New spy-file policy
challenged
Required police audit
overdue, panel finds
By Amy Herdy
Denver Post Staff
Writer
Friday, February 21,
2003 - Heavily criticized for not following any type of policy for years
as it collected spy files on peaceful protesters, the Denver Police Department
apparently has already violated its new policy, in place only a few months.
That and other observations
were made at a public hearing of the Public Safety Review Commission on
Thursday night, where more than a dozen people asked the commission for
accountability of the Police Department.
Review committee chairman
Brian Muldoon called aspects of the spy files "really reprehensible" and
promised to examine their existence and future prevention.
Muldoon observed that
the Police Department has already missed a deadline, a fact that was brought
to light by speaker Gail Bundy. Bundy, a writer and Denver resident, asked
for the results of an audit that under the new policy, implemented in October,
is supposed to be conducted on a quarterly basis for its first year.
No quarterly review
has been done, Muldoon told Bundy, to which she replied, "So what you are
telling me is that this policy, newly written, is not being followed."
Time and again, speakers
told the seven-member panel of violations of their civil rights by the
Denver police, who either never had an intelligence policy since the unit's
inception in the 1950's or who repeatedly violated it by keeping thousands
of spy files.
For some, "protesting
is the only way we can be heard," said Anita Cameron, a member of ADAPT,
an organization that focuses on the civil rights of Americans with disabilities.
"(Officials) ignore
our needs and our requests and put us in a position of having to demonstrate,"
Cameron said, and then be labeled by police as "terrorists, militants and
radicals."
For speaker Pavlos
Stavropoulos, the spy files had nothing to do with criminal intelligence.
"They are political intelligence files," said Stavropoulos, who, like most
of the speakers, has a spy file.
And while Denver officers
are under investigation for double dipping in off-duty jobs, he said, no
one has been disciplined for the spy files.
"So when some money
has been misplaced, it's very serious. When the Constitution's been put
through the shredder, we don't really care about the damage," he said.
Police officials could
not be reached for comment Thursday night.
At the hearing, only
one person spoke on their behalf.
"If you hamstring
the police from gathering intelligence," said neighborhood advocate Lisa
Dobson, "then all they can do is be reactive, which means come in and clean
up the mess once it is too late to prevent it."
One speaker said she
had little hope of actual reform.
"I am testifying today,
not because I believe the PSRC can really do anything," said Marge Tanawaki,
"but in the hope that calling attention to the methods and behavior of
the authorities might stave off the fascist state I see descending inexorably
upon this city, state and nation."
The hearing was part
of ongoing litigation over Denver's spy files.
After learning of
the existence of 3,200 individual and 208 group files in March, the ACLU
filed suit on behalf of six plaintiffs, challenging the department's custom
of spying on peaceful protesters, maintaining the files and sharing the
files with other law enforcement agencies.
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