than 2,500 other cases.
The deliberations around the cameras unfolded during the mayoral campaigns, and became a wedge issue between the two candidates.
“Turning on more cameras won’t magically make our neighborhoods safer,” Wilson said in September. “But it will certainly make our neighbors more vulnerable. As the Trump administration escalates its attacks on immigrants, trans people, and big cities in general, we need to prioritize safety, not surveillance.”
Harrell sought to paint Wilson as disconnected from the safety concerns of people living in neighborhoods with disproportionate gun violence.
Now that she’s been elected, Wilson has run into dueling lobbying campaigns, for and against the cameras. Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Eddie Lin, progressives who oppose their expansion, have made overtures to her to delay new deployment. A spokesperson for Lin, Garrett Plescow Moore, confirmed that the council member opposed new cameras.
"We continue to be concerned about the extensive use of surveillance technology in Seattle, including CCTV, [automated license plate readers], and real-time crime center software, said Molly Quinton, spokesperson for the ACLU of Washington.
A volunteer for Wilson’s campaign, Dan Howes, called Wilson's delay to take action “unacceptable” in a recent op-ed.
“Turn the damn cameras off,” he wrote.
But Wilson’s office has also faced personal pleas in favor of more cameras. After two young people, Tyjon Malik Stewart, 18, and Tra'Veiah Houfmuse, 17, were shot and killed near Rainier Beach High School last month — a case that has not been solved — Wilson and members of her staff attended a memorial.
There, Angelia Hicks-Maxie, Parent Teacher Student Association president of Rainier Beach High School, said she urged Wilson’s deputy mayor, Brian Surratt, to allow for more cameras. Hicks-Maxie understands some of the concerns raised about surveillance, but said they’re secondary to the pain of people whose families have experienced gun violence.
“I feel like there’s people who are sitting in their lily-white towers looking down on us and trying to tell us what’s best for us,” she said. She appreciated Wilson’s presence at the memorial, but said she would fight any effort to turn off or delay the implementation of cameras.
As for the downtown and business interest groups with whom Wilson has pledged collaboration, they’re pushing hard for continued expansion.
“They’ve made our city safer,” said Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association, “and I think it makes no sense, in the name of standing up to the Trump administration, to harm Seattle.”
The council is considering legislation that would remove language from Seattle law instructing cooperation with federal officers, and Wilson has issued directives to police to document and verify any reported immigration enforcement activity.
© 2026 The Seattle Times. Visit www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
