After 21-year-old culinary student Nicole Westbrook was killed in a random drive-by shooting last year, Seattle police detectives had an easy idea for trying to identify the white sedan involved: Check for any photos snapped by red-light traffic cameras nearby.
“You’d figure somebody who had just shot someone might not be stopping at all the red lights,” said Ian Goodhew, deputy chief of staff to King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg.
There was just one problem. State law bars police — or anyone — from accessing the red-light footage for any purpose other than proving traffic violations.
So while surveillance video from a building near the shooting scene captured the side of the car, police were unable to look at its license plate number.
Nine months later, Westbrook’s slaying remains unsolved, and changing the law to allow investigators to obtain such images with a search warrant is a top priority for police and the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.
A bill introduced in the Legislature by Reps. Cathy Dahlquist, R-Enumclaw; Christopher Hurst, D-Enumclaw; and Chad Magendanz, R-Issaquah, would accomplish that.
“Especially in violent crimes, it is just another tool investigators can use to narrow down who a suspect is,” Goodhew said. “It’s not often we need it, but when we do need it, it’s often a very serious case.”
The House Public Safety Committee held a hearing on the bill Wednesday.
Representatives of the police departments in Tacoma and Lacy – two cities with red light cameras – said they knew of no past cases in which investigators sought footage but saw value in having access to it.
“The cameras could be very helpful in getting a license plate,” Lacey Police Chief Dusty Pierpoint said.
Pierpoint said he understands the privacy concerns involved, but said he didn’t think residents would oppose using the cameras to identify vehicles involved in felonies.
“The community benefits when that happens,” he said.
The restriction on accessing the photos and video from the cameras, including school speed-zone and toll cameras, was intended to prevent the misuse of the footage in violation of people’s privacy rights — and the creation of a “surveillance society,” said Shankar Narayan, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, which is opposing the bill.
Staff writer Jeremy Pawloski contributed to this report.
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