FULL INTERVIEW: Councilmember calls lack of security cameras at Seattle Center ‘pathetic’

Our Take

This is a familiar script: a violent incident happens in public, officials scramble for someone to blame, and within days a councilmember is on camera calling a lack of surveillance "pathetic." KOMO News' interview with Rob Saka captures the moment perfectly — the push isn't just for a few cameras at the Seattle Center, it's for plugging into Seattle's growing "real-time crime center" apparatus, the same kind of command-and-control hub that cities nationwide are building around Flock Safety hardware and data-sharing networks.

Nobody disputes that the Bite of Seattle shooting was scary and that bystanders deserve answers. But "we need cameras everywhere" is the easy answer, not necessarily the right one. More fixed cameras and ALPR feeds funneled into a central monitoring room means more permanent infrastructure, more data retention policies written after the fact, and more mission creep from "solving this one shooting" to tracking everyone who walks through a public plaza. Seattle already has a camera and surveillance footprint worth knowing about — check our map to see what's already watching your neighborhood before the next "emergency" expansion gets rubber-stamped.

Credit to KOMO News for getting Saka on record pushing this so plainly — it's useful to watch officials make the case for surveillance expansion in their own words, before the budget line items and vendor contracts get buried in a council agenda. If you want to push back on that process locally, our take-action page has tools for making your voice heard before the cameras go up.