In Thursday's New York Times...
Accusations That Police Tried to Spy on Wall St. Protesters
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
New York Tines
May 3, 2012
On Monday, the New York Police Department sent its warrant squads after an unusual set of suspects: people who had old warrants for the lowliest of violations, misconduct too minor, usually, to draw the attention of those squads.
But those who were questioned by the warrant squads said the officers had an ulterior motive: gathering intelligence on the Occupy Wall Street protests scheduled for May 1, or May Day. One person said he was interviewed about his plans for May Day. A second person said the police examined political fliers in his apartment, and then arrested him on a warrant for a 2007 open-container-of-alcohol violation.
Officials have yet to respond to questions about the tactics, but one police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters about police policy, said the strategy appeared to be an extension of a policy used at events where crowd control could be an issue. Before certain parades that have been marred by shootings, for example, the warrant squads have tracked down gang members who live nearby to execute outstanding warrants, no matter how minor, the official said.
But the department’s use of this tactic as part of its strategy for policing the Occupy Wall Street movement raises new questions about the surveillance efforts by the Police Department, which faces restrictions in monitoring political groups…
(Continued below the fold.)
The article continues on to discuss a piece that appeared on Gawker.com on the eve of the OWS May Day protests, which occurred on Tuesday. I covered the Gawker.com story in a Tuesday morning update to this post, which was originally published here late Monday: “Breaking: Cornstarch Sent to NY Mayor, Banks; Media Feebly Trying To Link "Terror Threat" To OWS.”
PD Raids Activists’ Homes Before May Day Protests
Gawker.com
A day before Occupy Wall Street hopes to shut down New York and cities across the country in massive May Day protests, the NYPD visited at least three activist homes in New York and interrogated residents about plans for tomorrow's protest.
Today "there was definitely an upswing in law enforcement activity that seemed to fit the pattern of targeting what police might view as political residences," said Gideon Oliver, the president of the New York Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, which offers legal to support to Occupy Wall Street. "They were asking what are your May Day plans, do you know who the leaders are—these are classic political surveillance questions."
Oliver said the National Lawyer's Guild is aware of at least five instances of NYPD paying activists visits, including one where the FBI was involved in questioning. (He wouldn't elaborate.) We spoke to three of these activists...
Getting back to the piece in Thursday’s NY Times, details are provided concerning two of the NYPD’s previously-reported five raids. I urge you to give it a read. (Again, here’s the
LINK to it.)
What I find interesting—and one of the very few, slightly positive aspects about all of this—is that the NYT is actually making some semblance of an effort to follow-up on this travesty of a story, at all. More often than not, this type of coverage in the MSM is non-existent. The fact that we’re reading anything at all about it in the MSM, two days after May Day, is a good thing.
As the article closes out, we read quotes from Brooklyn resident Sean Broesler who recounts how, early on Monday, he: “…woke up in bed to a rather large detective standing over me with a flashlight.”
We learn “…he was arrested on a 2007 open-container violation for which he had failed to appear in court. He said a second roommate was also arrested on a warrant. “
In the last sentence of Thursday’s article Broesler asks…
“Why would they be going to activists’ houses and using pretexts to get in just before May Day when they could have picked me up at any point in the past?”
I’d be curious to know how many physically-violent and mentally-harmful assaults involving guns occurred in New York City’s five boroughs in the 24-hour period that preceded Tuesday’s Occupy/May Day protests?
We know there were at least five incidents...