Dec 27 '05 - 2268 W - Vote Good + 12 :: Bad - 11 New Video Evidence Shows NYPD Covert Surveillance of Cyclists and Protests
Published December 27, 2005 by DemocracyNow.org
Last Thursday, The New York Times published an article revealing that
it had obtained videotapes showing the New York Police Department
conducting surveillance by planting undercover officers to secretly
infiltrate and monitor anti-war protests, bike rallies, and even a
vigil for a dead cyclist. The footage the Times obtained showed
officers holding protest signs, carrying flowers with mourners, riding
their bicycles – and videotaping people at events.
The Times says that the footage shows at least ten undercover operatives taking part in seven public gatherings since the Republican National Convention in August 2004. In an editorial published the day after the story ran, The Times wrote, "it is a sad day when a police force generally known for its professionalism is caught using underhanded tactics to spy on and even distort political protests and mass rallies."
This is the latest in a series of revelations
about domestic spying that have come to light in the past few weeks.
Last week NBC News revealed that the Pentagon has been monitoring
peaceful anti-war protesters and the New York Times exposed how
President Bush ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on
Americans without court-approved warrants. Also, newly released
documents show that counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of
Investigation have been monitoring domestic organizations active in
causes as diverse as peace, the environment, animal cruelty and poverty
relief.
Jim Dwyer, New York Times Metro reporter, author of the expose on covert police surveillance published December 22nd.
Paul J. Browne, New York City Police Department's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.
Eileen Clancy, forensic video analyst and member of I-Witness video, a project that assembled hundreds of videotapes shot during the RNC.
Norman Siegel, longtime civil rights attorney. He is former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
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AMY GOODMAN: Our guests to talk about police surveillance of protest are Eileen Clancy of I-Witness Video; Jim Dwyer, New York Times reporter; Paul J. Browne joins us on the phone, Deputy Commissioner of Public Information for the New York Police Department; and Norman Siegel is with us in studio, long-time civil rights attorney, former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Jim Dwyer, let's begin with you, your expose of last Thursday. What did you find?
JIM DWYER: We found that in the last 16 months, there was very robust presence by disguised police officers at a number of events, including anti-war protests, poor people's march during the R.N.C. last year, and also at these mass bike rides, these group bike rides called Critical Mass. And until September 11th, the surveillance by the police of First Amendment-protected activities had been one of the most controlled and limited of all police powers, not only in New York City, but in big cities around the country, and also there were a lot of restrictions on the F.B.I.
After September 11, there were a lot of revisions made to those controls. They were done in each jurisdiction, but they all essentially moved in the same direction, which was to ease those restrictions. And New York Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly both sought to ease those restrictions, saying that the threat of terrorism was so great that they were handcuffed in preventing future terrorists because of these rules.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the videotapes that you got.
JIM DWYER: The videotapes were from a variety of sources. They were all accumulated by I-Witness Video by Eileen Clancy's sort of one-person operation, but with many tentacles, I would say, of information coming in from civilians, bystanders who were filming things, legal observers, activists who were filming stuff, as well as the police department's own video, which was made public, in effect, during these trials of people arrested at these protests or at the bike rides, because the videotape would be turned over as part of the discovery process during the pretrial proceedings.
AMY GOODMAN: And these videotapes that you say document undercover police work, describe them.
JIM DWYER: Well, in some cases, they're very explicit. You see people who are dressed up with buttons like "I'm a shameless agitator," or, you know, buttons describing the mayor with a kind of a vulgarity, and people putting stickers on their bikes that say, "Bicycle riding is not a crime," and so forth. And then they would go out and either circulate in the protest or they would ride in the bike ride. Sometimes they would be videotaping. Sometimes they would be holding slogans, you know, protest signs or signs indicating some kind of political belief.
And in one case -- or in a couple of cases, what you see is what appear to be faked or sham arrests taking place of these individuals, and the purpose of those arrests is not entirely clear, but we know that in one instance, it had a very profound effect on a demonstration, when a man was arrested, who seemed to be standing on a sidewalk doing nothing more than holding a sign. He's arrested by a police lieutenant, or a police lieutenant started the process of arresting him. The crowd -- this is during the R.N.C. -- objected to his arrest. People started shouting, “Let him go! Let him go!” And then, a confrontation developed between police officers in tactical riot gear and some of the people who were yelling and hollering about this arrest.
When you look at the videotape closely, it shows that the man actually did not have handcuffs on when he was led away. When they unzipped his backpack, it seemed that he had a radio of some sort in there, looked like a two-way radio, and he seemed to have a very cordial relationship, which was not typical at the moment of what was going on between the police and some of the demonstrators. So that was a pretty interesting piece of video.
And there was another piece where some officers -- some people were arrested during one of the bike rides. And one of the officers -- well, let me not jump ahead and say he's an officer. One of the people who was arrested gets down on his knees, and he says to the arresting officer, “I'm on the job,” which is police lingo for meaning, “'I’m a cop, I'm a police officer, too.” And so, the uniformed officer responds by saying, “Hey, Louis,” typically a way of saying, “Hey, Lieutenant,” “Hey, Louis, he's under.” So this man was led down the block and got back on his bike and away he rode. And two other people who were with him, a woman and a man, were put into the van with other people who were arrested, but about 25 minutes later, they were videotaped down in the Lower East Side at the scene of yet another arrest. So it was pretty clear that those people were not bike riders. It looks like the person who was arrested on 23rd Street holding the sign was not a protester. And that's what the videotapes show.
AMY GOODMAN: Paul Browne, you’re Deputy Commissioner of Public Information. Your response to the New York Times reporter's expose, Jim Dwyer?
PAUL J. BROWNE: Well, I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what -- it's just wrong, flatly wrong, to say that after September 11th our activity in these areas picked up. That's not what our reform of the Handschu Accord was all about. We went to court to have more leeway in conducting undercover investigations. Nothing described by Jim Dwyer was an undercover investigation. None of the officers were undercover officers. And it's more than a semantical difference in the police department.
What he describes is activities typically done by anti-crime or plainclothes officers, beside the large crowds, whether it be New Year's Eve, whether it be a political protest, to act or direct the actions of uniformed police officers when some sort of violence or criminal activity of any kind breaks out or lawbreaking, whether that would be just to arrest the bottle thrower in the middle of the crowd or direct his arrest or to identify the people blocking cross-town traffic during one of the mass bike rides in order to have them arrested. That's what he described. That's not undercover activity. It's not undercover police officers. It's not covered by Handschu. We did this kind of activity before and after September 11, and it's virtually unchanged. And that's the basic mistake in that reporting.
AMY GOODMAN: They're not undercover, they're what?
PAUL J. BROWNE: They're anti-crime or plainclothes officers. It may be a semantical difference in Jim's head, but it's not in the police department’s.
JIM DWYER: Actually, if I –
AMY GOODMAN: Jim Dwyer.
PAUL J. BROWNE: And the other thing is when he uses the term, “Hey, Louis, he's under," for your listeners, “under” means under arrest, not undercover.
JIM DWYER: Right. Well, he was promptly released, and whether he was undercover or plainclothes or whatever, but --
PAUL J. BROWNE: Can I interrupt one second, Jim? You’re modulating in and out. I don't know if there's a way to improve what I am hearing.
JIM DWYER: Okay, I will try and talk louder. One of the things that happened when the police department went into the -- when the city went in after 9/11 and sought different kinds of guidelines about the use of undercover officers was that it asked specifically that the distinction between undercover officers and plainclothes officers be eliminated from the guidelines that were put on them, and the court granted that request. It may still be that the function is, as Commissioner Browne says, entirely different, but that -- not to get too semantical on anyone.
AMY GOODMAN: On this issue of Handschu, for people who are not familiar with this agreement, I'd like to bring in Norman Siegel, long-time civil rights attorney. Explain what the Handschu Agreement is in New York.
NORMAN SIEGEL: First, it's Barbara Handschu and other political activists in the early 1970s, went to court on the premise that they were engaged in the First Amendment-protected activity and that the police were engaged in surveillance, spying on them, in violation of the First Amendment. In 1985, an agreement was entered into with the City of New York and the police department that, in effect, was a traditional check and balance on the police department, so with regard to video cameras at First Amendment activity, the police could turn on the video cameras when illegal activity was taking place or, in fact, someone was threatening or that there was imminent activity that was going to lead to illegal activity. There were also provisions in there with regard to when an undercover could engage in undercover, and it was basically a check.
There was a three-person commission that was set up that was supposedly independent of the police department that would review complaints by political activists with regard to surveillance, and they would put out an annual report. And, as Mr. Browne has stated, after 9/11, the police department and the City of New York went into the federal court and were able to lower the standard, and one of the concerns that I and other people in this civil rights community have is that we don't think the traditional check, the accountability that we need in a democracy, over our law enforcement people is present. And with the lowering of the standard, I believe that this activity has increased and will increase in the months and years to come.
AMY GOODMAN: And that issue, Paul Browne of undercover versus plain clothes, that Jim Dwyer just raised.
PAUL J. BROWNE: Well, there's two distinct functions here, what I’m talking about. Regardless of how he described them, that may not be important to your listeners, police officers who go to demonstrations in plain clothes are what we call anti-crime cops. They’re there for one purpose and that only. It has nothing to do with political surveillance. And that's the misleading part of that story. They're there to either intervene or to direct police intervention on some kind of lawbreaking that breaks out at that particular event.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do they get arrested?
PAUL J. BROWNE: They may get arrested or appear to be arrested just to keep functioning. I’m not certain that they did get arrested. I don't know who these individuals are, but assuming if some of them are police officers, they may be led away, as if they're under arrest, and then they continue to function.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. When we come back, we'll continue this conversation with Paul Browne, Deputy Commissioner of New York Police Department, Deputy Commissioner of Public Information; Norman Siegel, long-time civil rights attorney; Jim Dwyer of The New York Times; and we'll bring in Eileen Clancy of I-Witness Video who has videotape of so much of this undercover work.
Listen/Watch show: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/27/1444202
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