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Spying by Police: Joint Terrorism Task Force Report
Gets Revised, Goes to Council
Audit Finds Illegal Data; FBI Spied on Portland Protests;
Environmentalists Sue; Boulder CO Gets JTTF

Fortunately, the community groups who organized to testify about this year's Joint Terrorism Task Force Report to City Council had a good reason to rewrite prepared remarks prior to the hearing: the Council requested the Police Bureau take the original Report back and do more work on it prior to coming before them. The unusual action led to a delay of the hearing from January 26 to February 1-* and came in part as a result of the community groups holding a news conference on January 25, pointing out the inadequacy and bias in the original version. On April 6, the Auditor found the Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU) had improperly collected information on Black Lives Matter protestors. In other spying-related news, two stories came up in mid-December as we headed to press last time. The first was a lawsuit filed by environmental activists about spying done by Oregon law enforcement connected to the state's "fusion center" as they organized against a pipeline in the southern part of the state (Oregon Public Broadcasting, December 14). The second was that the FBI had undercover officers embedded in the racial justice protests in Portland from 2020 until 2021-- after Joe Biden had been sworn in as President. And in related, but not local news, community groups in Boulder, CO looked to Portland's struggle against the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) to try stopping their City Council from approving their police joining the JTTF. Unfortunately, on February 1 their Council voted 6-3 to let it happen.

The Portland news conference featured speakers from Unite Oregon, the ACLU of Oregon, local attorney Brandon Mayfield (the survivor of improper FBI spying--PPR #33), Portland Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and 350 PDX. This led to news stories the day before the originally planned hearing in the Oregonian and on Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB). By the next morning, the hearing had been postponed.

The original JTTF Report gave scant details on the cases the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) sent to the FBI as possible "terrorism," and included a pagelong pseudo-analysis about how the end of the war in Afghanistan meant the US was more vulnerable to attacks. The revised version took out that editorializing and expanded on the explanations of the cases, which included a threat against Mayor Wheeler which was deemed harmless. There were also people who were somehow assumed to be terrorists because they were involved in setting a fire at the Portland Police Association headquarters, one person who fired a gun toward and another who broke glass at the federal building, all of which seemed like criminal acts the PPB should have investigated on their own-- and apparently did. There was another case where someone made an empty threat against a school, and an update on a case which wasn't fully explained last year in which a text message threat to a "religious leader" was turned over to authorities in Florida, where the threat originated. The FBI asked for PPB's help in only one case: a threat of a non-existent bomb at a school.

Most of the groups involved in the news conference also testified before City Council, along with Portland Copwatch, and local chapters of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the League of Women Voters, and Veterans For Peace. Council members Jo Ann Hardesty and Carmen Rubio acknowledged that community concerns led to the updated report. Hardesty was clearly disturbed, as the first Black woman on the Council and someone who has received a lot of threats, that the PPB alerted the FBI about the threat to Wheeler and none of those against her. CAIR called for the FBI to pay more attention to white supremacists.

Wheeler, who had previously ended the ability for the community to testify about Reports, stated at the opening there was "confusion" about whether the Council had to take public testimony or to vote to accept the Report, but implied he was being generous in allowing both to happen. In the previous two years since Portland changed its relationship to the JTTF, the Council has voted (PPRs #80 and 83). And the Mayor himself said all Reports would now include public testimony, after a push from groups in the JTTF campaign in November (PPR #85). The ability to speak directly to Council was much appreciated after organizers resorted to a mock City Council hearing with empty seats representing Commissioners in 2020 and a live commentary during the 2021 hearing.

The Auditor's report found the CIU, which includes the two officers who have clearance to work with the JTTF, had collected information using personal cell phones and social media without reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct. They say "the Portland Police Bureau provided no guidance for officers at protests about what information they could collect" and the information was kept past allowable deadlines. Furthermore, of 37 kinds of technology the Bureau uses to collect information, they only have policies for 16. Unfortunately, the audit only vaguely addressed a concern raised by the public about the PPB sharing information with other agencies (especially federal ones); there was no investigation into whether protestors' personal info was given to the JTTF.

The people suing the TITAN Fusion Center, which supposedly is a place for federal, state and local law enforcement to share information to prevent another 9/11, say they were improperly spied upon while trying to prevent the Jordan Cove Liquid Natural Gas project (PPR #78). Those suing include members of the Klamath Tribes and the Oregon Women's Land Trust (Oregonian, December 15). As a basis for the suit, they cited information gathered pertaining to their political, religious or social beliefs in violation of Oregon law 181A.250, the same law which organizers relied on to have Portland leave the JTTF both in 2005 and 2019.

News about the FBI having undercover agents at protests wasn't surprising, but made headlines in the New York Times (December 22). The article reveals the agents were "furtively videotaping," but also notes court documents said agents in plain clothes helped identify someone who threw a Molotov cocktail in 2020 and others protesting on inauguration day in 2021. Court records show Oregon State Trooper Christopher Schinnerer, who is in the JTTF, tracked the movements around the country of Molotov cocktail suspect Malik Muhammed (OPB, March 28).

Members of the Boulder NAACP chapter and the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center were among 21 people who tried to get their nominally progressive City Council to reject their police chief's request for a Memorandum of Understanding with the FBI to join the JTTF. The Boulder Council agreed to modify the memo-- by requiring annual reports and that the one Boulder cop involved would follow city policies (Boulder Daily Camera, February 24). This all sounds very familiar.

Watch the Portland news conference at youtube.com/peaceandjusticeworks.

*- The Council normally meets only on Wednesday or Thursday, but held a special session on a Tuesday morning to get the Report heard as close as possible to its required January date.
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May, 2022
Also in PPR #86

Portland Copwatch
PO Box 42456
Portland, OR 97242
(503) 236-3065/ Incident Report Line (503) 321-5120
e-mail: copwatch@portlandcopwatch.org

Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.

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