The Black Lives Matter movement grew because it was believed that black people are being unfairly targeted by police. Now, BLM activists are accusing a local police department of spying on them and illegally targeting them for trying to call awareness to that abuse in a bombshell federal lawsuit filed by the Black Lives Matter Global Network chapter in Rockland County, New York.
According to Mother Jones, the police department in Clarkstown, a city of about 84,000 people, created a Strategic Intelligence Unit in 2013, and spied on Black Lives Matter members unlawfully for a least a year, from January through December 2015. The group accused the Clarkstown police of racial profiling the members and violating their rights to free speech and assembly. Court documents between the department and the county DA's office show that unit, which was supposed “to gather intelligence on suspected criminals," conducted social media surveillance on BLM activists and continued to do so even after the unit's supervisor was told by the lead detective in the prosecutor's office that the surveillance had to stop.
BLM activists elsewhere have long suspected the police were monitoring them, but the Clarkstown documents establish some of the clearest evidence. According to a November 2015 police intelligence report, the special unit used a "geofence" twice that month to monitor Twitter and/or Instagram feeds of people it determined were affiliated with the BLM movement. The report details that Clarkstown police employed “a social media monitoring platform and other investigatory tactics” to “search, monitor and analyze real-time social media content” of surveillance targets. A report for the following month shows that police tracked the social media activity of Black Lives Matter activists on six occasions. The goal, according to the reports, was to disrupt potential violence.
In addition, Mother Jones also obtained an email exchange between Peter Modafferi, the former chief detective for the Rockland County DA’s office, and Sgt. Stephen Cole-Hatchard, the former head of Clarkstown’s Strategic Intelligence Unit. Modaferri writes, “Steve, I mentioned before, you really should not have Black Lives Matter listed as a target of surveillance.”
While some people like Chris Conley, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, noted that social media is public information, Susan Freiwald, a professor at the University of San Francisco Law School disagrees. She said, “Police should not be tracking people without legitimate suspicion that they are involved in criminal wrongdoing.”
Mother Jones also pointed out that Black Lives Matter activists have continually been targeted by police investigations in this country. The Guardian reported that the NYPD was able to obtain text messages from BLM organizers. Also, CNN reported that the Justice Department had obtained search warrants to access Facebook accounts of “anti-administration activists.” Finally, earlier this month, Foreign Policy revealed that the FBI had identified a new surveillance category for “black identity extremists,” people analysts felt might attack police in retaliation for police violence against African Americans.
In the Clarkstown suit, BLM is seeking unspecified monetary damages and a cease-and-desist order by the court against the intelligence unit, whose reports are shared with nearby law enforcement agencies and with the US Department of Justice.
Source: Mother Jones/CNN
