San Diego Police have installed more smart streetlight cameras downtown just before Comic-Con – NBC 7 San Diego

San Diego residents have mixed feelings about smart street lights, some of which were installed by police last weekend in advance of the Pride festival in Hillcrest.

“I think it’s a privacy issue, I’m not very happy with it. You know, the technology of today, AI, any image can be captured and manipulated for a crime or whatever,” said Giovanni Zamora.

Andre Lowe said they are needed.

“I live downtown here, so I see a lot going on down here. I’ve actually had a lot of things happen down here, I just recently had my finger chopped off with a machete. I mean, that’s needed down here,” Lowe said.

San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl sent a memo to San Diego City Council members last week emphasizing the urgent need for the police department to install smart streetlights at nine new locations downtown and around the San Diego Convention Center.

The announcement came ahead of Comic-Con weekend, when nearly 150,000 people were expected at the convention center.

The memo states: “The expected large number of participants could represent a potential target of opportunity for individuals or groups interested in committing acts of violence or crime.”

However, privacy advocates fear that the police are circumventing city law… because the municipal code defines urgent circumstances as “emergency situations involving death or serious physical injury to a person or imminent danger or significant property damage.”

Seth Hall of the San Diego Trust Coalition said Comic-Con does not meet that definition because there is no immediate threat to the public.

“When any agency, including the police, comes along and says this event that has been planned for years in advance, or this event that we all know about is basically an emergency, and we’re creating an emergency when we don’t have any specific knowledge of a specific threat, and we want to circumvent the rules and do everything without oversight, that kind of behavior is very concerning and alarming to us. We don’t think that’s the right direction for the city. The rules exist, you have to follow the rules and the laws, and our police department should certainly be a leading example of following the rules and the laws,” said Seth Hall of the San Diego Trust Coalition.

Hall said the SDPD’s decision to circumvent transparency rules undermines trust between citizens and police.

“As the name of our coalition, TRUST SD Coalition, suggests, that’s what we’re trying to encourage here. We’re trying to inspire San Diego residents to use this technology the way the city government uses it. Actions like this are really not helpful,” said Seth Hall.

NBC 7 has reached out to the SDPD and is still awaiting a response. In the next few weeks, the City Council will have an opportunity to comment on the new camera installations. Chief Wahl said department officials would remove them if the City Council asked them to do so.