A lawsuit forced Memphis Police Department officials to walk into federal court this past week and start spilling secrets about surveillance methods.

Many things came out during three-and-a-half days of testimony that started on Monday. Here's what you need to know.

1. The city has lots of ways to watch people.

The trial showed the MPD has a powerful surveillance apparatus that includes plainclothes police, social media monitoring and more than 1,000 surveillance cameras posted throughout the city.

The ACLU of Tennessee had argued the city used that power to monitor Black Lives Matter and other protest movements, breaking a 1978 consent decree that barred the city from gathering "political intelligence" on non-criminals.

U.S. Judge Jon McCalla ruled on August 10 that the city violated the 1978 consent decree, but he allowed a bench trial to go forward as he considered other issues, including whether or not to appoint a monitor to enforce the decree.

2. The true identity of Bob Smith was revealed. On Facebook, a person named Bob Smith made friends with numerous activists. By "friending" them, he got past privacy restrictions.

On Day 1 of the trial, "Bob Smith" was unmasked. The primary police officer running the undercover social media account was Sgt. Timothy Reynolds, an officer who wore a pinstriped suit and glasses in court.

Reynolds described opening the undercover account in 2009 or 2010, then beginning to focus on activists right around the time of protests over zoo parking in May 2016.

The account was active until last month and made contacts with hundreds of people, Reynolds testified.

Reynolds is white, but identified himself as a "man of color" in at least one post. He didn't explain in detail why, but he said, “You have to post stuff to actually look like an active account.”

Like many other city officials in the case, he said the point of gathering information on protests is to learn about big gatherings that might spiral out of control and lead to violence. He said he did not care about the content of the speech.

The police department repeatedly cited the July 10, 2016 takeover of the Hernando de Soto bridge as an example.

Aerial video of the bridge protest showed the sheer physical danger of the moment: People walked into traffic with a few police cars nearby trying to stop vehicles from running them over. The crowd and the police remained in a standoff for hours high above a potentially deadly drop. In the end, police leader Michael Rallings helped talk the people down, everyone left and no one was hurt.

The other side argues the city is going too far in trying to head off such events and aims to suppress dissent.

3. The identify of the fake Michael Rallings Twitter account was revealed, too.

In 2016, someone created a Twitter account that supposedly came from Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings.

The real Michael Rallings was not amused. In court, he said he doesn't use social media, and feared the fake account would post something inflammatory, causing the city to erupt. Rallings ordered a criminal investigation and said on the stand that he still wants the person responsible to face criminal charges.

Later that day, Paul Garner of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center took the stand and acknowledged he ran the account, which he said was a satire or parody. In an interview Friday, he said the fake Rallings account had a small number of followers and little attention until the police department started denouncing it.

"They're creating fake accounts and I think what they were doing was a lot more dangerous," he said.

To date, Garner has not faced criminal charges. He said criminally charging him would represent a doubling down on the suppression of speech that's alleged in the trial. "I don't think it would be the most politically wise thing to do."

4. High-level police officials had little knowledge of the 1978 consent decree.

“Prior to the lawsuit, I had a vague knowledge of the consent decree,” Rallings said on the stand.

He said he didn't know what new police recruits were learning about the 1978 decree, that he wasn't aware of any ongoing training given to existing officers and that he couldn’t remember receiving training in the consent decree himself.

Lt. Col. Eddie Bass was asked if he had an understanding of the decree: "Vaguely. Again, it's from 1978."

The decree says police can't take pictures of people at a protest or meeting for identification purposes. The MPD was doing that, according to testimony and emails.

That's just one example. The consent decree also says the police director must approve any criminal investigations that might affect First Amendment rights.

Testimony during the trial suggests that in recent years, police officers at lower levels were deciding what steps to take about free speech events, not the director.

Major Lambert Ross formerly ran the Real Time Crime Center, which monitors the city's surveillance cameras and does other data analysis. He said center employees sometimes identified social media posts about peaceful events, then sent them to police precinct commanders.

The judge spoke directly to the witness. "So a precinct commander could make a decision about what to do on a peaceful event?"

Ross replied, “That would be up to that precinct commander. Yes sir.”

5. The conflict between Memphis activists and the police is sometimes strangely intimate.

The police director described sharing a water bottle with activist Keedran Franklin as they walked off the Hernando de Soto bridge together following protesters' takeover of the span in July 2016.

As Rallings left the courtroom, he passed Franklin sitting outside and said, "Mr. Keedran, you're still looking sharp."

Franklin said Friday that he has Rallings' personal cell phone number and that even though they're adversaries on some issues, they still talk. Franklin said he called Rallings that very morning after police officers showed up at a community garden he helps run.

At a break in the trial, Franklin also exchanged a lengthy handshake and warm greetings with Ross, the police major. Franklin told Ross, "I just want to live."

He explained later what he meant. "How much of this do you think you would be able to take, a full police force pointed at you?"

Franklin had said in court testimony that the police frequently follow him, that it's taken an emotional toll and hurt his relationships with friends and family.

He has a trial coming up Sept. 13 related to an April arrest during an immigration protest.

6. In this conflict, race plays out in surprising ways.

The history of political intelligence in Memphis has strong racial overtones. For instance, white-dominated law enforcement spied extensively on Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Records and testimony show police officials in Memphis more recently watched Black Lives Matter, a social movement formed in response to police shootings of African-Americans.

On Aug. 6, 2016, a high-level police official expressed concern that agitators might hijack a panel discussion at a church called New Life In Christ, "and turn it into, let's say a (Black Lives Matter) event," according to emails introduced in the court case.

The official also suggested sending officers to the church panel discussion to gather intelligence.

The official who wrote those emails is Eddie Bass, who is African-American and was a major at the time.

Some of the other high-level police officials who testified at the trial are also African-Americans, including Ross and Rallings. It's a testament to the social changes in recent decades -- though black people in Memphis still lag dramatically behind whites in wealth, many have risen to high levels in politics and government.

7. The case might take a long time to resolve.

Both sides in the case will submit briefs and the judge is expected to rule sometime in the fall. Appeals are quite possible, which could push a final resolution of the case well into the future.

8. The Memphis police may be "stroppy".

As people were leaving the courtroom following the close of the trial, activist Fergus Nolan taunted a group of police officials. They'd had to check their guns outside the courtroom and at the moment had empty holsters.

"You guys aren't so stroppy without your sidearms," said Nolan.

Nolan is originally from Ireland. "Stroppy" is British slang meaning "hard to deal with or control, angry, unruly, impudent."

One of the police officials played along, saying, "I still consider myself pretty stroppy without my sidearm."

Reach reporter Daniel Connolly at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.