Activist groups decry cop infiltration

Officers quietly sat in on meetings

By H. Gregory Meyer, Tribune staff reporter

February 26, 2004

Activists from five groups whose meetings were infiltrated by undercover officers took a bullhorn and a snare drum to Chicago police headquarters Wednesday morning to protest and demand an apology.

A recently issued internal police audit revealed that days before the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue summit in November 2002, police quietly sat in on rallies, fundraising events and strategy sessions of the American Friends Service Committee, Not In Our Name, the Autonomous Zone, the Chicago Direct Action Network and the Anarchist Black Cross.

Police had gleaned intelligence, largely from Web sites, that a fraction of those organizing against the business meeting were plotting mayhem like that outside the 1999 World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, police spokesman David Bayless said.

"We had received information...that there was a small number of people that intended to use those meetings to bring harm to the city," Bayless said.

"We are obligated to explore those threats."

The infiltration appears to be the department's first since the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals loosened a consent decree in 2001 that had restricted law enforcement intelligence tactics in response to the Chicago Police Department's infamous Red Squad.

In 2002, police started out investigating the Direct Action Network, but attention spread when other organizations were named on the group's Web site and members of those organizations attended network meetings, according to the audit.

At one meeting of 20 activists, an undercover officer reported demonstrators' discussions of where to kick off their march--at Boeing Co. headquarters, City Hall, the State of Illinois building or the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, where the summit was held--and whether to hamper traffic during rush hour, the audit said.

Police said they launched four similar operations in 2003, but they declined to provide details.

On a sidewalk outside police headquarters, 3510 S. Michigan Ave., representatives from each organization blasted the department.

"The spying and infiltration by the Chicago police is further proof that the United States, in the hysteria generated since Sept. 11, 2001, is taking on the trappings of a police state," said Chuck Hutchcraft, Chicago coordinator of the pacifist American Friends Service Committee.

"We have no interest in threatening or damaging the monuments to stolen wealth--all the cold commercial Chicago buildings," said Anthony Rayson of Anarchist Black Cross.

Speakers at the rally of about 35 people accused the police of singling out groups by their politics.

Sheri Mecklenburg, general counsel to Police Supt. Philip Cline, argued otherwise.

"We did not target any group because of their ideology," she said.

"We investigated only to the extent necessary to ensure the safety of the city and its residents."