Surveillance planned for Pioneer Square

The Pioneer Square Community Association plans to install three closed-circuit television cameras, or CCTVs, to monitor public areas as a way to prevent crime and make neighbors feel safer.

With a $20,000 grant for a one-year pilot project, the neighborhood group said it'll likely mount fixed cameras on private property to view parts of Occidental Park and the Yesler Way corridor near Third Avenue.

Video surveillance of public places is on the rise nationwide, and common in parts of Europe, renewing the debate about privacy rights. Everett, Tukwila, New York City and much of Great Britain now use CCTVs to watch subways, sidewalks, streets and stadiums.

The Pioneer Square project will be run by a community group, not a city agency.

"It's certainly not a panacea by any means," said Casey Jones, the association's executive director. "We hope to send a message that this place is cared for and there's an expectation that here in this public place you won't conduct illegal activity."

Civil rights activists say the idea smacks of George Orwell's "1984," the novel in which Big Brother uses cameras to monitor citizens' movements.

"The idea of being watched all the time makes me uncomfortable as a woman," said Susan Tillitt, an artist who lives in Pioneer Square.

"Cameras everywhere is a form of harassment in general. You don't spy on me for my safety. It's a creepy feeling, because you don't know who's watching you."

Lavale Smith, a homeless man who spends his day at the city park near Third Avenue and Yesler Way, said: "It's an invasion of privacy. Why here? That's wrong."

Doug Honig, public education director with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, speaking generally about video cameras, questioned how video cameras would be used: "Who has access to these tapes? How long are they stored? What's done with it?

"The overwhelming material they capture is legal conduct by law-abiding citizens. It's usually done for a benign reason. As we get more and more of these cameras, people get more used to them. Down the road, it moves us closer to Big-Brother-is-watching scenario."

Yesterday, Sunny Nguyen said he favored the idea because he thought it would help reduce crime.

"There will be more security around here," said Nguyen, who recently witnessed an assault at night. "I'm not worried about privacy. We're in a public place."

Once installed, within the next two or three months, the Pioneer Square cameras will capture digital footage that would be kept for "a short time," said Jones, who didn't know how long that would be. "We're not storing months and months worth of footage to try to use it in some way."

The group hasn't signed a contract or worked out other details, such as who will get access to the footage, but ideally police could request it, Jones said.

CCTVs have become increasing popular with law enforcement. In a 2001 report, the International Association of Police Chiefs found that 700 agencies use the cameras, mostly to help with investigations or gather evidence.

"It's no different than you or I standing on a street corner with a 35 millimeter camera taking pictures," said Mike Brasfield, former Seattle assistant police chief and a public safety coordinator with the South Downtown Foundation.

The foundation, formed in 1999 to distribute mitigation money from the new football stadium and exhibition center, provided $20,000 grants to three neighborhoods for cameras.

Within days, the Sodo Business Association plans to mount two video cameras onto private buildings to nail graffiti artists who've been tagging buildings in that south downtown neighborhood.

"The city does the best it can but it can't keep up with the public graffiti," said Mike Peringer, the group's president. "We are taking it upon ourselves to do something about it."

He declined to say where the cameras would be mounted, but that it would be on private property and would likely move. Inevitably it would trained on some public sidewalks and streets.

The cameras can zero in to read a license plate on a van and be monitored in real time by the company providing the equipment, Seattle Video, he said.

While Sodo and Pioneer Square move forward, the Chinatown/International District decided recently not to accept the grant because of concerns with operations, costs and the vendor.

Neighbors in the district also wrestled with issues of privacy, including the possibility that cameras create a false sense of safety for people. They ultimately will not accept the $20,000 grant, but still like the idea.

"We hope that we'll be able to use it in case crimes do happen," said Sue Taoka, executive director of the Chinatown/International District Public Development Authority. "If it becomes some level of deterrent, it creates a safer neighborhood overall."

Some proponents point out that people's public lives are already being watched.

More than 200 traffic cameras watch major freeways around greater Seattle. Cameras track car prowlers in Community Transit park-and-ride lots and watch over children in school playgrounds and lunchrooms.

King County Metro is in the process of installing camera systems aboard 160 buses and plans to add more.

"It's to make people feel safe, not just to catch bad guys," said Linda Thielke, Metro spokeswoman.

Four fixed cameras on 40-foot buses and five cameras on 60-foot buses broadcast real-time to a viewing station at Metro headquarters. Only transit police can get access to the recording, and so far they've done so only when a driver files an incident report, Thielke said. Tukwila police zero in on criminal activity along one of the worst sections of Pacific Highway South with video cameras.

In Everett, five cameras mounted on lamp posts at downtown intersections transmit images to a viewing room at the police station. Officers can pop a videotape into the player and record, but they don't automatically do so. Any long-term recordings require supervisor approval.

"It didn't cure the crime problem, it just added another tool for the police to use," said Lt. Marty Parker, who started the camera project five years ago after the downtown business association requested it. "With six cameras, officer can watch a multitude of areas."

Parker once observed a vicious juvenile assault in the viewing room and radioed a patrol officer to the scene. The suspect fled at the sound of approaching sirens, but Parker tracked the man with the pan-tilt-zoom cameras as he fled for three blocks.

Yet in Great Britain, where news reports estimate more than 1 million cameras patrol the cities and towns, two major studies of CCTV use have shown that they haven't clearly reduced crime. A report in June by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders found that of 24 English cities studied, 13 showed that crime had fallen since CCTV cameras were installed. In four, crime rose significantly, and in the other seven cities, cameras had no effect.

P-I reporter Phuong Cat Le can be reached at 206-903-0370 or phuongle@seattlepi.com

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