Posted on 12/22/2005 2:35:56 PM PST by shooter223
NEW YORK (AP) -- Police officials Thursday disputed a newspaper report accusing them of using undercover officers to infiltrate and monitor anti-war groups and other activist organizations.
The report in Thursday's New York Times said videotapes obtained by the newspaper showed police conducting surveillance on people attending an Iraq war protest, a monthly bicycle ride staged by cycling activists and a vigil for a cyclist who had died in an accident.
The Police Department's top spokesman, Paul Browne, criticized the report as misleading. He said plainclothes police - not undercover officers - regularly attend protests to maintain order and stop crimes in progress, not to spy.
The story "confused plainclothes officers used to prevent and respond to acts of violence and other unlawful activity with undercover officers who conduct intelligence investigations under court-approved guidelines," Browne said in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
And how about the police officers who actually oppose the war in Iraq? Surely they are allowed to attend these rallies as private citizens.
Pretty limp. Maintaining order and stopping crimes -- the 'police presence' -- is the purview of the uniformed branch. And before FR's cop groupies get in an uproar, consider police-not-dressed-as-police at an abortion clinic protest.
So how long you been an anarchist ?
Wanting to see uniformed cops at demonstrations is anarchistic?
"So how long you been an anarchist ?"
Let me tell you a story of the upstanding, hardworking, Denver Police Department. They were "monitoring" anti-war activists for years and ALSO pro second amendment activists. They were taking videos and stills of the gunnies every time we protested our communist governor. They finally had to be sued to release the 3000 files they had on law-abiding, peaceful gun-owners. I confronted one cowardly, scumbag, "intelligence" cop about the handy-cam he was hiding in his coat and he took off back behind the uniformed cops lines like the anti-American, police-state, slime he was.
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