EXCLUSIVE: Seattle officials finally acknowledge police staffing shortages in justification for surveillance cameras

For years, Seattle officials publicly resisted acknowledging the full extent of the Seattle Police Department’s staffing crisis. While the Seattle Police Officers Guild repeatedly warned that the department had lost more than 700 officers since 2019, the City often disputed or minimized those figures.

But now, for the first time, the City has formally confirmed the scale of the crisis, not in a press release, not at a public safety briefing, but deep inside an administrative document drafted to justify the installation of new police surveillance cameras.

The City’s 2024 Surveillance Impact Report, obtained by The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, written to support a proposal for city-run CCTV systems, bluntly states that “over 700 officers” have departed SPD since 2019, leaving just 913 deployable officers as of January 2024, the lowest staffing level since 1991.

This acknowledgement stands in stark contrast to years of public messaging suggesting the situation was under control or stabilizing. Instead, the document describes a department experiencing “unprecedented patrol and investigations staffing shortages” that now hinder its ability to respond to emergencies, solve major crimes, or maintain basic coverage levels across the city.

This frank admission does not appear in any of the City’s public safety talking points. It appears only in the surveillance report because the staffing crisis is now being leveraged as the primary justification for bringing new surveillance systems to Seattle.

The Surveillance Impact Report ties the department’s diminished size directly to its request for sweeping new technologies. The City argues that CCTV cameras and other tools are needed not just to combat gun violence and human trafficking but to compensate for the department’s inability to field enough officers. The report states that the new technologies are intended “to mitigate unprecedented patrol and investigations staffing shortages” and “bolster police effectiveness” in areas where crime is concentrated, given that traditional strategies have been unable to keep pace.

The report makes clear that the new surveillance plan is not just a crime-fighting initiative but a structural response to the department’s depleted ranks. The proposed system includes city-run CCTV cameras positioned in high-crime areas, the ability for private businesses to voluntarily stream their camera footage directly to SPD, real-time analytics integrated into a centralized Real Time Crime Center, and expanded monitoring capabilities. These tools, the report argues, will help SPD “deter and detect persistent felony criminal behavior” at a time when the department lacks the workforce to do so through traditional patrols and investigations.

Rather than assuming that SPD will quickly rebuild its staffing levels, the City appears to be designing a long-term public safety strategy that relies on technology to fill the gaps. Surveillance becomes the solution for a department that, in its own words, now operates with the fewest deployable officers in over three decades.

For much of the past four years, City Hall maintained that SPD’s staffing woes were either exaggerated or gradually improving. In contrast, the surveillance report describes a department struggling to maintain basic functionality. It stresses that “low staffing levels” are delaying investigations and preventing officers from holding violent offenders accountable.

It also acknowledges that long-time efforts to reduce gun violence and human trafficking “have not been consistently successful,” and that the absence of personnel is one of the key obstacles.

The disparity between the City’s public reassurances and the internal admission in the surveillance report raises questions about transparency. Residents may reasonably wonder why this information was withheld until now, and why it emerges specifically in a document advancing a separate policy goal.