This week's cover story about Greensboro police surveillance of activists is long, so long in fact that we had to cut two entire sections out to make it fit. Here they are in full:
NAACP
The civil rights organization
has worked closely with the Beloved Community Center and Latin King leader
Jorge Cornell over the years, but a request on the NAACP turned up a minimal
amount of criminal intelligence.
One of the few mentions came
from former Captain Charles Cherry, who alleged that, “Councilman Matheny in a
August 23, 2010 e-mail directed the GPD to look for ways to charge NAACP
members, because the citizens complained to Mr. Matheny.” Cherry, who says he
was fired from the department for helping officers file complaints of
discrimination, also claimed in the same message that Chief Miller intimidated
an NAACP member.
Most of the e-mails
pertaining to the group surrounded the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade
that the organization coordinates. A 2007 police parade assignment document
names four officers, including JR Robinson who appears on other intelligence
reports and future gang-squad officer Ernest Cuthbertson.
The team was assigned to the
parade route and surrounding area, aiming to “monitor activity and relay intel
to [Incident Commander].” The following year the intelligence team for the
parade was smaller, consisting of Richey, Flowers and Robinson, but had an
identical assignment.
Cuthbertson was later the
team leader for the “event response/arrest team” at a June 11, 2011 NAACP rally
against reopening the White Street landfill. The team included six other
officers, including gang unit officer Roman Watkins who regularly clashed with
the Latin Kings.
Finch alerted other officers
that the NAACP was planning a march to address the police department, landfill
and other issues in May 2011 and that state NAACP President William Barber
would be there.
“We’ll have the source in
there so we don’t necessarily have to cover it,” he wrote on May 25, but didn’t
give more details about he source. When asked about possible overlap with other
groups, Finch said, “I know that Nelson Johnson and the Latin Kings will be at
a few of the anarchist events. I’m not sure that Barber would want to align
himself with the anarchists but I guess anything is possible.”
Sharing information
Part of Finch and Flowers’
regular duties required them to coordinate with other agencies. Officers in
other departments who had attended Finch and Flowers’ training regularly
requested the information, and the two spent time helping other agencies with
intelligence.
Finch and Flowers forwarded
information about demonstrations, like a Farm Labor Organizing Committee
protest on May 6, 2011, to other departments and also met with other agencies
to share intelligence. Reports show regular correspondence and meetings,
especially between officers in major North Carolina municipalities, about
various “subversive” tendencies.
E-mails show that Greensboro
police coordinated and discussed responses to Occupy with police departments
around the country, such as an Albany, NY officer asking for advice on dealing
with occupations, and a Richmond, Va. officer cautioning against growing
anarchist involvement. Finch forwarded an e-mail with the agenda for a
statewide Occupy meeting, highlighting three workshops about the Democratic
National Convention (or DNC), anarchism and homeland security.
In mid-May, 2011, the two
helped Goldsboro police with “a large number of Pagans coming to town,” a few
days later helping Mayodan police with intelligence on an Aryan Brotherhood
member and Kentucky State Police about a Klan and National Socialist Movement
member.
The department received
regular updates on “extremist” activity throughout the country and world, from
alleged anarchist riots in Greece to changing outlaw motorcycle gang
allegiances. Bulletins, like one from the FBI on Feb. 21, 2012 entitled
“Methods used by anarchist extremists while attempting to disrupt a political
event,” were a regular occurrence.
Greensboro police were
invited to a free training called the “Domestic Extremism Symposium” on June
29, 2012 in Illinois hosted by the Gang Professionals Network. It is unclear if
any officers attended the event, which covered several of Finch and Flowers’
regular targets as well as lone offenders, black separatists and American
Islamic and Puerto Rican extremists.
An FBI report on anarchist
graffiti in Charlotte leading up to the DNC was forwarded to campus security
throughout the state — including GTCC, Forsyth Technical Community College,
Guilford College and UNCG — on March 30, 2012 and included a request for photos
and notification of any “suspicious graffiti on your campus.”
Milton Harris with the Joint
Terrorism Task Force called to request any intelligence gathered during the NC
Rising anarchist conference, which primarily consisted of various workshops.
Finch and Flowers went to Charlotte Nov. 29, 2011 to meet with the FBI and
Charlotte police because “they have a bunch of people that they need identified
and want to go over the files we have on them” for anarchists and Occupy
participants.
They worked with Oakland
police to help identify “several of our NC anarchists, including two from
Greensboro” who were among 400 people arrested in an Occupy Oakland march in
late January 2011. The two also provided surveillance and assistance to
Asheville police during court dates for alleged anarchists who were charged
with property destruction in downtown Asheville on May 1, 2010.
“We’d be very glad to come to
Asheville and assist you guys in any way [during the court case],” Flowers
wrote on Dec. 15, 2010. “We conduct a great deal of covert surveillance and
have identified numerous state players in the anarchist movement.”
Finch and Flowers were taken
up on the offer, and went to take pictures of people and vehicles and identify
people in court supporting the accused.
The oldest e-mail turned up
in the search is about a call to action for “Insurrection Night” in June 2004.
FBI special intelligence officer Gary Evers warned that website called for acts
of vandalism at specific sites coinciding with the G-8 Summit in Georgia.
“It should be noted that the
web page is signed by the ‘Southeast Anarchist Network’, which is based in
Greensboro, however no specific acts of violence are known for Greensboro at
this time,” Evers wrote.
Around the same time, Evers
offered Greensboro police a 347-page anarchist manual and “other information
concerning anarchists,” the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front
on a disc.
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