City Is Rebuffed on the Release of ’04 Records

City Is Rebuffed on the Release of ’04 Records

ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: August 7, 2007
A federal judge yesterday rejected New York City’s efforts to prevent the release of nearly 2,000 pages of raw intelligence reports and other documents detailing the Police Department’s covert surveillance of protest groups and individual activists before the Republican National Convention in 2004....
The city and the Police Department have come under intense scrutiny over the surveillance tactics, in which for more than a year before the convention undercover officers traveled to cities across the country, and to Canada and Europe, to conduct covert observations of people who planned to attend. But beyond potential troublemakers, those placed under surveillance included street theater companies, church groups, antiwar activists, environmentalists, and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies.

And as the convention unfolded, more than 1,800 people were arrested, mostly for minor violations, and many were herded into pens at a Hudson River pier and fingerprinted instead of being released on summonses or desk appearance tickets, which are more customary for charges that amount to little more than a traffic ticket.

[Happy Monkey]

Excellent.

[DanaC]

The city and the Police Department have come under intense scrutiny over the surveillance tactics, in which for more than a year before the convention undercover officers traveled to cities across the country, and to Canada and Europe, to conduct covert observations of people who planned to attend. But beyond potential troublemakers, those placed under surveillance included street theater companies, church groups, antiwar activists, environmentalists, and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies.

Y'gotta feel sorry for the operatives who got stuck shadowing mimes...

[Griff]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Y'gotta feel sorry for the operatives who got stuck shadowing mimes...

That would be absolute comedy genius on film.

Secrets of the Police
Published: August 8, 2007

The city of New York is waging a losing and ill-conceived battle for overzealous secrecy surrounding nearly 2,000 arrests during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Yesterday, for the second time in three months, a federal judge ordered the release of hundreds of pages of documents that detail the Police Department’s covert surveillance leading to the convention. People who were detained, some for days and without explanation, may finally begin to get some answers.

If the decision by Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV stands, the documents may figure in scores of lawsuits challenging police tactics that included the heavy-handed: rounding up suspects on the streets, fingerprinting them and putting them in holding pens until the convention was all but over. That such a police action happened in New York, and during the large, democratic show of a political nominating convention, was troubling.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly seemed to cast an awfully wide and indiscriminate net in seeking out potential troublemakers. For more than a year before the convention, members of a police spy unit headed by a former official of the Central Intelligence Agency infiltrated a wide range of groups. As Jim Dwyer has reported in The Times, many of the targets — including environmental and church groups and even a satirical troupe called Billionaires for Bush — posed no danger or credible threat. Tracking them was, at the least, a waste of resources that could have been better used elsewhere.

The Police Department surely has good reasons for needing to keep parts of their covert activities under wraps, particularly where operations against potential terrorism are concerned. The judge — and even the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represented the plaintiffs — correctly acknowledged a need for limited nondisclosure. The names of undercover agents and other potentially compromising information in the documents have been redacted. We hope that’s enough to let them see daylight. (The Times was a party to the lawsuit that released more than 600 pages of documents in May.)

New Yorkers have been tremendously patient with the demands of living in a city scarred from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and now made secure in ways, large and small, that can often interrupt their lives. They accept that the police have a job to do in keeping everyone safe, and they are overwhelmingly cooperative. But the overarching police strategy that culminated in the arrests three years ago this month did not feel like it was done with just safety in mind.

Along with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s denial of permits for protests on Central Park’s Great Lawn, the police action helped to all but eliminate dissent from New York City during the Republican delegates’ visit. If that was the goal, then mission accomplished. And civil rights denied.

[yesman065]

So THAT was "mission accomplished"

Nice.