By GW Shultz, reporter fro the Center for Investigative Reporting
May 10, 2010
The autobiography of a former police officer in Minnesota discloses fresh details about the breadth of law enforcement spying on political protesters that took place leading up the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
The book has received only scant attention outside of Minnesota since first being published in June of 2009. But now-retired officer Richard Greelis from the Bloomington Police Department near Minneapolis reveals that local authorities quarreled over who would get to plant informants in political-protest groups, created their own activist organization with an “appropriately provocative name” and laughed about getting paid to participate in a monthly demonstration bike ride known as Critical Mass that encourages alternative transportation.
[. . .]According to the book, Greelis worried of losing his own cover while secretly attending a meeting held by protesters at a public library. Greelis realized that among panel participants was a former FBI agent he knew named Colleen Rowley who in recent years has become a vocal critic of police spying on political activists. But Rowley didn’t say anything.
Greelis says he and a partner attended the meeting to determine if anyone was “advocating violence,” and they noticed what appeared to be another undercover officer seated nearby, “looking mostly at his feet and probably feeling as out of place as we did.” It turned out later the man was doing his own version of intelligence gathering but actually worked for emergency medical services and not the police. Greelis writes that the meeting’s crowd mostly consisted of older people and a handful of college kids.
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http://centerforinvestigativereporting.org/blogs?category=31&project=3908#4543
AxXiom for Liberty 