Officers spied on activities, top members of Occupy LR

Papers detail infiltrated meetings, watched individuals

Undercover Little Rock detectives spied on Occupy Little Rock activities and members over several months, including the group’s planning meetings and protest actions, according to city documents obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The documents show that undercover detectives infiltrated the group of political activists during early October 2011 meetings weeks before the group went on to occupy the green space outside the Clinton Presidential Center downtown.

The intelligence gathering, which mirrored efforts by law enforcement to monitor Occupy Wall Street chapters nationwide, continued through at least February 2012, the same month city politicians began openly questioning or criticizing the group’s right to stay on public property, leading to a police operation that emptied the camp and nettedfour arrests in May.

The police surveillance documents were released a week after four members of the local Occupy Wall Street group had disorderly conduct charges dismissed in Little Rock District Court.

The revelation that Occupy Little Rock was monitored and infiltrated was “bizarre” but expected, said movement member Adam Lansky, who used his experiences with the group in an unsuccessful campaign for a city Board of Directors position in November.

Many members of the group believed there were always hints or glimpses of possible law enforcement activity directed against them, either in the form of a poorly masked surveillance detail or suspicions about the same non-descript vehicles following certain members. To be honest, Lansky said, he feelsa little flattered.

“It’s creepy to me. Man, it’s creepy,” Lansky said. “But it’s funny to me. People are threatened by what’s different. People are threatenedby something that seems to detract from their power.”

It is unclear in the released documents how many detectives were involved, how many hours they spent monitoring the group’s activities or what means were used.

Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas declined to be interviewed about police surveillance of the Occupy Little Rock members. Department spokesman, Sgt. Cassandra Davis, also declined to be interviewed.

The release of the information on the Little Rock surveillance comes less than two months after a civil rights group, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, acquired FBI documents detailing a widespread effortby federal, state and local agencies, as well as corporate entities, to monitor and assess any threats posed by Occupy Wall Street groups across the country, which sprouted worldwide to protest, among other things, the influence of money in poli-tics and perceived economic injustice.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the fund, said the heavily redacted, 112-page document her group obtained painted a picture of federal agents “treating the protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.”

That’s despite indications that the groups were peaceful in nature, she said.

Occupy Little Rock member Greg Deckelman said the monitoring by law enforcement reminded Occupy members of the type of spying done on political activists in the 1960s under FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

FBI Special Agent Kimberly Brunell, spokesman for the Little Rock field office, said she couldn’t confirm or deny any involvement by federal agencies in the local monitoring efforts by Little Rock investigators.

“We meet with our state and local partners all the time. We are an intelligence agency, part of being proactive ... is we’ll look to potential criminal and terrorist threats,” Brunell said. “But we don’t investigate groups or people solely on their exercising their First Amendment rights.”

Brunell said she could “neither confirm or deny” whether local FBI were still investigating or monitoring Occupy Little Rock activity or its individual members.

Several Occupy Little Rock members said that beyond the constitutional and ethical implications of surveillance - and possible infiltration - of a group of citizens peaceably gathering to promote political change, such measures were unnecessary and a waste of time and money. All of their meetings were streamed online and officers were invited in person to attend.

Before the group “occupied” the city property outside the Clinton Presidential Center on Oct. 21, 2011, the group had several public meetings and protests that were monitored and infiltrated by city police, records show.

The first document was an e-mail a patrol officer sent to Little Rock Police Capt. Hayward Finks on Oct. 11, 2011. In the e-mail, the officer reported the observations of undercover detectives who monitored the group’s public meeting that night.

The officer, who wasn’t identified, said the detectives “actively joined” the organizer’s “Media” and “Legal/ Law Enforcement Relations” groups without mention of their presence being made, documents said.

The head of the Occupy Little Rock legal team, law student Caleb Baumgardner, said he had no idea there was a detective who had “actively joined” his group.

In an Oct. 15 document, detectives detailed the underpinnings of the social and political themes of the national Occupy Wall Street movement, and noted the Little Rock offshoot’s use of social media sites, which “LRPD Intelligence Detectives are monitoring to collect relevant intelligence,” the document said.

Detectives pointed out in their memorandum that Occupy membership reached out to the local AFL-CIO, as well as the Arkansas Communities Organization, and thatwhile “the Occupy groups tout they have no single leader or governing body several leaders have been tentatively identified.”

Lansky and Baumgardner were two of the six potential leaders identified in early reports, including their date of births, race and gender and criminal histories.

Though the documents showed no reports or memorandums from detectives until February 2012 after an Oct. 18, 2011, e-mail, Occupy Little Rock members said they don’t think the police, or whoever else was involved, stopped paying attention.

In an impromptu protest outside of Acxiom on Nov. 16, one that was executed within 20 minutes of deciding to do it, the group was met by security as soon as they arrived.

Little Rock detectives took photos of some members holding anti-Acxiom placards on the same day of that protest, according to the documents. That confirmed suspicions that Deckelman and others said they had. They thought that day that the police, or Acxiom, or both, already knew they were coming.

Another Occupy member, Jennifer Pierce, who was among those arrested in May, said she had been routinely followed by an undercover officer in an unmarked white Buick sport utility vehicle.

When she decided to turn the tables and follow the woman, she said she was swarmed by marked and unmarked cars within minutes and lectured by an undercover detective.

Pierce said she complained to Thomas about the tailing and confrontation and the chief told her he would look into the event to see if any wrongdoing had occurred.

One Occupy member, Marie Mainard O’Connell, said the specter of observation, either by local police, or by some federal agency, lent a “chilling effect.”

“It affected the group dynamic. You’d hear the question ‘who can you trust?’ and basically, you find yourself questioning the motives of new people, which is not helpful for growing an organization,” Mainard O’Connell said. “As a technique for keeping an organization from effectively accomplishing their goals, infiltration is pretty effective.”

The final intelligence memorandum by police, dated February 2012, updated other officers, statingthat “5-10” members who were active in the beginning have left the group for various reasons.

“It appears the main reason for the turnover is lack of true leadership and in-fighting between occupiers who camp and those who do not,” the document said.

In late February, city director Gene Fortson openly questioned the viability allowing the group to stay anchored on city property, followed by criticisms from city director Lance Hines about the cost or the perception of the cost of providing police protection for the semi-permanent encampment.

On April 24, the group was told it had less than a month to pack up and on May 16, approximately 75 uniformed officers cleared the camp, and arrested four members who were charged with disorderly conduct for what they called an act of “civil disobedience.”

Their charges were dismissed on Jan. 23 at the request of the prosecuting attorney’s office.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 02/04/2013

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