Citizens outside FedEx facilities in Memphis April 3, 2018, cite problems that remain 50 years after MLK's murder
While the city of Memphis and its institutions celebrated MLK50 with keynote speakers, banquets and $100-per-head events last month – and prepared for international media and tourists – activists asked themselves:
“What would Dr. King do?”
Bill Stegall acting as “ICE agent” and ICE prisoner actors, led by Yuleiny Escobar and mock-chained together, dramatizing prison abuses
Documents gleaned from a Tennessee Department of Homeland Security Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show that law enforcement agencies, from local authorities to Highway Patrol to Homeland Security to TBI and the FBI, were keenly interested in how local activists might commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with civil disobedience. They tracked social media accounts, and in response Memphis police on April 3 swept activists and a Latino journalist off the street to curtail further grassroots actions and avoid embarrassment to the city on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis April 4, 1968.
Tactical police units arrested nine persons at about 3 o’clock on April 3 as they put on a “street theater” demonstration to highlight abuses of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) practices -- especially forced labor of undocumented persons who were in ICE detention centers and in line for deportation. The action had been supported by Memphis Coalition of Concerned Citizens (C3) and Comunidades Unidas en Una Vox (Communities United in One Voice — CUUV).
While the First Amendment practitioners did no more than announce, chant and slowly walk inside a crosswalk from one side of Poplar Avenue to another, there could not have been more of a set-up for law enforcement engagement. The action was widely advertised on social media as a “Rolling Block Party – 2:01 (p.m.) at 201,” referring to the Shelby County Justice Center at 201 Poplar. In other words, right in front of the county jail and Sheriff’s Department.
Further, law enforcement hackles had been raised by an earlier action outside FedEx operations, where activists blocked traffic for about 25 minutes, and by social media posts on March 29 that had suggested later actions at Graceland and at the Hernando DeSoto Bridge. The bridge, which conveys Interstate 40 traffic across the Mississippi River, had been shut down by more than a thousand citizens for about five hours on July 10, 2016, in the wake of police shootings of unthreatening black men in Baton Rouge, LA, and St. Anthony, MN.
Meanwhile, not part of the FOIA, MPD officer Tadario A. Holmes on Sunday April 1 had put out an email to local clergy, alerting them to warn their congregations to stay away from 201 Poplar, Graceland and the bridge on the afternoon of April 3 as trouble was brewing.
Posting phony action deceived and diverted law enforcement
FAKE-OUT
Ironically, the activists’ social media postings about the “Rolling Block Party” going to Graceland at 4:44 p.m. and the bridge at 6:30 p.m. were intended to fake out police — a diversion designed to draw law enforcement away while the “block party” rolled to a different destination. The plan was to descend upon Top Stop Shop, a mini-mart where the clerk had shot and killed a 17-year-old who ran away after stealing a can of watermelon cooler. The clerk did not report that he had shot the teen in the back of his left thigh on March 29, 2018, as he ran down the street. His body was found in a weedy lot two days later.
The discovery of the teen’s body came just days before the city’s heavily promoted MLK50. It sparked outrage in the community and led to a gathering of the teen’s family members, neighbors and activists outside Top Stop Shop on April 2, 2018. Police at MPD’s Real Time Crime Center in downtown Memphis watched someone’s Facebook live-stream from the
Social media post of an action at Graceland was to fool police
event and dispatched officers, who ultimately arrested one activist, Spencer Kaaz; temporarily detained two others, Hunter Demster and Keedran Franklin, in the back of patrol cars, and threatened the arrest of others. Police on the scene were overheard to call out Demster’s and Franklin’s names. Apparently they had been fed those names by MPD’s social media watchers as they recognized the two very visible activists.
The activists’ diversion of police to the bridge certainly kept officers from gathering near the Top Stop Shop, but it backfired as police pre-emptively arrested activists at the mid-afternoon action outside the police station.
Activists’ postings about rolling to Graceland also were fake, although law enforcement was less concerned about Graceland than the bridge as our FOIA docs reveal.
READING BETWEEN THE (REDACTED) LINES
Twenty-eight pages of heavily redacted documents, which were submitted in response to the FOIA, show the alert of law enforcement picks up at 3:18 p.m. Friday March 30 when an email from inside MPD went out with the Subject line: “COALITION OF CONCERNED CITIZENS BLOCK PARTYS.pptx.”
“Pptx” is a Microsoft PowerPoint file extension. The PowerPoint included screen shots of “Rolling Block Party” graphics from Facebook, including references to “2:01 at 201;” Graceland at 4:44, and the Hernando Desoto Bridge at 6:30.
Video wall at MPD’s Real Time Crime Center
The body of the email read:
“Please send to our team and partners.”
While both the sender and recipient of the email have been redacted, we conclude it was generated from inside MPD and engaged the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC), MPD’s outpost at 600 Jefferson Avenue.
RTCC then sent an email to Tennessee Highway Patrol brass and others. The sender of the email is redacted as are probably three recipients – not redacted are Jimmie Johnson, Memphis district captain of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, and Memphis-based Lt Gregory Obie of THP.
The email states:
“Attached you will find information regarding a possible bridge protest on April 3rd. Your assistance with keeping our bridges safe and Interstate traffic uninterrupted during the upcoming MLK50 events (April 2-7, 2018) would be very appreciated.”
ALERTS HIT THE FAN
Officers push Yuleiny Escobar onto the hood of a police car
By Tuesday morning April 3, the string of notifications had reached the top level of the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, that being Commissioner David W. Purkey, and including THP Colonel Dereck Stewart.
Quickly joining the loop were the TBI and Tennessee Fusion Center Co-Director John Curatolo. The fusion center coordinates information among law enforcement agencies.
Also in the loop was the FBI, at least in the form of Memphis-based FBI intelligence analyst Stephanie Juneau.
Jane Waldrop, West Region Administrator, Bureau of Response for Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, was notified at 9:24 Tuesday morning April 3, and she pushed out the alerts via an email at 10:03:
“There was a your (sic) tube video they put out yesterday that just had 12 cars in parking lot with doors open and the same music playing from all the vehicles saying they were going to do a rolling block party.
“THP may be able to give you more info on what they have planned for this.”
CONCERN HEIGHTENS
Michael Welch, Region 4 administrator with the Tennessee Department of Transportation, replies:
“The Rolling Block Party at the Hernando Desoto Bridge definitely concerns us. Do we know any other details? Do they have permits for these, etc.,
“This is today and we thinking tomorrow was our biggest day.”
At about 11:30, a Word .doc file, “Information Bulletin – Rolling Block Party,” is sent from a redacted sender to a large number of redacted recipients. Apparently it came from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU).
The bulletin states: “Attached is a list of locations that this “Rolling Block Party” is heading. Says 6:30 PM going to be at the Herman (sic) DeSoto Bridge.”
It continues:
“They are blocking streets. Suggest you look at the link:
“https://www.facebook.com/al.lewis.378/videos/10204411937454404
“The rolling block party has already started. They are at Tchulahoma and Democrat…”
Then, “The group is leaving that location and going to the next. No current information of what next stop is. Officers are with them.”
TENNESSEE FUSION CENTER
One of the recipients, however, is TFC Co-Director Curatolo, whose alert level increases as he emails at 11:32 to Stephanie Juneau and others:
“Stephanie,
“There is a reference to the Herman (sic) DeSoto Bridge that crosses the Mississippi River. Anything further on this?”
There is no response from Juneau to Curatolo’s question — at least not in the FOIA response, although it seems likely Juneau replied as she had been prominent in tracking previous gatherings of citizens such as a memorial vigil in 2016 for Darrius Stewart, a 19-year-old back-seat passenger who was shot and killed after a traffic stop by 25-year-old Memphis officer Conner Schilling.
Curatolo at 11:48 alerts Commissioner Purkey, assistant commissioner Rick Shipkowski, THP head Stewart and others in THP and Homeland Security with heightened concern as evidenced by the “subject” line: “PRIORITY Urgent: CIU Information Bulletin – Rolling Block Party.”
There is no reference in the string of emails to the arrests that went down mid-afternoon, but at 6:52 an email widely distributed states:
“All is clear, THP and HELP have disbanded location.”
State troopers and at least one HELP truck had been stationed near the Tennessee side of the bridge.
HELP is the TDOT program which utilizes the big, yellow trucks that cruise the Interstates and assist with everything from traffic issues to motorists with flat tires.
PREACHERS NOTIFIED
Here is the email MPD sent out to ministers on Sunday April 1:
“Greetings Clergy,
“I appreciate your willingness to pray for the peace of our city.
“Disturbingly, I received some information circling the internet that threatens that peace. It seems that individuals are planning some disruptions on April 3, 2018 in our city at various locations; 201 Poplar, Graceland, and the Hernando-Desoto Bridge.
“These disruptions will cause mandatory response from police - officers must intervene when there are disturbances.
“The reasons for these disruptions, in our knowledge, have no direct connection to Memphis. It is our goal and duty to keep Memphis safe and at peace for everyone.
“I am urging you, all clergy, to strongly encourage your congregants and public alike, to stay away from these activities, to help maintain peace and order in our city.
“I appreciate the continued partnership with our clergy leaders, and let's please reach out to the public to encourage peace during our MLK50 Celebration. Thank you.
“Blessings and Peace,
“Officer Tadario A. Holmes
Memphis Police Department
Crime Prevention Unit
2466 Peres
Memphis, TN 38128
Tadario.Holmes@memphistn.gov>
Office 901-323-8199”
SURPRISE AT FEDEX
Not publicized on Facebook was an action late morning April 3 which targeted FedEx and institutional forces that “manufacture poverty,” according to C3 leaders. The “Rolling Block Party” stopped in the street on Tchulahoma Road next to FedEx facilities. While purple airplane tail fins fashioned a surreal backdrop, traffic was blocked for about 25 minutes as citizens danced in the street to music that was coordinated on radios from 12 or more cars.
Activists held signs that said, “Things are Not OK,” and “50 years after MLK with no real change?” Signs also noted Memphis is the poorest major city in the country – a result of intentional structures, they said.
This action was not anticipated by MPD, Tennessee Homeland Security, the Tennessee Fusion Center, Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, Tennessee Highway Patrol, the TBI, the FBI, Tennessee Department of Transportation – all of whom were concerned about the “Rolling Block Party” posts. However, it did not escape local, national or international media. Embedded with activists were locals MLK50: Justice through Journalism, The Commercial Appeal, and Citizens Media Resource; national outlets the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Daily Kos, and UK media The Guardian and the British Broadcasting Corporation.
While police showed up quickly to the FedEx action, they were clearly taken off-guard. Officers stood back while awaiting orders from command staff, but they took no action toward the demonstrators. Traffic was stopped, and people in cars and trucks were irritated – and some were amused and entertained, even joining activists in dancing – but nobody got hurt, and nobody got arrested.
DID POLICE TARGET ACTIVISTS?
Perhaps feeling they had been shown up outside FedEx, police were not about to let it happen again – especially since further actions had been suggested at Graceland and the bridge and since the city was in the middle of its much-promoted and internationally watched MLK50 week. Taking activist leaders off the streets would snuff actions later that day and perhaps the following day, April 4, the 50th anniversary date of King’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
More than 30 sworn officers, mainly Organized Crime Unit (OCU) Vice Team and Multi-Agency Gang Unit (MGU) operatives, were braced for activists in the middle of the street at 201 Poplar. That’s not counting command staff, surveillance van operators, support staff and Real Time Crime Center personnel who presumably watched the action on the RTCC video wall.
By deploying OCU Vice Team and MGU detectives and officers, who are trained to make drug raids and suddenly snatch people, MPD signaled that their pre-determination was to make arrests.
OCU officer twists Zyanya Cruz’ arm...
CHAIN GANG
As anti-ICE demonstrators staged up between a parking lot and a bail bond company on Poplar, Al Lewis of C3 talked to the media:
“Poverty is not the problem. It’s the people who manufacture poverty that’s the problem,” Lewis told reporters.
Eleven women, wearing scrubs to emulate prison garb, simulated chaining themselves together as ICE prisoners. Recently retired White Station High School economics teacher Bill Stegall dressed up as an ICE agent, leading the “chain gang.”
...then breaks her down to the pavement the moment another officer handcuffs Manuel Duran
“They want free labor inside those prisons,” Yuleiny Escobar shouted into a bullhorn as Stegall and the women walked east down the sidewalk on the north side of Poplar in front of bail bond companies. “Modern-day slavery…That’s why we have all these police out here, all these police. So much poverty, so much police, no change. Fifty years, no change.”
The “chain gang” entered a designated crosswalk and slowly made their way across the street. Stegall, Escobar, Zyanya Cruz, Elizabeth Vega and about half the women had made it onto the opposite sidewalk – on the south side of Poplar – before police began making arrests. They started with Keedran Franklin, a C3 leader and prominent organizer who was shepherding actors through the crosswalk.
“I’m a marshall,” Franklin told an officer who grabbed him.
HAIR-TRIGGER ARRESTS
From the time Stegall stepped off the sidewalk and into the crosswalk on Poplar until police grabbed Franklin was 60 seconds. The red light at Poplar and Danny Thomas at the next intersection east of there lasts 51 seconds.
OCU officer points to journalist Manuel Duran as arrests begin
Lt. Andre Pruitt was acting as something of a street boss over other officers, directing and pointing. He excitedly began pointing at Manuel Duran while another officer said, “Get him, guys,” as they closed in and nabbed the reporter while he was live-streaming from his phone on the end of a selfie stick.
“He’s a reporter. He’s a reporter,” Escobar, Cruz and Vega began shouting to police – but it made no difference.
Police then roughly grabbed the three women – pulling Vega by her hair, twisting Cruz’ arm and slamming Escobar onto the hood of a police car. They arrested activist Spencer Kaaz, who was standing next to Duran.
Elizabeth Vega of St. Louis displays a ‘souvenir’ from her trip to Memphis; ‘I came to Memphis and all I got was this bruise,’ Vega was able to joke the next day — back at 201 Poplar for a required, early morning court appearance with others whom MPD arrested. Link to story and video: www.dailykos.com/...
Meanwhile, many other citizens were stirring in the street as were several journalists. Police only arrested those directly engaged in the action, however, and charged them with disorderly conduct and obstructing a highway or passageway – go-to charges which are used to stop the First Amendment when no actual laws have been broken. Police said they ordered people to get out of the street – although the demonstrators were entirely in the crosswalk and were moving to the sidewalk. No journalists other than Duran were arrested — and as his video shows, he was backing up toward the sidewalk when police grabbed him.
Outraged that police were singling out visible activists, Stegall, who is white, yelled to officers: “Arrest my ass. Arrest my ass.” And so they did.
POLICE FILM CITIZENS
After the arrestees had been transported from the scene, at least two OCU officers filmed citizens and journalists who had gathered on the sidewalk – a male officer held a small Go-Pro camera, and a female officer scanned the crowd with a DSLR camera that was recording video.
After making arrests, MPD tactical officers film bystanders
A good 30 minutes later as activist supporters were leaving the area and walking east down the north side of Poplar, the same OCU officers “kettled” them – pinning them in a parking lot, where the citizens feared they could not leave or else be arrested. In fact, officers arrested Fight for $15 activist Ashley Cathey and her sister Ambra as they crossed the street. Both had put on scrubs and taken part in the “chain gang” earlier.
IRONIC AND STRATEGIC ARRESTS
Ironically, police took it out on the men and women who were lawfully crossing the street – albeit slowly – at 201 Poplar and not hitting anyone or stealing anything. The action at FedEx was more disruptive, and while no one was harmed other than being inconvenienced, organizers were stunned to ponder how police arrested no one outside FedEx operations but chose to arrest street theater actors at 201 Poplar.
With the 50th anniversary of MLK’s assassination in Memphis looming the next day, and with international attention focused on Memphis as Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young and other civil rights icons were in town – as well as former Attorney General Eric Holder and freedom riders Diane Nash and Rep. John Lewis – police no doubt saw the “2:01 at 201” action as their opportunity to round up activists before April 4 – and before they could carry out further actions on April 3 at Graceland or the bridge.
BOMB ON A PLANE
In the film, Meet the Parents, Ben Stiller’s beleaguered character is hauled off an airplane after complaining to a flight attendant, “It’s not like I said bomb on a plane.”
In Memphis, call “bridge,” and it triggers law enforcement. Any reference on social media to an action at the bridge results in a full response from law enforcement since the notorious shutdown July 10, 2016.
The bridge reference reverberated through state agencies on April 3 and became the main source of concern throughout the day.
Manuel Duran live-streams minutes before he was arrested at 201 Poplar
MANUEL DURAN
Charges of disorderly conduct and obstructing a highway or passageway against Duran were dismissed on April 5. Although $100 bail was posted for Duran by 9 p.m. on April 3, he remained in the Shelby County jail. Two ICE agents were in General Sessions Judge Bill Anderson’s courtroom on April 5, ready to take him into their custody.
Duran has since been held in Louisiana ICE-contracted detention facilities awaiting his fate. Yesterday, an immigration court in Virginia ordered a stay of deportation — which only means that he cannot be deported in the meantime while attorneys seek to argue his case that he has been a constructive journalist and member of the community and that his life will be in danger if he is returned to El Salvador.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
The FOIA response did not include any Earth-shattering information – it is not news that law enforcement monitors social media. Further, no federal level intervention is suggested, other than the FBI analyst, and there are no references to ICE targeting Manuel Duran — although the ICE agents in Anderson’s courtroom apparently had told Anderson’s deputy that orders to snatch Duran came from “the top,” meaning high up in the Trump administration.
MPD and the sheriff’s department assisted ICE by arresting and holding Duran, contend Duran’s attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
We have reached out to MPD’s public information office with further questions about inter-agency communications and cooperation but have gotten no information. Then, we made an open records request of MPD for similar information, such as other agencies, like at the federal level, that might have been involved in security and surveillance during MLK50 week. The only response to that request has been: “It has not yet been determined if responses to your request exist.”
We also inquired why MPD chose to take out demonstrators with a tactical unit. We see why – but would like to hear from MPD command staff. Organized Crime Unit officers do not wear body cameras; nor badges, patches or insignias, and they wear their own shoes, instead of police-issue footwear. Multi-Agency Gang Unit members were less in the mix on the street at 201 Poplar, and they are somewhat differently outfitted, including wearing of MGU patches.
Finally, we do not know exactly what software (see update below on a data collator called NC4) law enforcement is using these days to track activists on social media. Formerly, MPD used Geofeedia, a software that could track the location of a person posting to Facebook. However, after an ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) investigation, Facebook last year said it would no longer provide that level of data to Geofeedia.
MPD apparently uses “Stringray” software to determine the location of cell phone users. MPD surveillance vans presumably contain Stingray apparatus. Activists have complained that their cell phones have gone dead while at public actions where there was heightened police presence.
Should any law enforcement members discover any inaccuracies in the above, or wish to reach out and speak on-camera about any of these subjects, we welcome it.
Memphis Truth Commission blogger Fergus Nolan helped us analyze and compare emails contained in the FOIA response with those from the Matt Winter FOIA of 2016. His story is at www.MemphisTruth.org.
Update on spy tech: From depositions and court documents released relative to the ACLU’s lawsuit against the city for spying on citizens, in contempt of a 1978 court order, we see that MPD uses a collator called Street Smart, from California-based security corporation NC4. Link to story: memphistruth.org/...
Link to the FOIA response from Tennessee Department of Homeland Security:
drive.google.com/...
Link to our video from April 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSCoXe8vR0w
Links to earlier related stories on daily's:
www.dailykos.com/…
www.dailykos.com/...
Gary Moore makes films about social justice issues, operates the educational non-profit Citizens Media Resource and posts matters of national interest to DailyKos as FreeSpeechZone.
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