Tag Archives: power

FOIAing special police operations in DC

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The Washington Post reports that Partnership for Civil Justice has filed a FOIA request on the Federally-backed “Safe Streets task force” that is operating in DC, and which is implicated in allegations of an unjust shooting of a suspect they were pursuing this past week.

“The residents in the District have a right to know exactly who is operating on their streets, under what authority, and who is authorized to use force,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a co-founder of the group.

Verheyden-Hilliard and the Partnership gave myself and a colleague at the time some initial consultations when we were considering pursuing legal action against the city (we ended-up working with ACLU-affiliated representation). The Partnership for Civil Justice seems to have fought a long-standing and principled battle for civil liberties in the District of Columbia, where Federal powers seems to trump local power, and local power seems to think it is bigger than it is — with the a frequent effect of constricting movement and speech of civilians. She, as it seems everyone at the Partnership is, is also involved in the activist group ANSWER, whose tactics and tone I’ve found myself disagreeing with (while sharing many overlapping issues of concern).

An ugly morning in DC

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Click through to view the set at Flickr, with captions. Also see these photos by Jake Cunningham, some of which more closely show demonstrators being pushed into the police car by police.

The sun is hitting DC hard this morning. It’s going to be another hot one.

Another day of protests against the World Bank and IMF is planned. I hear that last night some activists took to the streets of Georgetown in the wee hours of the morning.

I’ve got a lot of questions about the choices made by some to use certain tactics and the posturing of some of these activists — but analysis and judgement of that seems irrelevant to what I witnessed Saturday morning. I went out as an independent photographer, a role I have played for years here in DC.

I saw it get ugly in Foggy Bottom.

Whatever relevance you thought the demonstrations had to the issues they were ostensibly protesting, I don’t think it was their fault that it got ugly.

Captain Herold, of the DC MPD, who appeared to be the officer in command, and who is known to activists as being in charge of the political unit — police intelligence on activists — is attributed in the Washington Post for most of their description of what took place. Herold says “the police were put in danger when they were surrounded as the crowd turned” — this is not true. If the police were put in danger or were surrounded, it is only after they surged into the crowd after an awkward and sudden attempt to stop a crowd that was, in fact, mostly surrounded by police.

If it wasn’t for a key moment where one officer came to the fore, the morning easily could have been forgettable.

I know a PNC bank branch had its windows smashed-out earlier — but that was a different time, a different neighborhood, possibly by entirely different people. I saw no behavior of that sort down around the bank.

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