A Federal judge issued an order for the NYPD to release all their information pertaining to the GOP Convention protests today. The city fought to keep them remained sealed and what was released showed that the NYPD did not want to be embarrassed by their activities. Nearly a third of 36,500 of the city's finest worked during the convention and some of them went way beyond...and below the call of duty.
From the AP:
City lawyers had argued that the arrests, mainly for disorderly conduct, were justified in part because of intelligence showing certain protesters were threats to the public. But civil rights activists argue the internal documents, many marked "secret," show the nation's largest police department spent tremendous time and resources to conduct surveillance on people who were merely practicing free speech and displaying no sign of criminal intent.
The papers "vindicate the sanity of those people who thought they were being followed," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said Wednesday at a news conference.
One dispatch detailed plans by the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network to hold a rally featuring Sean "Diddy" Combs, Jay-Z and other rap stars. It concluded that their presence "will likely inflate the total number of participants."
The documents show that the NYPD sought to monitor activists as far away as California and Europe, Lieberman said. They also suggest the department infiltrated protest groups by having undercover officers enter their Internet chat rooms and attend organizing meetings, she added.
This type of information that was documented is incredibly invasive and a warning sign of the police state that the current government seems to endorse. The judge's decision was a good one in that it exposes what our government is sinking to. Free speech does not need to be monitored in this way. Those protesters were peaceful and only meant to express their constitutional right to show their disdain for President Bush and the rest of the Republican party.
|