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  • Recording reveals police efforts to recruit BLM activist as informant

    Swansea activist Lowri Davies recorded call from officer in ‘frightening and distressing’ attempted recruitment

    A secret recording has revealed how a covert police unit in Wales tried to recruit a Black Lives Matter activist to be an informant.

    The anti-racism campaigner Lowri Davies shared the recording with the Guardian to raise awareness of what she alleges were “distressing” techniques used to try to manipulate her into providing information to the police.

    Davies, a Swansea University law student, is one of the main organisers of a local Black Lives Matters (BLM) group that regularly supports protests about the deaths of black people after contact with police.

    She said two police officers spent 90 minutes seeking to convince her to become an informant, imploring her not to tell anyone about the attempted recruitment.

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    Black Lives Matter: Swansea activist’s trust ‘destroyed by police approach’

    A Black Lives Matter activist said her trust was “destroyed” when police tried to recruit her as an informant.

    Swansea University law student Lowri Davies said she was called in March by a covert officer.

    The anti-racism campaigner said she was confused to be asked to give details of far-right activists protesting at Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

    South Wales Police said a complaint referring to contact made by a covert officer was being considered.

    Ms Davies received the call from the woman “out of the blue” on a Tuesday morning.

    “She says that she is a covert police officer and she works for informants, usually with drugs and burglary and, in my case, the protests,” she said.

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    The NYPD Paid An Informant To Help A BLM Protester Charged With Sabotaging Police Van

    The NYPD sent a paid informant to surveil, befriend and ultimately drive a Black Lives Matter protester to attack a police van last month, according to a new federal complaint unsealed on Wednesday.

    The civilian informant — identified in the filing as the NYPD’s “confidential source” — was involved in the arrest of Jeremy Trapp, a 24-year-old Brooklyn man accused of sabotaging an NYPD vehicle.

    “At best, Mr. Trapp is unsophisticated and easily susceptible,” his defense attorney, Ashley Burrell, said during his arraignment on Wednesday afternoon.

    According to federal prosecutors, Trapp met the NYPD informant outside Brooklyn Criminal Court on July 13th, as protesters gathered to demand the release of individuals arrested during a demonstration in Bay Ridge.

    Trapp told the source that he thought cops were racist, that he wanted to harm police, and that he was previously involved in burning an NYPD vehicle, according to the complaint. After exchanging phone numbers, the two arranged to meet in the informant’s car.

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    The FBI Targets a New Generation of Black Activists; The agency would put its investigative authorities to better use by holding police officers accountable for acts of brutality.

    Throughout its history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has viewed Black activism as a potential national security threat. It has used its ample investigative powers not to suppress violence, but to inhibit the speech and association rights of Black activists. And its reaction to the protests following the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd shows little has changed.

    In October 1919, a young J Edgar Hoover, director of the Bureau of Investigation’s general intelligence division, targeted “Black Moses” Marcus Garvey for investigation and harassment because of his alleged association with “radical elements” that were “agitating the Negro movement”. Hoover admitted Garvey had violated no federal laws. But the bureau, the precursor organization to the FBI, infiltrated Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association with informant provocateurs and undercover agents who searched for years for any charge that could justify his deportation.

    The justice department ultimately won a conviction against Garvey on a dubious mail fraud charge in 1923. Meanwhile, white vigilantes, police and soldiers targeted Black communities with violence during this period, which included the Red Summer of 1919, the Tulsa massacre of 1921 and scores of lynchings, did not receive the same focused attention from Hoover’s agents.

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    FBI Tracked an Activist Involved With Black Lives Matter as They Traveled Across the U.S., Documents Show

    Documents obtained by The Intercept indicate that the FBI surveilled Black Lives Matter activists — and that the Department of Homeland Security drafted a mysterious “race paper.”

    At the height of 2014’s Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri, FBI agents tracked the movements of an activist flying in from New York, and appear to have surveilled the homes and cars of individuals somehow tied to the protests, according to recently released documents provided to The Intercept.

    The documents, which include FBI emails and intelligence reports from November 2014, suggest that federal surveillance of Black Lives Matter protests went far beyond the online intelligence-gathering first reported on by The Intercept in 2015. That intelligence-gathering by the federal government had employed open-source information, such as social media, to profile and keep track of activists. The newly released documents suggest the FBI put resources toward running informants, as well as physical surveillance of antiracist activists.

    The heavily redacted records were obtained by two civil rights groups, Color of Change and the Center for Constitutional Rights, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and are being published here for the first time. Internal communications from Department of Homeland Security officials, released through this lawsuit, also revealed the existence of a document described by DHS officials as the “Race Paper,” which was the subject of a filing by the civil rights groups on Monday.

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    Newly Released Documents Show FBI Used Stakeouts And Informants To Follow Black Lives Matter Activists

    Newly released documents show that the FBI’s surveillance of the Black Lives Matter movement extends far beyond social media, according to The Intercept.

    The documents were acquired by two civil rights groups, Color of Change and The Center for Constitutional Rights, through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents reveal that the FBI not only used social media to track the whereabouts of black activists, but they also used informants and stakeouts. One of the emails also mentioned the existence of a document called the “Race Paper.” While the papers don’t specifically mention Black Lives Matter, the inquest that resulted in their release was centered around the movement.

    A lot of the content is redacted, but what is available provides an overview of the FBI’s movements during the height of the Black Lives Matter fervor in late 2014.

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    Why Was an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Tracking a Black Lives Matter Protest? Email obtained by The Intercept shows bureau discussion of Mall of America protest and an informant who relayed plans.

    Members of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force tracked the time and location of a Black Lives Matter protest last December at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, email obtained by The Intercept shows.

    The email from David S. Langfellow, a St. Paul police officer and member of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, informs a fellow task force member from the Bloomington police that “CHS just confirmed the MOA protest I was taking to you about today, for the 20th of DEC @ 1400 hours.” CHS is a law enforcement acronym for “confidential human source.”

    Jeffrey VanNest, an FBI special agent and Joint Terrorism Task Force supervisor at the FBI’s Minneapolis office, was CC’d on the email. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces are based in 104 U.S. cities and are made up of approximately 4,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officials. The FBI characterizes them as “our nation’s front line on terrorism.”

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