Agents on the Prowl in A2 - Police Power, Part 1

Agents on the Prowl in A2

POLICE POWER, Part 1

The following is the first in a series of articles documenting political maneuvers by the Ann Arbor Police Department. The source of this spine-tingling documentary is a dissertation rescued from the dusty shelves of the U-M Graduate Library. Completed last year, the dissertation is based on a series of interviews within the Police department and the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department. In exchange for anonymity, author John Perley Evans succeeded in getting relatively classified information from men in each department, from Police Chief Walter Krasny and former Sheriff Doug Harvey down through the ranks to individual patrolmen and deputies. Evans also interviewed various city and county officials who dealt directly with the two law enforcement agencies. The dissertation, entitled “Blue Power: A Comparative Study of Police Political Behavior, “ contains a collection of candid comments on such controversial areas as local police intelligence operations, police attempts to influence governmental agencies and police attitudes toward such confrontations as the South University riots of 1969 and the Black Action Movement strike of 1970. While specific incidents documented fall in the period from May, 1969 through April, 1970, police policies exposed in the interviews have not yet disappeared. Because of police refusal to make their policies and practices open to public scrutiny, the department is able to operate with few controls. Krasny’s recent non-appearance at City Council is only a further incident of police rejection of citizen authority. The articles in the series are an attempt to exposé the Ann Arbor Police Department as a self-serving, “empire-building” political unit accountable only to itself.

Officials in Washington do not hesitate to attack their critics as “threats to national security.” This Watergate mentality produced such episodes as the bugging of Democratic National Headquarters and the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office.

But the Watergate mentality, with its accompanying undercover agents, electronic surveillance equipment, burglary, harassment, enemy lists and other assorted dirty tricks is not confined to the federal government. The attempt to control “political enemies” has become engrained at all levels of government and even the Ann Arbor Police Department (A.A.P.D.) has its own E. Howard Hunt squad.

The A.A.P.D. has developed its own collection of “dirty tricks” for dealing with people “who have committed or are ‘conspiring’ to commit a crime against the morality code of the police,” – notably Blacks and “long-hair” radicals. Ranging from undercover surveillance of local “hip” bars to the keeping of political dossiers, the police are developing a full arsenal of intelligence weapons.

One city official with access to city files said:

“I looked into the whole police surveillance thing. I went over to the City’s Comptroller’s office and looked up the record of the budget for each department for the last two years – well actually not every department, I just looked up the police. The ‘capital outlay’ portion, where they record the equipment that has been purchased, shows that in the last two years they have purchased at least $20,000 worth of surveillance equipment. Such things as an IBM Surveillance Kit, etc. I don’t know the names of all the equipment but it’s all written down there.

“I also found a penciled in statement, ‘$500-Krasny-informers.’ I know that City Council gave Krasny $7,500 as reward money for the capture of the ‘coed killer’ which was to be used as he saw fit. There have never been any questions about where the money went. The money was used to pay informers. I know they have some kind of slush fund to pay off informers but I don’t know the source of the money.

“I was told by an officer that I ‘would be surprised at the files we have.’ They have files on people who aren’t even considered political activists.”

The A.A.P.D. collects information in a variety of ways on people. One notorious incident involved out-of-uniform police taking down the names and addresses of Black parents who spoke out at a Board of Education meeting in protest of certain school policies. One observer states:

“Whenever there is a radical mass meeting, the police are there taking pictures and trying to identify who is there. Sooner or later some of them will get into some sort of trouble. They use information on these people to malign and label them by innuendo and guilt by suspicion.”

Undercover agents are used to keep such people under continual surveillance. Only a selected group fall under the process. For example, one person interviewed spoke of selected harassment:

“On Saturday nights, plain clothed police will check the small or less well healed bars and will arrest on the street outside (these bars) for drunkenness. They never go near the bars or night spots that the socially prominent or well-to-do frequent. Or they’ll go to the bars frequented by the long-hairs/college crowd and do the same, wait for someone drunk and then nail him.”

Bar surveillance goes a step farther, as one person admitted that people from the County Prosecutor’s office (who are usually well-informed of intelligence information) would ride around in patrol cars on weekend nights, and point out people to be harassed.

Another method of harassment is the stopping of vehicles for alleged faulty equipment, as a means of initiating an illegal search.

(Bar surveillance has not gone out of style. Reports of undercover agents seen in local bars such as Flick’s or the Primo are continually called in to the SUN.)

One insider said the department has from 2-6 agents, not including the narcs. The department is also able to get undercover help from the State Police. This was confirmed by several other sources.

Agents go further than merely reporting on the activities of radical or minority groups. One informant reported on several incidents involving agent provocateurs (also confirmed by another source):

“A number of campus demonstrations have changed from being non-violent to violent at the instigation of agents.

“For example, the B.A.M. (Black Action Movement) incident I saw the person who threw the first brick, and can identify the man. It was thrown by a white undercover (A.A.) recruit who is now an officer.

“Another example, (on February 19, 1971) there was a peaceful demonstration in front of the Administration Building where the Regents were meeting about recruiting, war research, etc. (X), alias Phil – threw the first snowball which hit Lieutenant (Z). He lives with another bachelor A.A. policeman. He’s been at other demonstrations and been violent but never been arrested.”

(This incident comes up again in the report. A complaint was filed, but nothing was ever done to investigate the incident.)

“A third incident I saw in person. After the recruiter- S.D.S. confrontation at the School of Engineering where there were some 16-17 arrests (February, 1970), I went late to an S.D.S. tactics meeting. As I arrived, I saw the back of someone who was standing up and talking about the need for violence.

When I got into the room, I recognized him as an undercover policeman. I stated that this was the case. He denied it and then left shortly thereafter. He’s now an undercover narc agent with the State police.

Even when an agent is caught, all is not well for the group which has been infiltrated. In one case, two cops infiltrated a particular group and were unmasked. “They couldn’t figure out what to do with the cops and so after a while they let them go. The next day the cops busted them and charged them with kidnapping.”

Undercover agents are usually young recruits who want to move up quickly through the police organization. One person said, “They may grow a beard and they hang around the right areas and make contact. Some of this is good police work but with the young (officers), especially, it is abused (e.g. “they copy all names from address books, etc., which they wouldn’t do with a respectable person arrested and then use these as a follow-up for tips, etc.”).

When top officials in the A.A.P.D. were asked about why the need for intelligence operations, a wide range of justifications were given in answer. One said, “It’s very prestigious (in the law enforcement establishment) for local departments to have intelligence units.” Another official, after giving paragraphs of defense finally ended his harangue with, “It’s a bunch of goddamn crap that we have undercover intelligence officers working the campus. We do have officers taking courses up there and they naturally might get involved in what is going on but we don’t have the money to be putting agents up there.”

The police have close connections with other law enforcement agencies, such as the State Police and the F.B.I. One knowledgeable observer suggested that inputs from these sources “give (the Chief) the impression that there is more conspiracy going on than anyone else, like us, would think (e.g. “an underground network of drugs, draft dodgers, revolutionaries, etc.”) He seems to buy this and when he combines it with tips from informers who get highly suspect second and third hand information, and probably some second-hand information from wiretaps, all this makes him much more suspicious than he probably needs to be.”

The push for local intelligence units is strong, through such agencies as the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration established in 1968. The L.E.A.A. has an annual operating budget of over a billion dollars for “providing local police with sophisticated ‘crime prevention’ hardware.... The result enables police to keep citizens – the innocent and the guilty alike – under electronic and photographic surveillance.... Clarence M. Coster, associate administrator of L.E.A.A.. looks forward to the day when police will make sound and photographic recordings of ‘mass protests’ and rock festivals, as evidence for future prosecutions.”

Cross-referencing with other intelligence divisions in the State Police and F.B.I. insure that “conspiracy” paranoia will increase.

While the city administration is supposed to prevent the development of illegal and unethical police practices, few officials are even aware of its existence. When interviewed, one official said he never saw anything in budget requests about intelligence and did not have an answer to the possibility that it might exist. Another official said, “I am kept informed on the undercover narcotics operation, informally, but Krasny does not do so on political intelligence operations. It is my impression that there isn’t any of this going on but I haven’t asked him. Maybe I should.”

One top police official predicted that intelligence would continue to grow. “Intelligence is going to evolve into what detective bureaus used to be – highly knowledgeable about the whole community scene and aware of what’s going on. The question is one of being able to make the transition as municipal police departments become more sophisticated. It is going to be more difficult to empire build on that but there is still plenty of mileage to be had out of the political games yet to be played.”

(Further practices of the Ann Arbor Police Department will be the subject of other articles in this series. See Part II in the next issue of the SUN.)

Ellen Hoffman