Welcome to The Newsfeed.

We're here at Seattle City Hall.

One of the controversial issues facing Seattle's new mayor is whether or not to expand the city's surveillance cameras.

On the campaign trail, then mayoral candidate Katie Wilson rallied against the cameras, arguing they would be used to harm vulnerable communities.

Now, in the wake of gun violence in Rainier Beach and the Chinatown International District, some community members want those cameras turned on.

I sat down with Mayor Katie Wilson to discuss this complex and contentious issue, to learn where she stands today.

Here's a portion of that conversation.

One of the things when we talk about gun violence, is that grieving and mourning that the Rainier Beach community is currently dealing with right now, losing two students to gun violence.

What do you want to see in terms of stronger gun violence prevention policy?

-One thing that we're doing in the wake of those shootings is, working with our police department and with the schools to formulate this kind of... and with community based organizations, this kind of 90 day plan for really supporting the community and trying to make sure that there's not retaliatory violence, right, that things don't escalate.

And so that's like a lot of like support, for individuals and for, and for folks in the schools.

And part of that, too, is working with our police department to make sure that there's increased police presence in, in that area.

And one thing that I heard loud and clear when I went down and talked to young people, young folks at Rainier Beach High School, is that they do want that increased police presence, but it's also really important that the officers who are there also understand the community, ideally come from the community, right?

Look like them, right?

Like they really want to know that they can trust the officers.

-It seems you're currently, weighing the best route, the expansion of the city's existing CCTV surveillance cameras.

There's a lot of talk on both sides about going forward with the cameras and expansion or not.

Where do you stand today?

-This is a very like, complex an contentious issue, obviously.

And there are really strong feelings in the community for very good reasons.

Right.

Because I think the bottom line and what we all agree on is that people deserve to feel safe in their community.

Everyone deserves to feel safe walking around.

And right now that's not the case.

And the reasons why that's not the case are multiple, right?

Because we have levels of gun violence that are much higher than they should be, because we are in a position where we're facing threats from the federal government and from... and from potential surges in ICE activity.

You know, I think the issue with the cameras we're weighing very carefully.

I'm weighing very carefully.

The concerns that I expressed during the campaign, I very much still have about the security of the images and the footage that is being captured by our CCTV cameras.

That footage is held locally for five days and then deleted, but the risk, the biggest risk is really when there is an incident and SPD or the CARE department like goes to view footage and, it gets uploaded.

And at that point it's in the cloud.

And so we're trying to figure out now basically where, where the servers are.

Right.

Like, is that in a state that has protections like Washington does or not.

So we're trying to learn more about the security or potential insecurity of that data, and at the same time, weighing the risk of the misuse of that data against what the CCTV, CCTV cameras are used for.

Right.

And so, you know, when there is a crime, the CCTV cameras have proved useful in being able to apprehend the suspect and also being able to rule out suspects.

Right.

So if the police bring someone in and you can look at the camera, you can say, well, that's not that person.

They can release them, right?

There's a real usefulness to those cameras.

And at the same time there's a risk.

And so we're trying to weigh that very carefully because again, there are strong feelings and like really legitimate feelings in the community on, on both sides of that.

-I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching The Newsfeed, your destination for nonprofit Northwest News.

For more of our interview with Mayor Katie Wilson, visit CascadePBS.org.