Public Records Show Cops Are Still Very Interested In Surveilling People Who Protest Against Cops

Legal Issues

from the First-Amendment-casually-brushed-aside-again dept

There are few groups of people cops like less than people who don’t like cops. But it’s not that these people don’t like cops, per se. It’s that they’re tired of cops doing whatever they want whenever they want with near-zero accountability.

Cops continue to bad things, like murder unarmed people while “effecting arrests.” These actions prompt protests. Police are asked to oversee these protests to prevent things like further violence and/or property damage. Because they’re asked to police anti-police protests, they far too often choose to treat protected First Amendment expression as a criminal act.

It’s very much human nature to respond to antipathy with some of your own. The problem is cops are expected to rise above this human response to carry out their directives: keeping the peace and ensuring laws are respected by protesters.

But they don’t respect protesters, much less their rights. So, even if protesters are respecting the laws, law enforcement officers are going to do what they want to do, no matter how violent or unconstitutional it is. That’s the upshot of slew of documents obtained by the Brennan Center following several public records requests, as well as the inevitable litigation it took to force the Washington DC Metro Police to comply with the district’s public records laws.

The documents show DC Metro cops deliberately targeting protected expression by tracking and surveilling anti-police violence protests and the groups behind these demonstrations. Not only were they targeting people apparently for the sole reason of gaining more information about people who weren’t happy with their local law enforcement, they were sharing this information with federal law enforcement agencies.

We obtained documents from February 2020 to January 2023 showing that the MPD compiled information largely collected from social media platforms about upcoming demonstrations and other public events, including the date, time, location, organizer, and estimated crowd size for each assembly. During racial justice protests in the summer of 2020, the MPD provided these lists to federal agencies, including the Secret Service, National Park Service, and the Department of Defense. Likewise, federal agencies disseminated similar lists to email threads that included over a dozen local, municipal, state, and federal government officials.

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In response to one email from an MPD lieutenant asking for accounts and posts from people on social media who were “urging people to riot,” one U.S. Capitol Police representative stated that they were tracking groups such as the DC chapters of Black Lives Matter, Refuse Fascism, and Showing Up for Racial Justice, along with terms including “Protest DC,” “Justice for George Floyd DC,” “BLM DC,” and “No Justice No Peace DC.” The Capitol Police official did not provide any evidence that these groups had “urg[ed] people to riot,” nor did the official demonstrate that the phrases they were tracking corresponded to credible threats to public safety.

It’s not that the Metro PD shouldn’t attempt to stay abreast of current developments to ensure proper staffing for upcoming protests. It’s that Metro PD officers and officials drilled down into the collected data for the sole reason of finding almost any reason to track down and arrest them for activities entirely unrelated to the protests the PD claimed it was monitoring.

In one case, a DC police officer flagged a post from a woman about an upcoming protest and then dug deeper into her social media profile to find a photo supposedly depicting a child she had left sleeping in her car while she participated in an earlier protest.

On top of that, the Metro PD made liberal use of the term “Antifa” to depict people as potential threats to officers and the general public. The woman with the sleeping child picture was claimed to be (without supporting evidence) to be “one of the main Antifa organizers in DC.”

This happened so often even the federal agencies the Metro PD shared its “intelligence” with pushed back. The Secret Service rejected one such “Antifa” report by noting the targeted protest group (All Out DC) had never posted anything “inciting violence” on its multiple social media accounts. Metro officers handling protest surveillance also claimed (without evidence) that people participating in vigils for people killed by police officers were far more likely to commit acts of violence.

As if this is isn’t disturbing enough, here’s the background on the Metro PD officer who was in charge of the intelligence gathering depicted in the documents obtained by the Brennan Center:

Notably, the MPD officer who oversaw the department’s intelligence branch at the time and was heavily involved in these activities was suspended and subsequently indicted in part for allegedly providing Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, with information about police investigations into the group.

It was more than a casual disregard for the First Amendment. From all appearances, this “intelligence gathering” seems to have been infected by the head officer’s desire to shield pro-cop bigots from scrutiny while demonizing their opposition as “Antifa” or worse. And that means the intelligence-gathering operation had far less to do with ensuring the safety of the general public than generating the confirmation bias needed to take action against activists seeking social justice.

Worse, the supposedly protest-targeted surveillance was expanded to cover entire neighborhoods in DC — neighborhoods mainly populated by black residents. What began as a public safety oriented effort, supposedly aimed at ensuring proper staffing and response to upcoming demonstrations, became just another tool of oppression to be wielded by a Metro PD officer with ties to known (and acknowledged!) bigots.

We also obtained heavily redacted SCI Area Enforcement reports from May to July 2014 containing information about four designated areas or groups — Benning Corridor, Choppa City, Barry Farm, and Washington Highlands, which are in overwhelmingly Black wards of DC — sourced almost entirely from Twitter. Though each report states that it contains information found on social media “pertaining to ongoing criminal activities, beefs, and retaliations,” the little information that the MPD left unredacted demonstrates that these reports also include events and gatherings that appear far more innocuous, such as a birthday party, a graduation celebration, a cookout, a trip to Six Flags, a mixtape release party, and a concert.

Beyond that, there’s the usual cop disregard for laws, rules, and policies erected by others. Fake social media accounts were used to collect information — something police agencies have been repeatedly told by Meta and others violates their terms of service. The documents obtained here include communications and presentations where officers and officials openly acknowledge their actions with violate user agreements with the sites they monitor. Not included in these documents is any suggestions cops shouldn’t do this sort of thing, much less any policy forbidding investigators and officers from breaking the rules at targeted websites.

There’s not a lot that’s truly astounding in this document dump. But that’s not to say it’s not worth looking at or pointing out. Instead, it’s more confirmation that American law enforcement considers constitutional rights, internal policies, and third-party user agreements subservient to its surveillance goals. And, somehow, cops are still wandering around apparently just astounded the general public doesn’t like them, much less trust them.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, dc metro police, police, protests, surveillance