It's long been standard practice for police to conduct surveillance of protesters preceding major demonstrations, so it comes as no surprise that some activists and anarchists affiliated with Occupy Wall Street received a little visit from concerned members of the New York Police Department yesterday, on the eve of today's May Day General Strike. On the Anarchist News message board, one person who promises that "May Day means revenge," explains what happened:
This morning around 6:30 a.m. at least two houses were raided by NYPD detectives. In both cases, the cops used the pretext of spurious arrest warrants to gain access to apartments of local anarchists. The warrants were for individuals unconnected to those homes, but allowed cops access to one and apparently justified them forcibly breaking into another.
After entering the apartments the police searched them, intimidated the residents, and ran their identification. In one of the instances, an anarchist organizer was taken into a separate room and interrogated by detectives about past actions and upcoming plans for May Day. It awaits to be seen if more houses were subject to raids this morning. Regardless, this 'preemptive strike' by the NYPD was clearly a coordinated effort to intimidate local organizers and fish for information.
Gawker spoke to one activist, Zachary Dempster, who claims half a dozen cops "broke down the door" of his Bushwhick apartment, ostensibly to arrest his roommate on a warrant for a six-year-old open container violation. But Dempster thinks the NYPD were really interested in him, because they questioned him for five minutes in his bedroom about his plans for May Day. Other Occupy activists in Bed-Stuy were also paid a visit by police, who ran checks on their IDs.
Attorney Gideon Orion Oliver, who serves as President of the National Lawyers Guild - New York City Chapter, confirms that police visited at least three homes where political activists live, and visited at least three other residences searching for other activists, ostensibly acting on old warrants. "This is something the police have done before, before the 2004 RNC," Oliver recalls. "Of course, [NYPD spokesman] Paul Browne says the NYPD always goes and executes warrants and there's nothing extraordinary about this, but it's obviously to target people the police believe are political. You don't ask who protest leaders are if you're just going after a warrant that's totally unrelated. I think it means they're scared."
Orion also says that at least one protester received a visit from the FBI. "And if we've heard of at least five or ten there are surely more that," he adds.
So it goes. The NYPD's official assessment of May Day also made the rounds yesterday—SHIELD, the department's counterterrorism program, warns of possible "militant elements" and "disruptive activities," including a possible attempt to shut down bridges, tunnels, and ferries. (Read it in full below.) The NYPD has been preparing with drills using mock protesters on Randall's Island, and the department is particularly focused on a “wildcat march" scheduled for 1 p.m. in the East Village.
But the SHIELD assessment is described as "open source," and spokesman Paul Browne tells Politicker, "This is a summary of stuff the press has reported on all week and that has been disseminated on OWS related sites. It was sent on our website used by thousands of security directors for universities, hospitals, corporations, and other employers who are welcome to share it with anyone they want, and who do." In that spirit, here ya go!
