At the September 1st regular meeting, the Anchorage Assembly did the thing they always do. They talked about feelings, they talked about trust, and then they cut a check.
They approved up to $598,998.10 for the Real Time Crime Center. Desks. Monitors. A bigger room at Elmore. APD says it is not more cameras. Just a nicer cockpit for the cameras they already have. Last year this same body already green-lit about $11.8 million so that center could pull up to 750 feeds. Traffic cams. Body cams. Business cams people volunteered. Drones. License plate readers on the cruisers through Axon. That is the system. Tuesday was the furniture for the control room.
The privacy ordinance that was supposed to put real rules in code sat there for public comment. Case numbers before you pull a live feed. Wipe the data in two weeks unless it is evidence. Assembly has to approve new surveillance gear. No handing footage to out-of-state or federal partners without a warrant.
McCormick, Volland, and Scout put that on the table because current city code cannot answer the basic questions. What are you collecting? Who sees it? How long do you keep it?
Chief Case’s answer was the same one every agency gives when the hardware is already in the building. Code cannot keep up. Policies are enough. Trust us. We are only compressing the time it takes to do what we already do. One speaker called it a lobster in a pot. The water warms slow so nobody jumps.
That is the whole meeting. Feelings up front. Trust me bro in the middle. Money at the end. Franklin already settled this. People who give up essential liberty to buy a little temporary safety deserve neither. Anchorage is not special.
Alaska’s constitution is stricter on privacy than most of the country and it still was not enough to stop the build first, write the rules later routine. Crime is up. Property crime jumped. So the pitch writes itself. More screens. Faster hits on plates. Safer streets. Same pitch every city uses while the camera count climbs and the retention policy lives in a binder the next chief can rewrite.
They are not Flock. They will say that all day. They use Axon. Facial recognition is already banned. Traffic footage overwrites in a few days unless somebody saves it. All true. Also true that a room built for 750 feeds does not stay a quiet little help desk forever. Software gets better. Sharing gets easier. The next request is never the last request.
Politics does what it wants. The vote last year already happened. Tuesday just paid for better chairs in the room that watches the city if you believe the government security state!
If you think that is public safety, say so. If you think it is a police state with nicer monitors, say that too. Either way stop pretending this was a debate. It was a recap of a decision that was already in motion.
Spy cameras. Real Time Crime Center. Half a million more. Trust us.
What do you think? Liberty or the feed?
Anchorage residents can give public testimony on AO-2026-108 at the regular Assembly meeting on September 15 or online here: Assembly – Public Testimony.
Full ordinance text: https://www.muni.org/Departments/Assembly/SiteAssets/Pages/focus-on-public-safety/AO%202026-108_1_Surveillance_Technology_Final.pdf.
