Case is one of several across the US of police targeting anti-Trump and anti-fascist groups with monitoring and criminal trials

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Los Angeles police department has revealed in court that it infiltrated an activist group planning anti-Trump protests, in the latest case of US law enforcement spying on leftwing organizers.

A confidential informant working with the LAPD secretly recorded multiple meetings of a group called Refuse Fascism in 2017, according to newly disclosed police documents. The LAPD transcripts, first reported by the Los Angeles Times and reviewed by the Guardian, were submitted in a criminal case against activists who blocked a California freeway during an anti-Trump demonstration.

Police equipped an informant with a hidden recording device and had the individual attend Refuse Fascism gatherings at a local church “in an attempt to elicit information regarding the closure” of the freeway and to express interest in being involved “in any such future activities”, police wrote.

Miguel Antonio, one of the activists who was monitored and recorded by the informant, and then subsequently charged with misdemeanors for shutting down the freeway, told the Guardian on Friday that he would not let the surveillance stop him from organizing.

'Are they going to violate my rights?': California's battle over police body cameras Read more

“We’re not scared. We’re not going to back down in the face of repression,” the 28-year-old said, adding that this kind of spying was meant to discourage activists. “You’re in a church, and you’re meeting about organizing a peaceful protest, and you’re running the risk of being charged with conspiracy or these petty crimes.”

The LA case is one of several across the country of law enforcement aggressively targeting anti-Trump and anti-fascist groups with monitoring and criminal trials.

In Sacramento, police worked with neo-Nazis to pursue cases against leftwing activists, including seeking charges against anti-fascist protesters who were stabbed at a white supremacist rally. In Berkeley, police collaborated with a violent pro-Trump demonstrator to prosecute a leftwing group last year, and there have been similar controversies in Washington DC, Oregon and other states.

The LAPD surveillance was particularly striking given that there was documented evidence of violence involving far-right groups in southern California around the same time, and that those white supremacist organizations do pose a serious threat, said Mike German, a former FBI agent and expert on local extremist groups.

“This case seems to fall into a pattern of police agencies viewing anti-fascist organizing as terrorism, while overlooking the far more deadly and frequent violence perpetrated by white supremacists and other far-right militants,” he said.

LAPD did not conduct a similar spying operation on far-right groups while it targeted Refuse Fascism, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In a statement released late Friday, LAPD said the agency’s chief, Michel Moore, had “ordered a top-to-bottom review to determine whether the department’s stringent requirements for the use of confidential informants were followed”.

The department was “steadfastly committed to constitutional policing”, and would “take all necessary and appropriate steps to investigate any potential concerns raised”, the statement added.

The city attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the activists, declined to comment.

On 27 September 2017, Antonio and a group of activists shut down a freeway in downtown LA to protest Trump, one year after his election. After they were arrested, LAPD sent the informant, who has not been identified, to monitor the group’s meetings at the Echo Park United Methodist Church.

During an 11 October meeting, the informant approached Antonio and said, “Are we gonna do like any freeway things again…or major things like that?”, according to a transcript of a secret recording.

“I’m not sure,” Antonio responded.

The informant then said he was interested in joining future activities: “I thought the freeway thing was pretty good.”

Antonio then explained to the informant his thinking behind disrupting people’s morning commutes and raising awareness about Trump’s attacks on Muslims, LGBTQ people, immigrants and others.

The informant attended multiple meetings after that and coordinated with an LAPD detective. In one case, police noted in a write-up that one of the activists was caught on the recording making a joke about the president, saying, “That’s an awfully hot coffeepot, should I drop it on Donald Trump?”

Antonio was eventually charged with several misdemeanors, including obstructing public movement on a highway, failure to disperse from an unlawful assembly and failure to comply with a law enforcement order. A jury recently deadlocked in the case, and a new trial is scheduled to begin later this month.

Damon Alimouri, Antonio’s lawyer, said the LAPD surveillance was “unjust and outrageous”, adding that he suspected this type of spying was likely to escalate across the country.

“The further left that younger people go, we will continue to see law enforcement infiltrating these groups secretly,” he said, adding, “To a certain extent, it might intimidate some, and I think that’s the intention of the LAPD.”

Frank Wulf, the pastor of the church where the LAPD was conducting the surveillance, said it was “offensive” for police to “infiltrate a group whose purposes are clearly non-violent”.

“The government is interfering with the rights of protest in America,” he said, adding that he worried about a chilling effect: “You never know if the person sitting next to you is a police informant or not.”

By permitting this type of surveillance, the LAPD also appeared to be violating its own standards meant to protect against unconstitutional monitoring, said Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

“The target for them was a group organizing in a church where there was no indication of any criminal activity that was afoot,” he said, adding, “What this story demonstrates is that the agency is frankly rogue.”

News of the infiltration was a reminder that the politically motivated surveillance that was common decades earlier in the US has not stopped, said Antonio, who also organizes with a group called the Revolution Club.

He said that freeway demonstrations were meant to inspire people to get involved in organizing and remind them that the threats on people’s rights are urgent – and that they can’t wait until 2020.

“There are concentration camps at the border, they are stripping women’s rights to control their body, they are threatening war with Iran and they are destroying the planet,” he said. “We want people to act.”