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Portland Cops Caught Spying Illegally On Local Dissidents
Portland Cops Caught Spying Illegally On Local Dissidents
by Mitzy Waltz
[Originally published by PDXS in Vol. 5, No. 21, Jan. 25-Feb. 8 1996]
The Portland Police Bureau's Criminal Intelligence Division
(CID), the part of the Bureau that's supposed to track organized
crime and vice figures to prevent crimes from occurring, also keeps
files on local left- and right-wing groups, and shares this
information with other state, regional, local and Federal police
agencies.
The CID is so paranoid about the existence of an independent
police review board that it surveilled activists it thought might "take
over" the review board.
The CID keeps dozens of informants on its payroll to infiltrate
and spy on political activities in Portland. Some informants
produce information for money, but the Bureau also recruits
informants from among opponents of investigated groups.
If it wasn't for CID's over-the-top efforts to put one local activist
behind bars, you might not know any of this - but now these facts
have been documented in court.
PDXS was there when CID officers and local activists took the
stand Dec. 18 and 19 in the case of Squirrel vs. City of Portland.
This trial grew out of the arrest of Douglas Squirrel in July 1993. It
was the day of the so-called "anarchist riot," when Portland's Finest
closed off Burnside Street and barricaded in a group of people who
were at the X-Ray Cafe to hear several political punk bands. When
cops gave the rowdy and vocal crowd an order to disperse but
provided no path through their lines, a small group peeled off and
tried to make it out safely, with others following in its wake.
What ensued was a confusing melee, with cops chasing kids, two
windows getting broken (one broken by someone, the other with
someone) and an expensive parked car getting the boot. Where was
Squirrel while all this was going on? As far away as he could get.
After hearing reports that riot cops were massing for action on the
other side of the bridge and watching officers circle the block
taking snapshots of everyone in front of the X-Ray, he wisely
decided to mosey on. But the police were looking for him, and he
was arrested in a downtown doorway some distance from the
action.
Charged with felony riot, Squirrel was held with everyone else the
cops were able to sweep up. But there was one big difference in
how he was treated: Capt. Roy Kindrick requested that Squirrel be
held on a whopping $50,000 bail instead of the $5,000 most others
got. Kindrick said Squirrel was the ringleader, responsible for
"planning" the riot.
Kindrick got this crazy idea from CID's fat file on Squirrel, it was
learned, a file kept even though he had never been arrested or
convicted of any crime. And when Squirrel was finally released on
his own recognizance (without bail) and after a prolonged hunger
strike, he was determined to find out who was spying on him and
why - and to make it stop. He filed suit against the City of
Portland, subpoenaing his CID file and seeking both an end to the
surveillance and monetary damages.
Squirrel had a legal basis to do so. Oregon Revised Statute 181.575
forbids the collection and maintenance of data on Oregon citizens'
political, social and religious activities unless it relates to an
ongoing criminal investigation. It was passed by the legislature in
response to decades of political spying by the PPB and other police
agencies in the state. Instead of rolling over, however, CID tried to
stonewall. It even went so far as to maintain that it's not a "police
agency" at all, and can therefore operate in complete secrecy. And
when it finally did release portions of Squirrel's file, it was in a
heavily redacted (censored) version that left out information that
might expose undercover informants or police procedures. The City
Attorney's office even tried to talk the judge into keeping all
evidence out of the public record.
Appearing before Judge Michael Marcus, Squirrel and his lawyer,
Phil Lebenbaum, found themselves in a nearly empty courtroom.
This reporter was the only journalist present. First on the stand was
Officer Larry Siewert. Siewert didn't mean to, but he basically
dropped the bomb the plaintiff was hoping for. Here's Siewert's
own description of his CID duties: "I was assigned to monitor
subversive groups, the extremists on the left and on the right. Also
Earth First!, animal rights groups. I also monitored the anti-
abortion movement and provided all the dignitary protection." In
the early '90s, he said, "it took our whole unit to just keep up on all
the activities, all the different causes and demonstrations that were
going on."
Speaking under oath, CID officers admitted that they are regularly
assigned to stake out political meetings and protests, noting who
comes and goes, taking down license plate numbers and compiling
descriptions. Siewert and CID Sergeant Irv McGeachy also testified
that CID runs "Confidential Reliable Informants" (CRIs) within
many groups in Portland. Incidentally, Siewert's name appeared in
documents seized from the Anti-Defamation League in 1993 as that
organization's contact in the PPB. A retired San Francisco police
officer was charged with giving or selling confidential political
information to the ADL at that time; after he fled the country, his
files and ADL files were seized and found to contain reports from
many sources, including the PPB, about right-wing, left-wing and
anti-Semitic groups. At that time, Siewert denied being the source
of information about left-wing groups when interviewed by the
PPB's internal affairs department - McGeachy was also questioned,
according to documents acquired by PDXS.
Crime prevention strategy?
Police who took the stand said that any criminal activity, no matter
how minor, by any person associated with a group gave them the
right to spy on the entire group in perpetuity. That makes getting
your very own file pretty easy. Squirrel had no criminal record
when his name first appeared in CID's records, and the only "crime"
PPB officers observed him committing prior to his 1993 arrest was
allegedly jaywalking during a 1991 anti-Gulf War "Die-In" at which
some people (but not Squirrel) lay down on Portland sidewalks to
provide passersby with a visual reminder of what those nice "smart
bombs" CNN was telling us about actually do.
Lying down on the sidewalk could constitute blocking the
sidewalk, the sort of mild illegal action employed by proponents of
civil disobedience. "Civil disobedience is some sort of peaceful
action that could be a criminal act. It's still a crime," said Siewert.
Of course, CD has a long and proud tradition in America - the
lunch-counter sit-ins of the early '60s, for example, were CD.
Marching without a permit, trespassing and other minor
misdemeanors are employed to make a political point, get attention
for a cause and hopefully create change. So long as a protest
remains peaceful, the police may choose not to arrest anyone,
Siewert observed. At the Die-In in question, the police did not. But
CID did put information about Douglas Squirrel in their files,
including where he worked and went to school.
The other tactic some demonstrators use is direct action, which
Siewert said "is some sort of criminal activity." Sometimes it is -
beaning Newt Gingrich with a brick would certainly be both direct
action and illegal. Sometimes it's not, though. Feeding the hungry,
housing the homeless and helping prisoners navigate the legal
system are all examples of legal direct action. To activists, calling
for direct action means leaving symbolic demonstrations behind to
actually get something done. To the police, however, it's a code
word for violence that gives them an even better reason to gather
political intelligence on the person or group that advocates it.
Did the CID have other evidence implicating Squirrel in criminal
activity? No one but Judge Marcus and CID knows what's in the
uncensored files, but local activists familiar with Squirrel described
him derisively as a "peace nazi," the kind of guy who discourages
any rowdiness at protests. Siewert pointed to Squirrel's use of the
acronym BEIRUT for what it believed to be a group he headed as
evidence of his violent intentions, because Beirut, Lebanon was
known for violence at that time.
But BEIRUT was "basically me and sometimes one or two other
people," Squirrel said, adding that he made up the name Boisterous
Extremists for Insurrection against Republicans and other
Unprincipled Thugs (BEIRUT) when it was reported locally that
Portland had earned the nickname "Little Beirut" because of its
rowdy demonstrators. BEIRUT ran a hotline for messages about
demonstrations and events in the Portland area. Some messages
included suggestions that demonstrators should bring bottled water
and bandanas in case the police used Mace, or provided a phone
number that one could call if arrested to get legal help. Considering
that both Mace and arrests are common at demonstrations, and
since they can affect both the "guilty" and the adjacent innocent,
Squirrel saw these measures as simply being prepared in the Boy
Scout sense, and other experienced activists agree - "it sounds to
me like it was simply an informational line for people who needed
to know all the implications of exercising their Constitutional right
to free speech," said Mark Hubbard, conservation director of the
Oregon Natural Resources Council, a mainstream environmental
group whose name also appears in the subpoenaed CID files. Police
officers, however, testified that to them these cautions sounded like
"we're going to fight with the cops, so let's be ready to get Maced
and get arrested."
According to McGeachy, CID's goal is preventing crime at
demonstrations by ensuring an appropriate police presence. "We'd
receive information that a demonstration or protest was going to
occur," he explained. "We routinely then would go out to
bookstores and college campuses to see if this was occurring. Then
we would make a tactical recommendation" to the police force at
large. If it knows that a certain group or person has stirred up
violence in the past, it can legally keep tabs on them, so that
officers can be forewarned. That's legal under Oregon law.
But some of what CID's been up to is not, ruled Judge Michael
Marcus. "This was a fascinating case because of the delicate
balance of competing interests," Marcus told PDXS. "I determined
that some of the materials had no continuing relationship to a
criminal investigation of any kind, and that the existing procedures
were insufficient for purging documents that had no legal basis to
be maintained."
In particular, he denounced police spying on advocates of a strong
civilian review board. The idea that BEIRUT could somehow "take
over" the existing Police Internal Investigations Auditing
Committee and commit criminal activity with it was "preposterous,"
Marcus exclaimed - "what on earth were you thinking here?"
PIAAC members must be appointed by a city council member or
the mayor, testified PIAAC's Todd Olson, who was also completely
mystified about this alleged plot. "Everything that we did was
subject to the city council's approval," Olson said.
Dan Handelman of Portland Peaceworks, one of the groups spied
on, called the police's idea "very silly."
And the judge agreed. "The idea that this group of evildoers was
going to take part in a nationwide conspiracy to do harm to the
police through a civilian review board, that suspicion I find as
unreasonable," declared Marcus, ordering that the documents
relating to a Portland Peaceworks coalition-building meeting where
the board was discussed be discarded.
Although Marcus said documents that had to do with crimes could,
of course, be kept (five of the six documents at issue in this case
were determined, at least in part, to fit that description), his
decision determined that at least in Portland, citizens have a right
to find out if they're being spied on, and can do so by suing the city
and subpoenaing CID documents. (A previous lawsuit brought by
the ACLU on behalf of the Socialist Workers Party did not result
in a public right to know, as CID announced that the documents
requested had been destroyed before the request.) You may get
redacted files if they are watching you, as Squirrel did, but you'll
get something. And if it violates the law, you can insist that it be
shredded.
Marcus' ruling is intended to force CID to obey existing laws on
political intelligence gathering. He cautioned CID to be extremely
careful about what kind of information it keeps on file, noting
passages even in the documents retained that could violate the law.
He also assigned the city attorney and Lebenbaum to work together
to find a reasonable deadline for removing illegal files. Lebenbaum
hopes to establish a file review within weeks of an incident, a two-
year purge cycle rather than the current five-year cycle, and regular
spot reviews by the state Attorney General's office. A previous
agreement between the ACLU and CID about photos taken at
demonstrations provided for a 30-day purge schedule if no criminal
investigation is continuing.
Although he went overboard to understand the police point of view
and balance it with the public's right to privacy and to political
activity, in the end Marcus did not go easy on CID. "When you see
material retained in what used to be called the Red Squad files, and
it's the same old stuff, if the statute means anything, that's
precisely the sort of stuff that shouldn't be in there," he said.
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