Messages show New York police
surveillance of Black Lives Matter
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[April 05, 2017]
By Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Documents released by
the New York Police Department and published by a newspaper on Tuesday
shed new light on how undercover officers surveilled organizers from the
Black Lives Matter movement who were protesting police tactics.
The documents include brief internal messages between officers that
track demonstrators' movements during "die-in" protests at New York
City's Grand Central Terminal in 2014 and 2015, as well as photographs
and a video of the protests.
They also include two photographs of text messages on the screen of an
unknown person's cellphone that appear to be instructions sent by
organizers telling protesters where to gather.
"TONIGHT 8PM Die In & Community Convergence at Grand Central," one of
the messages reads in part.
A New York judge ordered the release of the documents in February after
a protester, James Logue, successfully sued the NYPD under freedom of
information laws, arguing that the police may have inappropriately
interfered with the right to protest peacefully.
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The city released the documents to Logue last month, and they were
published on Tuesday by the Guardian. The NYPD did not respond to
questions, although it has acknowledged its use of undercover officers
in the protests.
David Thompson, a lawyer representing Logue, said he was concerned by
the photographs of the two organizing text messages because they were
shared among only a small group of people.
"So we think this means that at least one police officer managed to get
him or herself into this core group of organizers and might still be
there for all we know," he said in an interview. "And that's
disturbing."
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![](../images/040517pics/news_c7.jpg)
People hold up a banner during a Black Lives Matter protest outside
City Hall in Manhattan, New York, U.S., August 1, 2016.
REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
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Thompson said the police surveillance of the protesters and the
retention of photographs of them without any publicly known evidence
of unlawful activity by the protesters was wrong.
Several of the protests in 2014 and 2015 were prompted by outrage
over the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man selling loose
cigarettes on New York's Staten Island who died shouting "I can't
breathe!" as a police officer's arm gripped his neck.
Some legal experts said in interviews it was difficult to tell from
the limited information released whether the police department broke
court-ordered rules that govern how New York City can police
political activity, but that the surveillance seemed
disproportionate.
"A 'sit-in' is not the same as an act of violence, and the police
should not be engaged in maximal surveillance for non-violent
activity," said Arthur Eisenberg, the New York Civil Liberties
Union's legal director.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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