Night of the Living Red Squad Files: How Police Share Information

by Mitzi Waltz

Night of the Living Red Squad Files: Portland police share files with dozens of other agencies, making removal of illegal or false data nearly impossible

By Mitzi Waltz

Image for a moment that Pat Buchanan is elected President of the United States later this year. It could happen. And imagine further that when he takes office, President Buchanan decides to round up all the commies and pinkos in the country and ship them off to "re- education camps," an idea that he has favored in at least one public speech. Where would he find their names? As revealed in the last issue of PDXS, when it came time to grab Portland's thought criminals Buchanan could just call up the Portland Police Bureau and ask to see the files maintained by its Criminal Intelligence Division (CID). Local activist Douglas Squirrel learned that his name is mentioned in at least six files maintained by CID when he sued the City of Portland for spying on him (see "Douglas Squirrel Busts the Cops," PDXS, January 29, 1996), along with the names, license plate numbers, addresses and political affiliations of many others.

Few political activists or civil right advocates were surprised by the revelations that came out of Squirrel's December 1995 case - although many were disturbed to learn of the extent and scope of the files that came to light. At the end of the trial Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Michael Marcus upheld the right of citizens to bring such lawsuits, and he demanded that CID destroy some information about Squirrel and others that should not have been included in its files. That's a step in the right direction. There's just one problem: according to testimony by Portland Police Officer Greg Kurath and others, CID shares the data it gathers about political groups and activists with other law enforcement agencies. In Squirrel's case, CID provided information about him to the Oregon State Police and the Secret Service. In other words, even if Portland's CID is forced to shred illegal documents, the same reports may well be stored in the files or databases of these other agencies, and can be used for purposes fair or foul.

Blue databases.

Law enforcement has certainly gone database-happy in recent years. The Portland Police Bureau refused to honor an Open Records Act request from PDXS for information about its data-sharing practices, but some neighboring law enforcement agencies were more than willing to boast about their leap into modern computing. "We participate in so many things," said Lt. Bernie Giusto, public information officer for the Oregon State Police. "For instance, we have what's called the Gang Resource Information Project that's housed at the state police, where we accumulate criminal gang information and share it with agencies in this state and agencies in Washington. We participate in a database for business computer fraud and general business frauds where the information is shared with us by the private sector. Within the state police we house all the criminal history information in the state - anybody who has ever been arrested, convicted or incarcerated - and we make this database [the Law Enforcement Data System, or LEDS] available to all criminal justice agencies in the state of Oregon. We have one of the most state-of-the-art DNA labs in the nation. We also have access to AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Intelligence System, so we can check fingerprints in seconds. And we have a DNA databank, where we now have thousands of samples on file." The OSP can also access a ballistics database called Bulletproof that includes detailed histories of rounds retrieved at crime scenes, including striation patterns and caliber. "That one allows us to follow the history of a firearm," Giusto explained. AFIS, incidentally, is maintained by the FBI, which has announced plans to add digital mug shots and descriptions to its offerings within two years.

Here in Portland, the PPB's regular crime files are stored electronically in the Portland Police Data System, of which CID files are believed to be a subset. Both the PPB and OSP certainly share files with the National Computer Crime Information Federal data clearinghouse, which contains more than 23 million records that identify people and vehicles sought by law enforcement agencies. Some PPB documents obtained by PDXS also mention sharing information with the Regional Organized Crime Network (ROCN), which is involved with narcotics and other investigations, as well as a database called the Western States Information Network. The Bureau is also believed to share CID information and make contacts in other departments via the Northwest Criminal Intelligence Network (NWCIN). Seattle officer Mike Ramsby described NWCIN as "a network of investigators up and down the west coast and Pacific Northwest, including Canada, Washington and Oregon, and other states. They deal in criminal intelligence work."

Ramsby said NWCIN does not maintain a database of its own, but holds regular meetings where CID types can meet and discuss cases and investigative tools. The Portland Police Bureau refused to comment about its relationship with NWCIN.

Dangerous data.

Why would someone care that files about his or her political activities are floating around somewhere just out of reach? There are plenty of good reasons. To start with, having a mention of yourself in any police file gives the impression that you might be involved with criminals or criminal activity, even if that's not the case.

Second, if the files released in Squirrel's case are at all representative, the intelligence gathered by our local police is of extremely poor quality. Names are wrong, affiliations are mistaken, and both hearsay and outright fiction are reported as fact. That's probably unavoidable when the police must rely on informants - especially when those informants are working for money (no juicy tidbits = no cash), or have signed on because they oppose the philosophy of the group in question, in which case digging up or even creating dirt is part of a personal crusade to stop the organization from succeeding.

Database accuracy is an issue that dogs even the top cops. For example, a 1985 FBI study found that "at least 12,000 invalid or inaccurate reports on suspects wanted for arrest are transmitted each day to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies." Regardless, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Arizona vs. Evans last year that arrests made and evidence gathered as a result of database errors are still admissible in court.

Third, police spying can force its targets to withdraw from political activity, simply because their presence might draw the police. "It happens quite frequently that I don't put myself forward as the spokesperson, or don't even get involved in certain organizations or actions, particularly with Portland Peaceworks, because I believe it will draw this sort of surveillance," said Douglas Squirrel, acknowledging that it affects how other activists perceive him as well. "It's like a scarlet letter branded on your forehead, having people know that if I go somewhere that's a reason for the police to investigate that meeting."

Dan Handelman of the People Overseeing Police Study Group, a project of Portland Peaceworks, agreed. "Even if it doesn't stop you from organizing, if you get arrested like Squirrel did and they drag out this long list of files, it can mean higher bail or more time in jail - even though the quality of their intelligence is really poor," says. "They can say anything in there." Handelman also testified at the trial, and Peaceworks was one of many groups whose names appeared in the files released.

Finally, political information in the hands of ideologues and demagogues can be used to hurt - or even kill. Several years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union represented the Socialist Workers Party in a lawsuit against the City of Portland. Like Squirrel, the SWP alleged that the Portland Police Bureau had been spying on its members. The suit was dismissed when CID claimed to have destroyed its SWP files before they were subpoenaed. But, before the suit was thrown out, the SWP alleged that police snooping cost some members their jobs and homes when employers or landlords were interviewed. And in the past, activists in U.S. cities, including Chicago, Oakland and New York, have actually been murdered by persons acting on the basis of information originally collected by cops.

Portland's Red Squad history.

Is the thought of right-wing stormtroopers tracking down suspected "commies and pinkos" too absurd to imagine? Think again. It's happened before - not just in Nazi Germany, but right here in Portland.

Elderly members of the International Workers of the World, the anarchist labor union better known as the Wobblies, once told tales of how the local "Red Squad," then operating from a secret office in the downtown train station, would grab Wobblies as they arrived in town and work them over. Some of these "Wobs" were later found dead in the river.

The Bureau did its patriotic duty during World War II, helping the Feds ferret out alleged Fifth Columnists among German-American and Japanese-American citizens, many of whom were sent to internment camps. In the '50s, the PPB could be relied on to toe the McCarthyist line, and the Red Squad collected copious data on "Communistic" and anti-war groups right up until 1974, when the American Civil Liberties Union finally forced an agreement on it to stop spying on non-criminal "subversives" - including the ACLU itself. And it's a documented fact that the Federal government has explored the possibility of setting up camps for radicals in case of some amorphous "national emergency."

Recognizing the potential for info abuse, the Oregon State Legislature finally tried to put the final nail in our Red Squad's coffin. In 1981, it passed Oregon Revised Statute 181.575, which reads, in part, that no law enforcement agency "may collect or maintain information about the political, religious or social views, associations or activities of any individual, group, association, organization, corporation, business or partnership unless such information directly relates to an investigation of criminal activities, and there are reasonable grounds to suspect the subject of the information is or may be involved in criminal conduct." Former ACLU Executive Director Stevie Remington drafted the original version of that bill, and told PDXS that some subsequent abuses have centered around the words "may be," which the police construe liberally. "I should have put in 'are conspiring to commit a crime'," she said regretfully.

Information wants to be free.

The 1981 Oregon Legislature never imagined how many law enforcement agencies would establish their own databases ¥ and how freely they would share supposedly confidential information with one another. Douglas Squirrel was not able to learn for certain how many agencies received information about him from PortlandOs CID. However, based on the experiences of local attorney Spencer Neal, it's possible that CID shared information on Squirrel with literally dozens of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

Neal first became concerned about these databases in the late 1980s. At that time, he was representing four people in separate lawsuits against the Portland Police Bureau. Neal's clients had been labeled as "gang members" by the police, and their names had been put on the "gang list" maintained by the BureauOs Gang Enforcement Team (GET). This is not a fun list to be on. If the words "gang affiliate" pop up when a cop runs a routine license- plate check, getting pulled over for a traffic ticket can be a nasty business, complete with unholstered weapons and shouted commands. Neal said his clients - three African-Americans with no gang affiliations whatsoever and one young man who was merely a member of a graffiti crew called the Art Fiendz - were harassed and intimidated by police officers as a result of appearing on the list. So Neal sued the City of Portland to force the Bureau to delete his clients' names from its gang list. Along the way, he discovered that their names had been shared with a wide range of other law enforcement agencies. "There were at least a dozen," Neal said, "including all local law enforcement agencies, the Portland School Police, the Sheriff's Office, the Department of Corrections, the Oregon State Police, parole and probation offices, you name it. It gets pretty loose out there."

Worse yet, Neal has still not been able to purge his clients' names from any of the lists, even though he won their cases. As a result of a settlement with the Portland Police Bureau, the City of Portland has agreed to set up a process to notify everyone currently on its "gang list," and to give those named a chance to challenge their listing if it isnOt true. But, years after the settlement, the City Attorney's Office has not yet established the procedure, although documents obtained by PDXS show that it has evidently grasped the serious possibility that not doing so soon (and doing so in a manner that satisfies minority community concerns) could result in a blizzard of costly lawsuits for defamation, emotional distress, discrimination or other harm. Perhaps the furor touched off in Denver, Colo., when civil rights leaders found out in 1993 that two out of three young Black men in town were listed in that cityOs roster of suspected gang members struck a chord in Portland. In any case, the most current memos from the city indicate that it is involving the Urban League of Portland and the Office of Neighborhood Associations in its effort to come up with an equitable solution.

But even if the city finally succeeds in doing so, it's unlikely that other agencies it shares files with will follow suit, with the possible exception of the Oregon State Police - and its solution for gang members may not apply to politicals. The OSP's Giusto told PDXS that when PPB informs it that a file has been dropped from its records, the OSP follows suit by purging any corresponding files from its database as well. He also said that OSP has a gatekeeping procedure in place to ensure that it does not maintain any information not related to crimes that may come in from local agencies.

Unwanted notoriety.

The local groups mentioned in Squirrel's case were not surprised to hear that their names made an appearance in CID's fileroom, but will doubtless be unamused to learn that their dubious fame has probably spread far beyond the Rose City. "It's sad that any government agency feels that there's something to be gained by this kind of surveillance," said John Schwiebert, pastor of the Metanoia Peace Community church. "Still, I would have to say it's not unexpected. While I don't think we're overly paranoid, some of us sort of imagine that what we do doesn't go unnoticed by people that are operating from a reactionary position." A spokesperson for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (who declined to be named for this article) agreed. "We've been 'on the list' for 50 years," she said. "Some people are very superior about it, but I see it as a threat. If they have lists of names of members, I see that as a serious problem."

Some groups and individuals mentioned in the Squirrel vs. City of Portland files are considering the possibility of a class-action lawsuit, although none had announced definite plans to do so at press time. Others may pursue complaints to the state Human Rights Commission, which could eventually end up at the United Nations. Political spying violates the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a signatory.

"There are very few checks on abuses of this kind," conceded Dave Fidanque, executive director of the Oregon chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "If the police know that someone might be able to have access to a file that would certainly be one more," he says, praising the trial's possibilities as a local precedent. However, he added, "it's very discouraging that this problem seems to keep cropping up. Every time we think we have systems in place to prevent it, they find a new way." And with the proliferation of databases and few controls on the information in them, your privacy ¥ not to mention your reputation; your freedoms of speech, thought and association; and perhaps even your life ¥ could be in serious danger if you are politically active.

Rules for Radicals, Portland Style

The ruling in Squirrel vs. City of Portland established some new "rules for radicals," to steal a phrase from famous organizer Saul Alinsky. If you are involved in political activity, and particularly if your actions include civil disobedience or direct action, you need to be aware of these restrictions and measures.

1.If you help to organize a demonstration and a few people who attend commit illegal activity, you may be held responsible for their activity by the Portland Police.

2.Actions held by the Portland Police to constitute "organizing" a demonstration include making a flyer or telling others that it may occur.

3.Arranging for first-aid or legal resources in advance of a demonstration is held by the Portland Police to constitute approval of illegal activities. This, of course, does not apply to organizers of non-political gatherings, such as ArtQuake or Little League tournaments.

4.Since Portland Police informants regularly attend all public political meetings and many that are ostensibly private, activists can never assume privacy when making decisions together or debating issues. Nor can they necessarily trust supposed members of their organizations.

5.If any person at a political meeting advocates violence, or even civil disobedience actions such as sit-ins, every person at that meeting can receive a notation in their CID file that they have "attended a meeting where violence or criminal activity was advocated" - even if they spoke up to oppose it, even if the advocate was a police, Federal or private intelligence agent. The police can then legally gather information about all persons or groups in attendance.

6.The Portland Police regularly share information with other city, state and Federal police agencies about activists. Since different agencies have different rules about what may and may not be kept, even if the PPD destroys its file on an activist the same information may continue to exist elsewhere. It can also be assumed that much of this information is available to private intelligence operations, over which there is no control whatsoever.

[Originally published by PDXS, Portland OR, February 9-22, 1996]