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DEA approved more than 50 requests for covert surveillance of racial justice protests last summer - CREW | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Minneapolis Police Caught on Video 'Hunting' ActivistsThe Drug Enforcement Administration approved at least 51 requests from state, local and federal law enforcement agencies to conduct covert surveillance during racial justice protests last summer, according to records obtained by CREW. The nationwide surveillance operation occurred in cities including Los Angeles, Tampa, Denver and St. Louis, and involved agents infiltrating crowds undercover, as well as aerial and vehicular surveillance to monitor protesters.
The operations were part of a two-week expansion of the DEA’s domestic surveillance authority by Justice Department leadership in June 2020, as first reported by BuzzFeed News. An initial release of records, obtained by CREW in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, detailed DEA’s surveillance efforts in Philadelphia, Chicago and Albuquerque.
The new records reveal the full scope of the DEA’s surveillance operations last summer. While some agencies sought DEA’s help with apprehending people suspected of theft or looting, CREW counted at least 51 instances where agencies enlisted DEA to secretly monitor protesters engaged in First Amendment protected activity.
In California, the DEA approved surveillance requests submitted to its Los Angeles Division Office by police departments in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Long Beach and Baldwin Park. The Santa Monica Police Department specifically sought “the assistance of DEA agents to support undercover surveillance operations.”
The officers’ own body cams record them taking pot shots at largely peaceful protesters, and celebrating their hits with laughter and fist bumps. Cruising in an unmarked cargo van, one officer imitates Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny’s cartoon nemesis, saying: “Be vewy vewy quiet. We’re hunting activists.” A police commander used the same language in a recording captured after midnight: “Tonight it was… ‘We’re goin’ out hunting.’ Just a nice change of tempo,” he said, adding: “fukk these people!’”
) Essentially, criminality is so normalized in black America that a disproportionate amount of our people can point to a loved one who has been in/out of prison. It's either their dad, uncle, best friend, brother, mom, sister, or they themselves. If not a direct loved one, then a loved one of a friend, so on and so forth. And because of this lenient attitudes about criminality have been developed. It's hard to accept that Dr. Umar "put these nikkas down for good" talk when you got a close friend in the bing for violent robbery.
