Taking their
cue from FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover’s paranoid surveillance of
Vietnam War-era peace activists, the New York Police Department
successfully placed a mole inside the Black Lives Matter movement,
who was able to view decision-making processes and participate in
protest actions.
Documents
unsealed by court order in February revealed that NYPD officers
gained the trust of BLM activists, accessing privileged information
to keep the police one step ahead of planned protest actions.
Police in
the city were routinely able to identify protest organizers and
participants in the 2014 marches protesting the death of Eric Garner,
an unarmed black man, at the hands of an excessively violent white
NYPD officer. Garner was selling unlicensed cigarettes at a
storefront where he had received permission from the manager to set
up shop. The killing was ruled a homicide by the New York City
coroner.
Black Lives
Matter organizers have been subjected to harassment and heavy
surveillance, including detention, arrest and prison for their
protest actions around the country.
Keegan
Stephan, an activist working with lawyers to gain access to
surveillance data taken by NYPD officers of BLM protests, said, "I
feel like the undercover [officer] was somebody who was or is very
much a part of the group, and has access to information we only give
to people we trust," according to the International Business
Times.
Retired NYPD
detective Joseph Giacalone was quoted as saying: "This could
have been going on a while before, for these people to get so close
to the inner circle."
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