The New York Times reported Sunday that the New York Police Department spied on dozens of activist groups in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Montreal in the year prior to the August 2004 Republican National Convention. Covering a lawsuit against the NYPD by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of seven of the 1,806 people arrested during the convention, the Times writes that, “On Jan. 6, 2004, the [NYPD’s] intelligence digest noted than an anti-gentrification group in Montreal claimed responsibility for hoax bombs that had been planted at construction sites of luxury condominiums…. The group was linked to a band of anarcho-communists whose leader had visited New York, according to the report.”
But the vast majority of people investigated had no intention of committing violent acts, released police records show—and their contents indicate some pretty poor intelligence. Local activist Jaggi Singh says the Montreal anti-gentrification group in question was one 20-year-old who was arrested and quickly confessed, and was not known to the local activist community.
Singh, who says he was smeared by “scare-mongering” NYC tabloids prior to the convention, says the NYPD was “exaggerating the extent of their knowledge and information” about anarchist groups to appear competent. The NYPD denies the allegations.
