Documents on police surveillance, Abuzuaiter now public

YES! Weekly is making numerous documents connected to today's article on Councilwoman Marikay Abuzuaiter's correspondence with police available to the public, as well as a few key e-mails about police surveillance. We redacted phone numbers out of respect for privacy.

Read the files on Abuzuaiter here, including the e-mails Abuzuaiter claimed she did not send. The councilwoman denied all correspondence with Detective Rob Finch, and also said she never communicated with Capt. John Wolfe about the Beloved Community Center or Latin Kings. Another e-mail between Wolfe and Abuzuaiter was accidentally left off of the file. The two pages that are blank except for e-mail attachments contain images of planned protest maps in Charlotte, referenced in today's article. 

In a guest piece in Saturday's News & Record, the police chief, city attorney and city manager claimed a restraining order the city filed against YES! Weekly was aimed at preventing the release of intelligence that could expose an informant to serious danger. 

"The city acted appropriately when it learned that criminal intelligence information was inadvertently released to the media," they wrote. "It believed that publishing intelligence information, including informant information, created immediate risk of serious injury or death."

Here are the other files we received that identifies a confidential informant. Due to a technical error, this e-mail was omitted from the file:

Only one person was named (with a full name and e-mail address that we have redacted here) and this is the full extent of the documents involving that individual that we have. In another e-mail, Finch referred to this informant as a "snitch." Is the city's claim referring to this handful of files, or to the more extensive information included in the public-information request on Abuzuaiter? What credible information is the alleged "immediate risk" based on?

Miller also told the News & Record that there wasn't an undercover officer posing as part of Occupy Greensboro. We had technical difficulties with this document too but have included a screen shot below. Click to enlarge and read where Finch wrote (at the bottom) that he was in an Occupy meeting. Miller forwarded the message (at the top) to the Secret Service because President Obama would be in town, and he commented about Finch's role. 

We've also included a few other files of interest from the police surveillance article. 




4 comments:

Author said...

Thank you Eric. Lot's of moving parts now, can you point us to Abuzuatier's denials?

Author said...

Also, page 27 of your online docs has an entire paragraph redacted. Can you clarify, was that redaction made by you or was it in the copy you received?

Billy Jones said...

So this is how blogs work now. Roch asks a question and instead of answering it so everyone can see the answer, Bryan Clarey telephones Roch the answer but the rest of the world is left to wonder what the answer is?

Oh yeah, real good journalism there, Brian, real good journalism.

Billy Jones said...

And just to clear things up, I've now established that the fault lies not no Eric Ginsburg and Bryan Clarey and the employees of Yes! Weekly but on the City of Greensboro. Now the question remains: Will City officials admit to the cover-up now that they've been caught red handed?