Valley law enforcement's internet "Red Squad" takes center stage at International Social Media and Surveillance Conference

A group of law enforcement officers who coordinated the crackdown on Occupy Phoenix, and regularly monitor the pages of activists through internet surveillance, are scheduled speakers at next week's "Social Media the Internet and Law Enforcement" (SMILE) three day conference.  The Phoenix Police Department are the host agency for this year's conference,  Detective CJ Wren and  Terrorism Liaison Officer (TLO) All Hazards Analyst Brenda Dowhan will be representing Phoenix,  Detective Chris Adamczyk, a TLO from Mesa Police Department will also be presenting.

What they will be presenting on, should be of interest to anyone concerned with the powers given to police agencies to spy and collect information on individuals and groups engaged in political activity.  While the justification has been provided that these departments are concerned with anarchists and "criminal activists," much of the documentation surrounding Occupy Phoenix revealed that these individuals and their respective police organizations (Phoenix PD and Mesa PD coordinating with other departments through the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC)) were using secretive technologies to identify individuals who merely criticized department policy.

Phoenix police prepare to make arrests during Occupy Phoenix (Downtown Devil)

Journalist Beau Hodai obtained thousands of pages of documents from various law enforcement agencies on the varied multi-agency responses to  Occupy Phoenix, and related events.  What Hodai learned was that the counter-terrorism infrastructure established in Arizona, through the ACTIC fusion center, worked closely with corporate partners to pass information along information on protests being organized against them. 

We made good use of the Hodai's source materials, which were generously posted online, to write a series of stories that Hodai had not covered, including the revelations that a co-owner of Changing Hands Books was passing information about Occupy Phoenix along to the Phoenix PD.  Another unsettling story we covered was on the Facial Recognition Unit within ACTIC that was using a facial recognition software to scan the state's drivers license database to identify participants in protests, using photos found on social media.  Given that most of the information regarding the activities of ACTIC, and the TLOs involved in targeting Occupy Phoenix, is approaching four years old, the upcoming SMILE conference affords us the opportunity to shine a light on these digital spies.  Here are some highlights from the conference agenda:

TLO All Hazards Analyst Brenda Dowhan is giving a presentation on Using Social Media for Event Planning and Real-time Monitoring, in her event description Dowhan advocates for "pro-active policing," citing an anti-police protest as an event which "could impact public safety and the community."  Given what we know from Dowhan's history with the Occupy protests, anarchist events, and marches affiliated with indigenous causes, her objective is not to merely pass along information to other regional TLOs about a possible protest or activist gathering, but to coordinate disruption.  Hodai noted in his "Dissent or Terror" article that after Tempe Homeland Defense Unit Detective Derek Pittam wrote of a guerrilla gardening event successfully disrupted by Tempe police, Dowhan responded with "Good to hear. Every site I've been on, they know that we are watching them."

Dowhan was often aided by Mesa Detective Chris Adamczyk, a TLO and self-described expert in "subversive organizations."  Adamczyk will also be presenting to other officers on the topic of  Unmask the Movement: Using social media to assess the risks of subversive organizations.  In his description, Adamczyk laughably describes the "dark side of social media," the world of street gangs, syndicates, criminal activists, and terror organizations. In addition to his obsessing over the Facebook page of Food Not Bombs, Adamczyk has launched a private enterprise to share his unique skill set.  His website and smartphone app, called the Protestus Project, claims to be"making sense of the world of activism," but for who?  The site is updated infrequently, and appears to rely of the same open source information that Adamczyk receives on the daily from his position as a TLO at the Mesa Police Department.  The website and app are uneven in what information is shared, for example the website documents an activist group involved in recent anti-police protests and provides analysis of the local Black Lives Matter/Rumain Brisbon protests, while the app appears to be an alphabetized threat assessment of local activist groups.  It's unclear if Detective Adamczyk writes all content for the website or app.

Perhaps nothing is more humorous than the presentation given by Detective CJ Wren on Stalking 2.0 ~ Stalking in the Social Media Era, which is apparently about a man who found 30 social media pages belonging to the police and saved the info to disk, and why police officers should lock down their social media profiles.  Detective Wren is the Arizona Chapter President at Association of Threat Assessment Professionals, and Law Enforcement President of the Arizona Terrorism Liaison Association.  Despite Detective Wren's counter-terrorism expertise and his online privacy tips for law enforcement, a simple Google search reveals that Wren himself has a revealing social media footprint.  Perhaps he should consider using his own online activities as a case study!  This is all the more laughable considering his employment (along with Dowhan and Adamczyk) relies on him stalking radicals, anarchists, indigenous activists, and immigrant rights groups on their respective social media pages and storing the information forever through a joint partnership with the Federal government.

Detective Wren would like to have it both ways; an open internet for for Wren, Dowhan, and Adamczyk to prowl, collecting "open source intelligence" to share with their TLO partners and the FBI through ACTIC; and, under the justification of officer safety,  a closed internet to protect the identities, actions, and opinions of police officers, shielding them from criticism. These agents of the law are speaking at SMILE because they are skilled in the use of surveillance, disruption, and repression to halt protests and groups opposed to the actions of government and business.

Creepy name aside, networking hubs such as SMILE, the ACTIC fusion center, and the activities of the anti-protest "Red Squad" counter-terrorism departments must be dragged out into the light.  The increasing efforts of local police departments to spy on and disrupt the efforts of activist groups and political protest goes hand in hand with the riot police using military equipment to intimidate and control people when they sign off from the internet and take to the streets.

Is Tempe PD planning to use cell phone data to identify participants at an anti-racist rally?

According to local media, the Tempe Police Department are preparing for a potential clash between a group of white supremacists who have announced a "White Man March" on Mill Avenue on Saturday, and a counter-demonstration organized by local anarchists and anti-racists, including residents of the surrounding neighborhood.

The TPD has a less than stellar history when it comes to dealing with protests. With that in mind, we want to put a spotlight on a secretive tool in the arsenal of the Tempe cops, one that can easily be used for spying on demonstrators in real time by using something almost everyone carries with them these days: a cell phone. The question is, will the TPD use it -- and what will be the implications for civil liberties if they do?

The Tempe Police Department's history of political repression through intimidation, electronic tracking, and surveilling of activists, radicals, anarchists, and participants in Occupy Phoenix, has been documented here at Down & Drought (and also quite extensively by journalist Beau Hodai, and by the anarchists themselves (1,2)), and includes using anti-terror cops to spy on gardeners and deploying mobile surveillance to gawk at tailgaters.

Knowing this historical context, and considering statements from TPD about their preparation for Saturday's protests,  we decided to do a little to research on the use of technology for the purpose of remote electronic surveillance. This led us to the Stingray, a device being discreetly used by law enforcement agencies across the United States to covertly collect data.

The Stingray is known as an “IMSI catcher”, meaning that the device records the International Mobile Subscriber Identity of a particular wireless device, such as a cell phone.  According to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal,  the "Stingray works by mimicking a cellphone tower, getting a phone to connect to it and measuring signals from the phone. It lets the stingray operator 'ping,' or send a signal to, a phone and locate it as long as it is powered on."

The Stingray has the ability to connect to all cell phones within a mile of the device, without police having to contact a wireless service provider, by collecting data on the identification and location of all phone communications within range, and then forwarding the signal on to the nearest cell phone tower.  Among the data collected by the Stingray include all outgoing numbers dialed for phone calls and text messages, and the identification for a phone which can be used to obtain call and text history.  As the Stingray is usually mounted in a police vehicle, it can stay mobile and, due to the lack of familiarity the public has with the device, would be difficult to identify.

A handful of valley police departments admitted that they use the device in an Arizona Republic article, among them Phoenix, Mesa, and Gilbert departments. These devices are generally purchased with grant funds made available by the Department of Homeland Security.  According to the Republic, a number of valley police departments refused to acknowledge the use of the Stingray device, including the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which denied any knowledge of the Stingray device. 

In a similar instance, journalists in Sacramento researching the use of the Stingray in the region were told by the the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office that the department had no knowledge of owning or using the Stingray.  When confronted with documents from other departments, including a purchase order from Sacramento County, which confirmed that the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office did own a Stingray and related technology, the department never fessed up to owning a Stingray, instead telling the journalists that their "legal counsel is coordinating a response" to the inquiry.

The Stingray is a product of the Harris Corporation, a company which specializes in high tech surveillance technology, and made the Stingray a sought after device for law enforcement after years of developing the technology for the US military. Harris Corporation refuses to answer reporters' questions about the Stingray and related products, telling them to ask the police agencies about the device, which would be great if Harris Corporation wasn't also requiring departments to sign non-disclosure agreements upon purchase. This is the case with one of the notable local departments absent from the Republic's article, the Tempe Police Department, who paid Harris Corporation $60,321.75 for a Stingray package in October 2012.

The contract, which the Public Intelligence project downloaded and hosts on their site, was removed from the City of Tempe's website in the weeks after the purchase.  The removal of the contract, between the Harris Corporation and the City of Tempe, was likely due to the non-disclosure agreement that Tempe probably violated by posting the document to the city's website. A subsequent request for an additional purchase from Harris Corporation to not exceed $123,497.50 was approved by the Tempe City Council at their August 22, 2013 meeting.  Naturally, the details of the recent purchase by the Tempe Police Department from Harris Corporation are not available to the public.

The use of nondisclosure agreements between the government and private industry to hide the acquisition of spy equipment with very serious civil liberties implications is troubling, to say the least! Why doesn't the city want its residents to know about this technology?  As noted in the USA Today expose on the Stingray, there is a concern that the device could be used to identify the participants of a rally or protest for a political cause.  

As we have previously noted in our article on the Facial Recognition Unit of the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC), local law enforcement have repeatedly used tools that were purchased under the pretext of "fighting crime", but were actually used to spy on the participants in protests and activist events, many of whom had never been accused or convicted of a crime.

So what does this mean for the future of protest in Tempe, or any town where the cops have a Stingray?  It likely means that anyone carrying a cell phone could have their identity placed at the scene by police, despite any other precautions (such as wearing a mask to conceal the face).  With the lengthy history of the Tempe PD's Homeland Defense Unit's efforts to stifle free speech and assembly, and the coordination between valley Terrorism Liason Officers (TLO) to identify radicals and anarchists in the valley, it seems quite likely that the Stingray could be discreetly deployed at this weekend's anti-fascist counter-protest to the "White Man March."

And if you think the Tempe Police Department using the Stingray on Saturday to collect the identities of people protesting a white supremacist march (or just anyone on Mill Ave who may get lumped in) is without precedent, think again.  In 2003, the Miami-Dade Police Department purchased a Stingray in anticipation of protests aimed at the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) conference.  The department claimed the device was needed to monitor protests, and the "anticipated criminal activities" which they claimed would be organized by cell phone. Following the FTAA protests, the City of Miami, the Miami Police Department, and its officers, faced a number of lawsuits concerning the level of violence and brutality used by police against demonstrators, as well as complaints over the use of surveillance to target journalists for arrest.

With concerns over the use of the Stingray, and the Tempe PD's history of repression towards protest groups, we reached out to Sgt Michael Pooley, the Press Information Officer at Tempe.  We asked Sgt Pooley for comment on the use of the Stringray by the Tempe Police in regards to the possible "White Man March" and counter-demonstration this weekend. We also asked about any past use of the Stingray by police at protests, and if the department has any concerns over the privacy concerns of anyone ensnared in the department's data collection.  As of the time this article was published, there has been no response from Sgt Pooley, continuing the silence from Tempe on what appears to be a serious attack on civil liberty.

Why does a Phoenix Cop want to see West Phoenix Girl Scouts profiled by police?

Eight year old Girl Scout Lexi Carney made national news this week after she and her family set up a table selling Girl Scout cookies outside of the TruMed medical marijuana dispensary in East Phoenix. Her mother Heidi had been inspired after hearing the news that a Girl Scout in San Francisco had sold out of her entire stock of cookies in a single day after setting up her table outside a pot shop. 

For its part, the local Girl Scouts chapter said that the medical marijuana dispensary would not have been approved because it would not be considered a "kid friendly" location. But the reality is that, in 2014, a family can set up a table at an East Valley medical marijuana dispensary and face no threat from law enforcement, even if Girl Scout leaders frown on the practice.  However, it's a different story in the Southwest Valley, if the Facebook post of a Phoenix Police lieutenant is to be believed.

In a February 6th posting on the public wall of his face book page, Lt. Tom Van Dorn posted a status update describing how he is a "cynical cop" because of his reaction when he saw a black Chevy Tahoe advertising the sale of Girl Scout cookies.  Below is a screen shot of Van Dorn's original post:

In other words, Lt. Van Dorn has a message for anyone driving a black Chevy Tahoe in the southwest valley: he is profiling your vehicle and is especially suspicious of anyone advertising their kid's Girl Scouts cookies from their vehicle in that part of town. When he sees your truck his first thought is, "WHO DID YOU ROB FOR THOSE COOKIES? [sic]" And, "I should pull you over."

According to the Girl Scouts of America's Girl Scout cookies FAQ, "parents and Girl Scout adults may assist, [but] it is the girl who makes the sale, sets learning and sales goals, and learns the entrepreneurial skills that are part of the program."  By these definitions the driver of the Tahoe is most likely following the rules, not that the police are empowered to enforce the Girl Scout handbook. 

Furthermore there's any number of scenarios which could explain why a parent would advertise that they have Girl Scout cookies for sale, for the suggested retail price of four dollars, as stated on the Arizona Cactus-Pine Council's FAQ. And the driver in the West Valley who advertises they have Girl Scout cookies for sale is not alone in this tactic, as the Duncan Banner reported over the weekend. 

 Tyler Boydson/Duncan Banner

The Watson family of Duncan, Oklahoma said that the painted message on their vehicle has helped them sell more cookies than they expected.  Luckily for the Watsons, they don't live in Southwest Phoenix where their support for their daughter's Girl Scout group would be interpreted by a Valley police officer as suspicious, and the cookies as likely stolen goods.

What's interesting is that you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more wholesome, American middle class activity than selling Girl Scout cookies. In other parts of town, parents who participate in such activities are viewed as engaged and responsible parents. But not if you live in Lt. Van Dorn's beat. To him, you're just a thief.

This sets up a lose-lose situation in which parents are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Violating traditional middle class parenting values invites police intervention, but emulating them draws police suspicion. 

According to his public Facebook wall, Lt. Van Dorn was transferred to the Estrella Mountain Precinct in early January, working the 33 Area which encompasses Estrella and Laveen in Southwest Phoenix, both heavily minority parts of the city.

Before his transfer to the Estrella Mountain Precinct, Tom Van Dorn worked in the Career Criminal Squad, a division of the Phoenix Police Department's Major Offenders Bureau.  Van Dorn was referenced in journalist Beau Hodai's "Dissent or Terror" investigation into various local law enforcement agencies' surveillance of Occupy Phoenix participants, as well as individuals associated with anarchist protests and events.

Did Phoenix Police and FBI fusion center information-sharing on protesters extend to Freeport-McMoran, too?

According to emails released in that investigation, it was Lt. Van Dorn, then a sergeant, who was responsible for sending undercover officer "Saul DeLara" to spy on protesters, and he encouraged his colleagues at the Arizona Counter Terror Information Center (ACTIC) to broaden the scope of their internet spying on protest groups. Several people who interacted with officer "DeLara" reported that he advocated violence and claimed to have connections to Mexican anarchists. He was quickly outed by Occupiers and was further revealed in the "Dissent or Terror" investigation to be Detective Saul Ayala.

Interestingly, a search of the the Global Intelligence Files, five million emails from global intelligence firm Stratfor and leaked thanks to the work of Jeremy Hammond (who also hacked Arizona law enforcement as a part of the Antisec group), reveals that Saul Ayala contacted Stratfor at least twice offering advice on alleged radical jihadists in Mexico, a common far right wing talking point, but something that seems a bit out of the jurisdiction of your average undercover cop. There's quite a bit in these files about local police and unfortunately the media has largely ignored it.

Nevertheless, the connections between local police and private national security firms like Stratfor (and Infragard, as we have previously reported) raise serious questions, just like Van Dorn's thinly-veiled profiling operating under the guise of cynicism. Last year Down and Drought revealed a racist tweet from Phoenix officer Yuliana Sobarzo, out of the South Mountain Precinct mocking the mentally ill.  Social media posts, like those from Sobarzo and Van Dorn, reveal the casualness with which officers feel they can display their racism and bias on social media and raise questions about general attitudes among the force.

As we covered in a previous piece, the Phoenix police department has had ongoing problems with racism and their heavy handed approach to policing, so it is no surprise that the police consider the residents of Southwest Phoenix to be always under suspicion, just like how anyone outraged enough by the looting of the economy to join popular protests was a potential target of police surveillance and infiltration. And, of course, when a police officer like Van Dorn, who ordered the infiltration of a popular protest movement, jokes about profiling, it's not a far leap to believing he may in fact do it.

Further reading: Phoenix cop mocks Olympic athlete, the mentally ill, and wins gold medal in anti-black racism

ARIZONA COUNTER-TERROR COPS USED FACIAL RECOGNITION ON FACEBOOK PHOTOS IN OCCUPY PHOENIX OPERATION

Last week the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the FBI for access to their records regarding the function of the forthcoming federal facial recognition program and the potential for a combined civilian and criminal database. The lawsuit came on the heels of a report by the Washington Post on a facial recognition software manufactured by MorphoTrust USA, used in criminal investigations by local and state law enforcement agencies in 26 states.  The software accesses a database of over 120 million photos gathered from police booking photos, and, in some states, driver's licenses and identification cards. In the same article, Arizona is identified as one of 13 states with no facial recognition systems for driver's license photos.

Yet, in journalist Beau Hodai's report "Dissent or Terror", it is revealed that the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC) is using facial recognition software to identify persons of interest through a database composed of millions of photos, and that they have used this system to identify at least one participant in Occupy Phoenix by using a photo taken from Facebook.  The ACTIC Facial Recognition Unit is a division of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) which acts in partnership with ACTIC and participating agencies,  the Arizona Governor's office, Arizona Office of Homeland Security, county and city police agencies, and the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Incidentally, the purchase of the software by MCSO briefly became the subject of controversy in 2008, when it was revealed that $200,000 in seized RICO money, in addition to federal grant funds, had been used in relation to MCSO officers and trips taken to Honduras.  Channel 12 reporter Joe Dana and Phoenix New Times blogger Stephen Lemons documented back in 2008 that the Sheriff's Office used the software as an excuse to built a "Honduras Unit" along with a database of photos from Honduras that related to the gang MS-13. As Lemons pointed out, Arizona was not considered a state with a high number of MS-13 members, and Dana drew out connections between Hendershott and the facial recognition software contractor Hummingbird Defense Systems that may have helped the company financially profit.


According to a 2007 presentation by Norm Beasley of MCSO on "Fusion Centers & their Role in Information Sharing" the Facial Recognition Unit was capable of operating "field deployable for special events and onsite identification" and that the ACTIC Facial Recognition Unit, under the direction of MCSO, was in the process of coordinating a national network of counter-terrorism fusion centers, and obtaining all "criminal images" from participating agencies to buffer the MCSO's own facial recognition database.

While it's unknown if the MCSO was able to achieve the goals outlined in Beasley's presentation, the  information obtained by Hodai from an Arizona Department of Homeland Security record shows that the ACTIC Facial Recognition Unit could access a database of 24.7 million photos from their photographic databases to identify an individual:

"The ACTIC Facial Recognition Unit has the ability to match biometric data contained in photographs -- such as those found on Facebook -- with biometric data contained in roughly 18 million Arizona Driver's License photos, 4.7 million Arizona county/municipal jail 'booking' photos, 12,000 photos contained in the 'Arizona Sex Offender Database,' and 2 million photos available through the Federal Joint Automated Booking System."

According to the MCSO's Counter-Terrorism website, the ACTIC Facial Recognition Unit "contributes to all criminal and counterterrorism investigations by potentially identifying unknown subjects, or locating known subjects, through a comparison of their photographic images to millions of stored booking, driver's license, and other related data bases."

The ACTIC Facial Recognition Unit has been used by Phoenix Terrorism Liaison All-Hazards Analyst Brenda Dowhan, an intelligence analyst for ACTIC, in at least one attempt to identify a person believed to have been involved with Occupy Phoenix. As documented below, in an email obtained by Hodai, Dowhan responds to Phoenix police detective CJ Wren who had asked for help identifying this woman by her facebook photo. 

The facial recognition search was unable to identify the person in the photo amongst the database of nearly 25 million photos.

If the use of facial recognition technology is about furthering the ability of police to catch "bad guys", then why is it that just about anyone who challenges the rich and powerful can end up in an ACTIC database search?  Beau Hodai, the author of the report on the Arizona counter-terrorism fusion centers, was driven to undertake the research after he was ejected from the 2011 ALEC conference in Scottsdale by security as a "persona non grata."

Rather than his removal being a misunderstanding, or the actions of a rogue cop, it was the hidden collaboration between the Phoenix police department and the ALEC planners in identifying and removing unwanted individuals.  In addition to journalists, Hodai's report and police documents disclosed the level of attention paid to Occupy Phoenix, anarchists, and Indigenous activists who seem to be singled out for no other reason than their motivation to take action against the interests of the rich and powerful.

This raises even more questions in what already looks like at the very least to be a case of police abuse of authority.  Already, we have documented on this blog that the PPD and FBI were almost certainly sharing information on protests and protesters with perennial activist target and accused abuser of workers, Freeport-McMoran.  This sharing was direct through emails, but may as well have happened through the FBI Fusion Center, where private security firm Infragard was allowed to participate in information sharing.  Likewise, we have also revealed how Tempe PD anti-terror cops treated local activists as terrorists.

The Washington Post article does not list Arizona as one of the states that uses facial recognition technology to access drivers license databases, but the documents released surrounding Occupy Phoenix and anti-ALEC protests clearly do contain photos taken from drivers licenses.  Are there databases of Valley activists?  Down and Drought has documents that suggest that there are, at least in the case of the Tempe Police Department.  Further, is this activity legal?   Especially when it is being used to target and identify activists.  Many states have laws regulating this kind of activity, or preventing it to be used for political purposes.  What is the case in Arizona?  More and more it appears that regardless of its original intent, the growing police and surveillance apparatus in Arizona, under the cover of anti-terrorism, has increasingly become a weapon for police to target activists and, in so doing, to protect corporations.  While the US is gripped by the NSA spying story, we seem to have our own mini-version right here in the Copper State.



This is part 6 in our ongoing series analyzing recently released police and Federal documents detailing their surveillance and infiltration of Occupy Phoenix and anarchists in the Valley.

Did Phoenix Police and FBI fusion center information-sharing on protesters extend to Freeport-McMoran, too?

Good news!  Arizona's richest CEOs are doing fine.  Because I know you were worried.  So, just so you can sleep at night, know that although there was a slight dip in pay for the state's top CEO's and chairpersons (there's a woman or two in the mix, after all!), Arizona's capitalists and managers-in-chief are still making out pretty damn well.  Granted the average did drop from $1.33 million the year before to $1.31 million last year, but what's twenty grand between friends, right?  Hey, we're all tightening our belts these days!

And standing on the top of the heap for a second year in a row is Freeport-McMoran CEO Richard Adkerson.  While the average worker in Arizona took around $44,000 last year, the mining boss took in just shy of $20 million, which actually was quite a bit less than the year before, when Adkerson cashed out some stock and took home a cool $82 million.

Which should come as some consolation to mine workers in West Papua, Indonesia (well, the ones who are still alive, that is).  Last month 28 were killed in a tunnel collapse in a Freeport-McMoran mine.  But what's a little death between friends, right?  Especially when it's easily replaceable workers.  As long as the profits continue to flow up the ladder.  

On Friday another worker was killed in a similar manner.  The union representing the workers, who fought a brutal 3 month strike for higher wages in 2011, has called on workers to halt production again until there is a safety review of the mine.

But, hey, raking in millions while workers die isn't the only perk of being a Freeport-McMoran executive.  As a recent release of Phoenix Police Department documents reveals, being a top mining executive also gets you the cooperation of the police when anyone has the gall to protest your dangerous and destructive profitable production methods.   And, maybe, it gets you a seat in the FBI fusion center.

And that's precisely what seems to have happened in 2011-2012 in Phoenix, as Occupy Phoenix protesters, members of the Industrial Workers of the World, the East Timor Action Network and others organized a series of demonstrations in front of Freeport-McMoran's downtown Phoenix offices.  Documents show that PPD was working directly with the company to provide them with intel about what protesters were up to.  Just how much?  It's not clear, but it could have been a lot.  And it could have gone as far as DHS as well.

As several of the emails now available for review about police actions during that period show, cops made sure to include Freeport-McMoran corporate security manager Tom Tyo (a retired MCSO captain) in their conversation.  In these emails they coordinate security and share information about the protest, when it will arrive, how many will attend and information about potential tactics.  There were several of these protests.

We don't know what else they shared in part because we don't know what was said in phone calls, but also because large numbers of documents in the time period including these protests were released completely redacted, totally blacked out.  However, protesters and organizations are named in police documents surrounding the protests.

This may seem like standard cop behavior.  After all, perhaps it's just natural to think that the police would inform and cooperate with a corporation being targeted by protesters.  Public safety, protection of property, etc.  However, we've seen from other documents that police during this period routinely gave over information to both the Feds and corporations about protesters and their plans, even when they were completely legal.  

In addition, Phoenix PD shared information on protesters through the FBI fusion center.  Documents indicate that information-sharing happened at the very least with the right wing, pro-corporate lobbying group ALEC when it became the target of local protesters.

But there may well be more to this story.  Documents also show that Infragard, the private-public security organization, was allowed to sit in on Fusion Center meetings and receive information on Occupy Phoenix protests and other actions, possibly including data on specific protesters.  

Infragard functions as a partnership between businesses, private citizens, the police and the FBI to share security information.  If this sounds to you like a proto-fascist organization, then you're not alone.  The Arizona chapter's website declares that since it's members "are vetted by the FBI, we can do information sharing with sensitive but unclassified data: via member to member, FBI to and from members, Intelligence bulletins to and from members and the Department of Homeland Security to members."

What's the relevance to Freeport-McMoran?  If you pull up Freeport-McMoran security honcho Tom Tyo's LinkedIn profile, what do you find?  Infragard.

Yet again we see that the Phoenix Police response to Occupy Phoenix and other local activists was very likely more than it seemed, with strong indications that police either willingly cooperated with corporate targets of protest or facilitated information sharing with them thanks to the mammoth, bloated homeland security infrastructure.    

The short version?  The Feds let Infragard sit in on FBI fusion center discussions about Occupy protests in Phoenix that targeted Freeport-McMoran, and the head of security for Freeport-McMoran in Phoenix is a member of Infragard.


If more information sharing than appears in the emails didn't happen, it would be surprising, but it still demonstrates just how dangerous this public-corporate policing alliance is, especially in the context of the anti-terrorism framework, where police have been turned into bored but well-paid little anti-terror auxiliaries, whose funding and internal structure tend towards encouraging busy work, self-justification and the identifying of false threats in order to pad resumes and secure promotions and funding.  By now, we have a decade of cops, bureaucrats, corporate functionaries and private consultants whose careers depend heavily on the anti-terror apparatus.  This is a dangerous situation for everyone, but most of all those who stand up and challenge it.

Were protesters singled out by the police and then shared with anti-terrorism authorities and corporate security?  It certainly looks that way when it came to the ALEC protests, and it looks a lot like that was the case with the Freeport-McMoran protests as well.  

But the final outrageous element in the equation is the complete silence so far from the local media on the matter.  What's the problem?  Too busy reporting on Amy's Baking Company?


This is part 5 in our ongoing series analyzing recently released police and Federal documents detailing their surveillance and infiltration of Occupy Phoenix and anarchists in the Valley.

Emails raise more questions about PPD, the red squad, homeland security and the repression of Occupy Phoenix

As we continue to go through the emails released by the Center for Media and Democracy detailing Phoenix Police, Tempe Police and FBI collusion in spying and disrupting Occupy Phoenix, many troubling questions arise.

For instance, who was in the driver's seat during the police response to the ALEC protests of 2011?  It seems clear from the emails that at least some PPD officers were serving as off-duty private security for ALEC while others were working on-duty.  They were coordinating, perhaps as one might expect, but this cooperation raises real questions about the role of a police force that likes to claim that its presence at protests is to facilitate the exercise of constitutional rights.  Clearly PPD doesn't look like an unbiased actor given these facts, a conclusion that no seasoned activist would dispute.

These records also show clearly that PPD was working with banks and, through the FBI fusion center, private security firms like Infragard.  Many questions about these relationships will surely be answered as we dig deeper into these thousands of emails.  But as of now, the answers don't look good for PPD and other police agencies.

Still other emails raise questions about not just the independence of the PPD, but also of whether there was appropriate oversight of such police protest staples as the community relations unit (affectionately known by local activists as the "red squad"), just what it's actual role is in the era of anti-terrorism and even whether it ought to exist at all.

This team plays a central role in the released messages which show it several times to be very important on the ground links for funneling information to police anti-terrorism officials and the FBI fusion center, and for carrying out their plans.  Such a relationship validates the "red squad" monicker that activists have given the unit.  Time and again the community relations unit proves itself to be an integrated part of the overall spying apparatus.

One recurring source of serious concern centers around the role played by Detective Chris Wilson, at the time assigned to the Phoenix PD community relations unit.  As we have previously reported, Detective Wilson, now revealed to have been using his contacts and authority as liaison to the Phoenix LGBTQ community to target and sexually abuse underage boys, is frequently cited in these documents as a source of information and as someone who can use his community contacts to get details on protesters and their plans.  

In the documents features above and below, Brenda Dowhan of the PPD and an alphabet soup of various other anti-terrorism related units responds to a February 2nd request by Tracey Woods of the Glendale PD for "a list of Occupy Phx members with pics".   Woods email in turn was in response to an initial message from Dowhan warning that underage occupiers, known to "openly consume drugs and alcohol" and "create a riotous atmosphere", might attend a fundraiser for a gay pride scholarship at the Mighty Cup & Spoon in Glendale. Incidentally, among Dowhan's other duties was to monitor Facebook and other social media.

Dowhan refers Woods to Wilson, who she says "has contacts with the LGBT and can obtain more information on their plans for the night".  Here we not only see the direct relationship between the community relations unit and the homeland security behemoth, but also how Det. Wilson's directives from above to spy on and interface with elements within the LGBTQ community put him directly in contact with the community he was later to admit victimizing.  This is of course particularly disturbing given the November memo from Det. Wilson's direct supervisor on the community relations unit, Sgt. Mark Schweikert, alleging that Wilson had protection from powerful individuals in the police and city government, and that Wilson was as a result difficult to manage.

But we must resist the tendency to chalk this up to a single bad apple.  In fact, what these emails reveal is that the "red squad" was key in the repression, surveillance, and disruption Occupy Phoenix, not to mention the role it played in creating the opportunity and authority necessary for Wilson to abuse his young victims.  Further, it suggests strongly that it has become a key element of the larger anti-terror infrastructure, a vital part of the information funnel and repressive machinery of homeland security that increasingly targets domestic activists as part of its ever-expanding mandate.

As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  And this is precisely the model on which anti-terrorism operates, a form of policing to which community relations has become wedded.  Assets unused for fighting terrorism instead must be justified by hyping threats.  Likewise, resistance must be framed as terrorism.  And the red squad was situated at a crucial juncture in that system.  Such a relationship creates a chilling effect with regard to the exercise of the very rights it claims to protect and makes a very good case for the total dismantlement of the unit.



This is part 4 in our ongoing series analyzing recently released police and Federal documents detailing their surveillance and infiltration of Occupy Phoenix and anarchists in the Valley.

Tempe anti-terror cops sent undercovers to infiltrate a local bar to spy on anarchists planning a community garden

According to documents released by the Center for Media and Democracy this week, while investigating Occupy Phoenix organizers and anarchists in Phoenix, Sgt. Ken Renwick (of Tempe's Homeland Defense Unit) directed plain clothes officers to "visit Casey Moore's and see if we can get any intel".  Casey Moore's is a bar in downtown Tempe where police suspected anarchists gathered and hatched their plans.  It's affectionately called "Casey's" by regulars.

The problem?  May Day was approaching and while it seemed Occupy Phoenix had wound down in many respects, it was known that Tempe anarchists were planning something, probably in Tempe, maybe in Scottsdale.  But finding out what hadn't proved an easy task.

At the beginning of Occupy Phoenix Sgt. Tom Van Dorn, head of the Major Offenders Bureau and Career Criminals Squad was forced to admit that "finding out how the anarchists are organizing and what they are up to is still difficult".  Sending police infiltrators like Saul DeLara (quickly unmasked by veteran activists) hadn't helped.  By May the cops were still complaining about the lack of information, and Brenda Dowhan worried about the "complete silence from May Day organizers".

Incidentally, Dowhan is a perfect example of the explosion of anti-terrorism positions since September 11th, signing off her emails as "Terrorism Liaison All Hazards Expert, Phoenix Police Department Homeland Defense Bureau, Arizona Counter-Terrorism Information Center".  An online search reveals her as an alumni.of Kaplan University, an online college.  In one email, Dowhan shared at least one link to an article posted to AnarchistNews.org entitled "Spain: New wave of incendiary attacks and sabotages by Nihilist Anarchists".  There were no attributed anarchist incendiary attacks in Phoenix during the period covered by these documents.

The cops are heading to Casey's

This wasn't the first time anarchists in Tempe had been singled out by anti-terrorism authorities to fit their demands for a local terrorist bogeyman.  In 2004, Dan Elting, a Phoenix cop and counter-terrorism trainer, organized a community forum at the Tempe library in which anarchists were described as terrorist threats equivalent to Al-Qaeda and the Klan.  Printouts of the Phoenix Anarchist Coalition's webpage were distributed as reference materials to a very conservative, elderly and scared audience.  It was the only local organization so featured.

Around the time Tempe plain clothes officers appear to have been directed in the name of homeland defense to brave the cool Spring patio weather and cold beers at Casey's to spy on anarchists, Casey's had been informally the site of a regular Thursday night anarchist drinking night known as "Anarchy Thursdays".  This is almost certainly the reason why cops were sent there.

Anarchists had been living and organizing in Tempe for well over a decade, and downtown Tempe had seen two previous May Day marches in 2002 and 2003.  The former had gotten a bit out of hand from the perspective of the cops.  In addition, police reacted clumsily and pepper sprayed journalists.  But by 2003 the bike unit had received training by the Eugene Police Department in crowd control (Eugene being another national hotbed of anarchist organizing at the time) and the march was more easily contained.

Over the years anarchists have become well-established in downtown Tempe neighborhoods and the community there, and had proved it most recently (pre-Occupy) during the 2010 resistance to SB1070.  Anarchists had initiated and been central organizers in building Tempe neighborhood resistance to the application of the law in Tempe, doing door to door organizing, printing yard signs denouncing the law that proliferated through the neighborhood, putting on well-attended neighborhood general assemblies and one very large march through the neighborhood that attracted a wide range of Tempe residents.  Police were not able to contain that march to the sidewalks and residents marched cheerfully in the streets as their neighbors frequently came out to wave in support or join in.

What the cops did know was that the Tempe May Day action involved taking over a public space ("reclaim the commons", as it was called in anarchist parlance) in order to plant a community garden.  An occupation.  This much was clear from the posters that went up around town.

The chosen spot was a long vacant lot downtown.  For two decades it had been the location of Tempe's largely beloved "Gentle Strength Co-op" (although not so much with the developers and city council).  Anarchists had held weekly meetings for years there as the Phoenix Anarchist Coalition, and had run an infoshop on the premises for about six months at one point (until some yuppie members complained about "bad vibes").  Still, anarchists worked there and were prominent members.  But the co-op had closed now and, after a failed attempt to develop the land into a Whole Foods/condoplex, it had lain fallow and unused for years.  What's more, the empty lot was now owned by the very same Canadian corporation that owned Zuccotti Park, the site of the original Occupy Wall Street encampment.

Officer Derek Pittam, by May Day 2012 serving as a Tempe Police Department Homeland Defense Unit Detective, had come up on the bike squad and had experience dealing with Tempe anarchists.  He'd had many run ins with them during protests and their routine cop watch patrols in the downtown.  Like many cops post-9/11, he had moved into one of the myriad anti-terrorism-related jobs that had proliferated across police departments nationwide thanks to increased Federal funding, a kind of grade inflation that led to the ridiculous number of titles accumulated à la Dowhan by many of the officers appearing in the documents released by PR Watch.  Those documents reveal Pittam was determined to deny anarchists a victory in their May Day plans.

Anti-terror cops defend empty lot from gardeners

In order to execute those plans, and to make sure that the vacant lot stayed empty and unused by the neighborhood, Pittam engaged in a series of pre-emptive actions (of questionable legality), such as sending police to visit local businesses warning of anarchist activity (including, according to one business owner, a claim that anarchists planned to run "really long hoses" across the street to water the lot).  Oh, the horror! 


He also wrote a letter to local businesses and prominent non-anarchist neighborhood residents.  In it, he linked the May Day action to anarchist violence. Pittam clearly saw this as a battle for the hearts and minds of Tempe.  He wrote: "I am very concerned that the organizers of this event have not disclosed important information in their quest to gain support from local residents and businesses." Unfortunately for Pittam, the letter was leaked by residents sympathetic to Tempe anarchists, who then published it the day before the garden planting, causing some embarrassment.

A riot cop is confused as a child is detained for vandalism

On the day in question about seventy people showed up with the intent of building a community garden, a great many of them local residents.  They gathered at the Farmer's Market across the street, with the permission of the owner.  What they found was a line of riot cops positioned in the lot.  Police threatened any trespassers with arrest.  Still loaded up with supplies (and with the cops baking in the hot sun), the group decided to take over a strip of city land right next to the lot.  Police did not act and a garden was built.  Several news outlets sent out reporters and cameras to
report on it, capturing the excitement and enthusiasm of participants.  A concrete planter was poured and filled with a variety of plants and vegetables.  At one point police, watching from the park, thought they saw some small children vandalizing a sign, so they stormed in and detained the kids and their parents.  It turned out the paint was water-soluble, so only warnings were given.  The impromptu community garden was maintained for three days until city workers came early in the morning and destroyed it.

In an email tooting his own horn about police activities that day (designed, as Sgt. Renwick had said, to make neighborhood residents and anarchists "go home saddened", denied victory), Pittam wrote, 'Our local actions, for better or worse, did appear to have an impact.  We did not have "Black Bloc" emerge...'  Why anyone would imagine a black bloc to be a useful tactic for building a garden wasn't clear, but it must certainly have been related to the general hyping of the potential for violence that these cops regularly engaged in.  Indeed, most likely a black bloc wasn't deterred at all, but none was ever planned.  After all, aside from its uselessness in that situation, it was also 100 degrees that day.  Only cops hang around in all black in those conditions.  They were the only black bloc that day.

Justifying their jobs in the face of what was in fact was a bit uncooperative but nevertheless standard fare protest must have been both frustrating and difficult to understand from an anti-terror framework.  It's telling that no where in these documents does it appear that police called each other out on their fantastic imaginings.  Instead, like Pittam post-garden defense, it's pats on the back, self-congratulation and attaboys. 

Interestingly, people who participated in the action didn't view it as a defeat.  A plot was taken over, the contradiction of cops defending an empty lot with significant local meaning was on full display, and a garden was planted.  And it was destroyed because the city couldn't tolerate it.  It would seem the organizers actually came out on top that day, not the TPD.

Nevertheless, when we read these police documents what we get is the odd juxtaposition of anti-terror rhetoric and gravity on one hand, and then the broad interpretation of results in the face of the actual run of the mill nature of the "threat".  As in the case of a local homeland defense officer, organizing with Phoenix anti-terror cops to send undercovers to spy on drunk anarchists and to deploy riot police in downtown Tempe to stop the planting of a community garden.  Oh yeah, and to detain children for painting.



This is part 3 in our ongoing series analyzing recently released police and Federal documents detailing their surveillance and infiltration of Occupy Phoenix and anarchists in the Valley.