NEW YORK - Undercover NYPD officers attended meetings of liberal political groups and kept intelligence files on activists who planned protests across the nation, according to interviews and documents that show how police have used counterterrorism tactics to monitor even lawful activities.
The infiltration echoes the tactics the NYPD used in the run-up to New York’s 2004 Republican National Convention, when police monitored church groups, antiwar organizations, and environmental advocates nationwide.
That effort was revealed by The New York Times in 2007 and in an ongoing US civil rights lawsuit on how the NYPD treated convention protesters.
Police said the spying before the convention was needed to prepare for the huge, raucous crowds headed to the city. But documents obtained by The Associated Press show that the police intelligence unit continued to keep watch on political groups in 2008, long after the convention had passed.
In April 2008, an undercover NYPD officer traveled to New Orleans for the People’s Summit, a gathering of liberal groups organized around their shared opposition to US economic policy and the effect of trade agreements between the US, Canada, and Mexico.
When the undercover effort was summarized for supervisors, it identified groups opposed to US immigration policy, labor laws, and racial profiling.