City, police must stop spying (again) on protesters
Forty years ago, in a federal court consent decree, the City of Memphis and the Memphis Police Department agreed to stop spying on its citizen protesters.
Last week, a federal judge ruled that the city and its police department have been spying on its citizen protesters -again.
“The city engaged in ‘political intelligence’ as defined and prohibited by the consent decree” of 1978, U.S. District Judge Jon McCalla wrote in an order released Friday.
McCalla will determine the extent of the city’s misdeeds, and possible sanctions, at a bench trial scheduled to begin Aug. 20.
Meanwhile, it’s worth emphasizing what the city did wrong and why it matters; especially at a time when American civil liberties such as free speech and privacy rights are being challenged from Washington to Moscow.
The 1978 consent decree was the first in U.S. history forbidding domestic intelligence units that monitor First Amendment activities of citizens.
It prohibited the city “from engaging in law enforcement activities which interfere with any person’s rights protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution including, but not limited to, the rights to communicate an idea or belief, to speak and dissent freely, to write and to publish, and to associate privately and publicly for any lawful purpose.”
The 1978 consent decree was the result of findings that police had been spying on citizens for more than a decade, clearly targeting “Civil Rights, Union, and Negro Coalition activities” as well as Vietnam War protesters.
A two-year investigation showed police had been illegally tracking mail, bank, telephone and student records, searching homes and otherwise surveilling members and meetings of the NAACP, AFSCME, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, as well as public school employees and church groups.
The consent decree specifically stated that the city “shall not engage in political intelligence.” That was defined as “the gathering, indexing, filing, maintenance, storage or dissemination of information, or any other investigative activity, relating to any person’s beliefs, opinions, associations or other exercise of First Amendment rights.”
Last week, Judge McCalla ruled that the city and Memphis police clearly gathered and disseminated “political intelligence” about citizens “relating to their associations protected by the First Amendment.”
In January 2017, police compiled a list of people “associated” with Keedran Franklin and other members of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens who had participated in a peaceful “die-in” protest at Mayor Strickland’s home the previous month.
The list of 53 names included social media “friends” and others who did not participate in the protest.
Police later added those names to an unrelated existing list of about two dozen people who required a police escort at City Hall.
Police created fake social media accounts – one in the guise of ‘Bob Smith’ – to gather and disseminate information on various “protest groups” connected to “causes” ranging from police shootings to Greensward parking.
Police assigned plainclothes officers to photograph various protests and demonstrations “to identify participants that were there.”
Police gave PowerPoint presentations on the information they’d gathered on protesters to other law enforcement agencies as well as to outside organizations such as FedEx, St. Jude and AutoZone.
Those intelligence briefings included information on gatherings at two local churches, a panel discussion at Abyssinian Baptist Church and a Black Lives Matter meeting at Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church, as well as a charity event called “Black Owned Food Truck Sunday”.
As it did in the 1970’s, the city claims its recent actions were not politically motivated, and were not taken “for purposes of intimidation or harassment” but merely “to gather intelligence on potentially unlawful activities.”
But McCalla ruled that the “consent decree’s prohibition against political intelligence is absolute” and does not depend “on whether the city’s intent was to intimidate or harass. The judge did agree that “there is a genuine dispute” about the city’s intent.
“Viewed in the light most favorable to the City, the purpose behind the City’s actions was to promote public and police safety, not to gather or disseminate information relating to the exercise of First Amendment rights,” McCalla wrote.
Whatever McCalla can determine about the city’s intentions, the individuals and groups that were targeted by its “political intelligence” gathering felt harassed and intimidated.
Police have a duty to investigate criminal activity and protect the public.
As they were reminded 40 years ago, that doesn’t give them the right to violate our civil liberties, such as free speech, free association, and peaceful assembly and protest.