People protest after a grand jury decided not to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo in the Eric Garner case. (photo: Yana Paskova/Getty Images)
NYPD
Officers Accessed Black Lives Matter Activists' Texts, Documents Show
By George Joseph, Guardian
UK
04 April 17
Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal details of how police
posed as protesters amid unrest following the death of Eric Garner
Undercover
officers in the New York police department infiltrated small groups of Black
Lives Matter activists and gained access to their text messages, according to
newly released NYPD documents obtained by the Guardian.
The
records, produced in response to a freedom of information lawsuit led by New
York law firm Stecklow & Thompson, provide the most detailed picture yet of
the sweeping scope of NYPD surveillance during mass protests over the death of
Eric Garner in 2014 and 2015. Lawyers said
the new documents raised questions about NYPD compliance with city rules.
The
documents, mostly emails between undercover officers and other NYPD officials,
follow other disclosures that the NYPD regularly filmed Black Lives Matter activists and sent undercover
personnel to protests. The NYPD has not responded to the Guardian’s request for
comment or interview.
Emails
show that undercover officers were able to pose as protesters even within small
groups, giving them extensive access to details about protesters’ whereabouts
and plans. In one email, an official notes that an undercover officer is
embedded within a group of seven protesters on their way to Grand Central
Station. This intimate access appears to have helped police pass as trusted
organizers and extract information about demonstrations. In other emails,
officers share the locations of individual protesters at particular times. The
NYPD emails also include pictures of organizers’ group text exchanges with information
about protests, suggesting that undercover officials were either trusted enough
to be allowed to take photos of activists’ phones or were themselves members of
a private planning group text.
“That
text loop was definitely just for organizers, I don’t know how that got out,”
said Elsa Waithe, a Black Lives Matter organizer. “Someone had to have told
someone how to get on it, probably trusting someone they had seen a few times
in good faith. We clearly compromised ourselves.”
Keegan
Stephan, a regular attendee of the Grand Central protests in 2014 and 2015,
said information about protesters’ whereabouts was limited to a small group of
core organizers at that time. “I feel like the undercover was somebody who was
or is very much a part of the group, and has access to information we only give
to people we trust,” said Stephan, who has been assisting attorneys with a
lawsuit to obtain the documents on behalf of plaintiff James Logue, a
protester. “If you’re walking to Grand Central with a handful of people for an
action, that’s much more than just showing up to a public demonstration – that
sounds like a level of friendship.”
Joseph
Giacalone, a retired NYPD detective sergeant and professor at John Jay College,
agreed that it would not be easy for an undercover officer to join a small
group of protesters and hear their plans. “It would be pretty amazing that they
would be able to get into the core group in such a short window of time,” said
Giacalone. “This could have been going on a while before for these people to
get so close to the inner circle.”
The
NYPD documents also included a handful of pictures and one short video taken at
Grand Central Station demonstrations. Most are pictures of crowds milling about
or taking part in demonstrations. In one picture of a small group of activists,
the NYPD identifies an individual in a brown jacket as the “main protester”.
These images of protesters are reminiscent of those taken by undercover transit
police, who were also deployed to Black Lives Matter protests in
Grand Central Station in 2015.
Giacalone
said this type of leadership identification was standard police practice at
protests. “If you take out the biggest mouth, everybody just withers away, so
you concentrate on the ones you believe are your organizers,” he said. “Once
you identify that person, you can run computer checks on them to see if they
have a warrant out or any summons failures, then you can drag them in before
they go out to speak or rile up the crowd, as long as you have reasonable cause
to do so.”
Attorneys
say the documents raise legal questions about whether the NYPD was acting in
compliance with the department’s intelligence-gathering rules, known as the
Handschu Guidelines. The guidelines, which are based on an ongoing decades-old class-action lawsuit,
hold that the NYPD can begin formally investigating first amendment activity
“when facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that an unlawful act has been,
is being, or will be committed” and if the police surveillance plan has been
authorized by a committee known as the Handschu Authority. (That
committee was exclusively staffed by
NYPD officials at the time.) However, according to the guidelines,
before launching a formal investigation, the NYPD can also conduct
investigative work such as “checking of leads” and “preliminary inquiries” with
even lower standards of suspicion.
Michael
Price, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, said it was difficult to know
whether NYPD’s undercover surveillance operations crossed the line, as the
documents did not make clear what, if any, stage of investigation the police
were in at the time of the operations. But he said the department’s retention
of pictures and video raised questions, since police are not allowed to retain
information about public events unless it relates to unlawful activity.
“So my
question would be: what was the unlawful activity that police had reason to
suspect here?” said Price. “It doesn’t appear that there was any criminal
behavior they were talking about in the emails. Most references are to protesters
being peaceful, so I would be very concerned if they were hinging their whole
investigation on civil disobedience, such as unpermitted protests or blocking
of pedestrians.”
Throughout
the emails, the NYPD’s undercover sources provide little indication of any
unlawful activity, frequently characterizing demonstrators as peaceful and
orderly with only one mention of a single arrest.
“The
documents uniformly show no crime occurring, but NYPD had undercovers inside
the protests for months on end as if they were al-Qaida,” said David Thompson,
an attorney of Stecklow & Thompson, who helped sue for the records.
Giacalone
argued that police could have easily come up with a legal justification to
initiate surveillance, especially if such operations occurred after the shooting of two NYPD officers in
December of 2014 (all dates in the NYPD’s email communications
were redacted). But he noted that such investigative activities would be harder
to justify if officers were not directly observing signs of unlawful activity.
“If
they’re not talking about any crimes being committed, they’re going to have a
difficult time defending this. It may end up in another one of these lawsuits,”
said Giacalone. “Some may say this is good police work, fine, but good police
work or not, we have rules against this kind of thing in New York.”
Attorneys
have already filed a petition charging that the NYPD may have failed to produce
all of its surveillance records. But for some protesters, the damage has
already been done.
“In
the first couple of months, we had a lot of people in and out of the group,
some because they didn’t fit our style but others because of the whispers that
they were undercovers,” recalled Waithe. “Whether it was real or perceived,
that was the most debilitating part for me, the whispers … It’s really hard to
organize when you can’t trust each other.”
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment