ACLU Reveals Denver Police Department Spy Files

ACLU Reveals Denver Police Department Spy Files

Imagine a society in which police officers surreptitiously follow and monitor political activists. The authorities record the actions and intimate details of dissidents' personal lives. In its secret files, the government identifies peaceful protesters as "criminal extremists" and tracks their political beliefs and opinions. The dossiers include membership lists of groups that the police have deemed dangerous, and protests in which targeted individuals have participated.

This nightmare scenario does not describe the plot of an Orwellian novel, the KGB's operations, or the FBI's infiltration of political groups in the 1960s. Welcome to the world of the Denver Police Department in 2002.

The ACLU Foundation of Colorado learned earlier this year that the Denver Police Department was monitoring and recording the peaceful protest activities of Denver-area residents, maintaining files on First Amendment-protected expression of law-abiding advocacy organizations, and sharing those files with third parties. The groups tarred with the "criminal extremist" label include the American Friends Service Committee, an 85-year old pacifist Quaker group that won the Nobel Peace Prize for its advocacy of non-violent social change, and the Chiapas Coalition, which conducts education and advocacy activities supporting the struggle of indigenous persons in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Individuals whose names appeared in the files include Sister Antonio Anthony, a 73-year old Franciscan nun whose opinions and lawful protest activity are documented in police files.

The ACLU first revealed the existence of the Denver police spy files at a news conference on March 11. Mark Silverstein, Legal Director, disclosed several pages from the spy files and called on Denver Mayor Wellington E. Webb to put a stop to the practice, to make a full public accounting, and to permit individuals to review their files. Two days later, Mayor Webb admitted that the Denver Police Department had adopted an "overbroad interpretation" of its surveillance policy that "resulted in cases where it may not have been justifiable to include certain individuals or organizations in our intelligence gathering activities." The City has admitted that it maintains spy files on as many as 3,200 individuals and 208 organizations.

In response to the ACLU's disclosures, Mayor Webb appointed three former judges as "independent auditors" to review the files. The City, however, has not yet established a process by which the "independent auditors" will review the spy files, created a procedure by which the groups and individuals named in such files may learn what information the City has gathered on them, or established procedures for review and eventual destruction of the spy files.

On March 28, ACLU cooperating attorneys Lino Lipinsky, Greg Johnson, and Sandra Wick of McKenna & Cuneo, L.L.P., together with Mr. Silverstein, filed a class action complaint on behalf of those individuals and organizations that, as a result of peaceful expressive activities, have been, are now, or will become targets of police surveillance or the subjects of police spy files. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit seek, among other relief, a declaratory judgment that the Denver Police Department's surveillance of peaceful, expressive activities is unconstitutional, and an injunction barring the City from conducting surveillance of peaceful activists and maintaining spy files. The City has thus far indicated that it will vigorously defend against the ACLU's suit, and has gone so far as to hire a private law firm to fight the ACLU.

In a related legal proceeding, cooperating attorney Steven Zansberg of Faegre & Benson has been working with the ACLU on an Open Records Act request, seeking public disclosure of the spy files. The City has refused to release the files, claiming that they are confidential records of criminal investigations - despite the Mayor's admission that the Denver Police overbroadly interpreted its own surveillance rules.

Despite the City's complaints about the ACLU's legal strategy, the spy files would be secret today if not for the efforts of the ACLU. This matter underscores the vital role that the ACLU plays in preserving and protecting the civil rights of all Colorado residents.