From
Crimethinc
(For practical tips on protecting you community from the police, click here.)
The police exercise legitimate authority. The
average police officer is not a legal expert; he probably knows his
department protocol, but very little about the actual laws. This means
his enforcement involves a great deal of bluffing, improvisation, and
dishonesty. Police lie on a regular basis: “I just got a report of
someone of your description committing a crime around here. Want to show
me some ID?”
This is not to say we should unthinkingly accept laws as
legitimate, either. The entire judicial system protects the privileges
of the wealthy and powerful. Obeying laws is not necessarily morally
right—it may even be immoral. Slavery was legal, aiding escaped slaves
illegal. The Nazis came to power in Germany via democratic elections and
passed laws through the prescribed channels. We should aspire to the
strength of conscience to do what we know is best, regardless of laws
and police intimidation.
The police are ordinary workers just like us; they should be our allies.
Unfortunately, there’s a big gap between “should be” and “are.” The
role of the police is to serve the interests of the ruling class; anyone
who has not had a bad experience with them is likely privileged,
submissive, or both. Today’s police officers know exactly what they’re
getting into when they join the force—people in uniform don’t just get
cats out of trees. Yes, most take the job because of economic pressure,
but needing a paycheck is no excuse for evicting families, harassing
young people of color, or pepper-spraying demonstrators. Those whose
consciences can be bought are everyone’s potential enemies, not allies.
This fairy tale is more persuasive when it is couched in strategic
terms: for example, “Every revolution succeeds at the moment the armed
forces refuse to make war on their fellows; therefore we should focus on
seducing the police to our side.” But the police are not just any
workers; they’re the ones who chose to base their livelihoods upon
defending the prevailing order, thus the least likely to be sympathetic
to those who wish to change it. In this context, it makes more sense to
oppose the police as such than to seek solidarity with them. As long as
they serve their masters, they cannot be our allies; by denouncing the
institution of police and demoralizing individual officers, we encourage
them to seek other livelihoods so we can one day find common cause with
them.
Maybe there are some bad apples, but some police officers are good people.
Perhaps some police officers have good intentions, but once again,
insofar as they obey orders rather than their consciences, they cannot
be trusted.
There’s something to be said for understanding the systematic
nature of institutions, rather than attributing every injustice to the
shortcomings of individuals. Remember the story of the man who,
tormented by fleas, managed to catch one between his fingers? He
scrutinized it for a long time before placing it back at the spot on his
neck where had he caught it. His friends, confounded, inquired why on
earth he would do such a thing. “That wasn’t the one that was biting
me,” he explained.
Police can win any confrontation, so we shouldn’t antagonize them.
With all their weapons, equipment, and surveillance, the police can
seem invincible, but this is an illusion. They are limited by all sorts
of invisible constraints—bureaucracy, public opinion, communication
breakdowns, an overloaded judicial system. If they don’t have vehicles
or facilities available to transport and process a great number of
arrestees, for example, they can’t make mass arrests.
This is why a motley crowd armed only with the tear gas canisters
shot at them can hold off a larger, more organized, better-equipped
police force; contests between social unrest and military might don’t
play out according to the rules of military engagement. Those who have
studied police, who can predict what they are prepared for and what they
can and cannot do, can often outsmart and outmaneuver them.
Such small victories are especially inspiring for those who chafe
under the heel of police violence on a daily basis. In the collective
unconscious of our society, the police are the ultimate bastion of
reality, the force that ensures that things stay the way they are;
taking them on and winning, however temporarily, shows that reality is
negotiable.
Police are a mere distraction from the real enemy, not worth our wrath or attention.
Alas, tyranny is not just a matter of politicians or executives; they
would be powerless without those who do their bidding. When we contest
their rule, we’re also contesting the submission that keeps them in
power, and sooner or later we’re sure to come up against some of those
who submit.
That being said, it’s true that the police are no more integral to
hierarchy than the oppressive dynamics in our own communities; they are
simply the external manifestation, on a larger scale, of the same
phenomena. If we are to contest domination everywhere, rather than
specializing in combating certain forms of it while leaving others
unchallenged, we have to be prepared to confront it both in the streets
and in our own bedrooms; we can’t expect to win on one front without
fighting on the other. We shouldn’t fetishize confrontations with
uniformed foes, we shouldn’t forget the power imbalances in our own
ranks—but neither should we be content merely to manage the details of
our own oppression in a non-hierarchical manner.
We need police to protect us. According to this
line of thinking, even if we might aspire to live in a society without
police in the distant future, we need them today, for people are not
ready to live together peacefully without armed enforcers. As if the
social imbalances and fear maintained by police violence are peace!
Those who argue that the police sometimes do good things bear the burden
of proving that those same good things could not be accomplished at
least as well by other means.
In any case, it’s not as if a police-free society is suddenly going
to appear overnight just because someone spray-paints “Fuck the Police”
on a wall. The protracted struggle it will take to free our communities
from police repression will probably go on as long as it takes us to
learn to coexist peacefully; a community that can’t sort out its own
conflicts can’t expect to triumph against a more powerful occupying
force. In the meantime, opposition to police should be seen as a
rejection of one of the most egregious sources of oppressive violence,
not an assertion that without police there would be none. But if we can
ever defeat and disband the police, we will surely be able to defend
ourselves against less organized threats.
Resisting the police is violent—it makes you no better than them.
According to this line of thinking, violence is inherently a form of
domination, and thus inconsistent with opposing domination. Those who
engage in violence play the same game as their oppressors, thereby
losing from the outset.
This is dangerously simplistic. Is a woman who defends herself
against a rapist no better than a rapist? Were slaves who revolted no
better than slave-holders? There is such a thing as self-defense. In
some cases, violence enforces power imbalances; in other cases, it
challenges them. For people who still have faith in an authoritarian
system or God, following the rules—whether legal or moral—is the top
priority, at whatever cost: they believe they will be rewarded for doing
so, regardless of what happens to others as a result.
Whether such
people call themselves conservatives or pacifists makes little
difference in the end. On the other hand, for those of us who take
responsibility for ourselves, the most important question is what will
serve to make the world a better place. Sometimes this may include
violence.
Police are people too, and deserve the same respect due all living
things. The point is not that they deserve to suffer or that we should
bring them to justice. The point is that, in purely pragmatic terms,
they must not be allowed to brutalize people or impose an unjust social
order. Though it can be empowering for those who have spent their lives
under the heel of oppression to contemplate finally settling the score
with their oppressors, liberation is not a matter of exacting revenge
but of rendering it unnecessary. Therefore, while it may sometimes even
be necessary to set police on fire, this should not be done out of a
spirit of vengeful self-righteousness, but from a place of care and
compassion—if not for the police themselves, at least for all who would
otherwise suffer at their hands.
. . .
Delegitimizing the police is not only beneficial for those they
target, but also for police officers’ families and police officers
themselves. Not only do police officers have disproportionately high
rates of domestic violence and child abuse, they’re also more likely to
get killed, commit suicide, and struggle with addiction than most
sectors of society. Anything that encourages police officers to quit
their jobs is in their best interest, as well as the interest of their
loved ones and society at large. Let’s create a world in which no one
oppresses or is oppressed, in which no one has to live in fear.
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have
found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be
imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with
either words or blows, or both.”
- Frederick Douglass
How to Fuck
the Police
On the Streets:
Organizing a Copwatch Program
Copwatch groups seek to contest or at least limit police
repression by directly monitoring police officers. Copwatch volunteers
patrol the streets, observing police and recording their interactions
with civilians. They often concentrate on areas of high police activity
or to which known trouble-making cops are assigned. Copwatch groups also
advise people of their rights and listen to their stories, and
otherwise endeavor to undermine and thwart the police state.
Most radicals, not to mention many others, realize that the idea of
policing itself needs to be completely rethought. In the meantime,
people have to be protected from the brutality they face daily at the
hands of the police.
Get a Group Together
Form a group. Put out calls for one everywhere, even on the
bulletin boards of church groups and local grocers, not just in the
activist community. Approach your neighbors—the best neighborhood watch
includes a copwatch.
Educate people in your community and other communities, especially
targeted ones, about their legal rights, and about how to carry out a
copwatch. Hold classes everywhere in your city, at accessible places and
times. These can be formal events, or informal teach-ins outside a
movie theater or between performers at a show.
Hold regular, accessible, well-advertised meetings—don’t depend on
the internet for all or even most of your communications. Many of those
who need copwatch most are unlikely to have easy or regular computer
access. Decide as a group what your goals are and how you will go about
achieving them.
Find hotspots where police repression frequently takes place. Look
for them in the police blotter in your local paper, or ask around in
neighborhoods, or approach lawyers who do a lot of street work and
request advice.
Establish patrols, and have them report on their observations on a
regular basis. Your group will be more effective if it is well
organized.
For a variety of reasons, it makes the most sense for people to do
copwatch patrols in their own neighborhoods. If it is important that you
patrol another neighborhood, make an effort to become familiar with it:
get to know locals, and make sure you understand local issues and
context. Canvas from door to door if necessary, introducing yourself and
your group and announcing your intentions and motivations. Be open to
input from locals; they are the ones who will experience the bulk of the
repercussions from everything that happens in their neighborhood. Come
through on your commitments: don’t just show up out of nowhere doing a
copwatch program for a little while and then disappear, stick around
until locals know who you are and that they can count on you.
When the cops are particularly brutal or kill someone, raise a
ruckus about it. Put pressure on them and keep it on. Approach the
survivors and follow their lead as to how to handle things. Offer to
organize protests or benefit events, screenprint shirts, or play media
liaison for them. If they’re into it, hold demonstrations, spray paint
the names of the victims and murderers everywhere, smash out the windows
of the offending police station.
Agitate for laws and regulations that enforce stricter controls on
police. Try to get the worst police officers fired. If your community
has a Citizen Review Board, make an effort to give it teeth. Police
review boards should be elected by district, not appointed. They must be
empowered to impose punishments and fire officers.
People from communities that are terrorized will often be
understandably afraid to stand up for themselves. A copwatch program can
be the first step towards solidarity with each other.
How to Copwatch
To copwatch effectively, all you need is your eyes and ears, and
some means of recording incidents. A small notebook and pen or pencil
are the most useful and least conspicuous. A camera or video camera can
also be useful, as can a cell phone or an audio recording device.
Copwatching is generally safest and easiest if you make sure to
follow the letter of the law. There should be no drugs, alcohol, or
illegal weapons on your person or in your system. Be careful not to
jaywalk. This author has friends who have done a perfect copwatch, then
jaywalked almost immediately after leaving the scene, receiving a $50
ticket for their efforts. If you are driving, make sure that you and all
of your passengers have on seat belts. Resist unnecessary horn honking
or loud music as you drive away—violations of noise pollution laws and
ordinances can be used as excuses to detain and arrest you. If you are
not following the very letter of the law, you may end up doing more harm
than good and could get yourself arrested. Don’t give them any excuse
to bust you.
Copwatching is best done with two or three others—you are less
likely to be arrested in a group. One cool-headed person can take the
role of speaking to officers, getting their names, ranks, badge numbers,
district designations, squad car numbers, license numbers, and general
descriptions, thus making them aware of your being there as observers.
The others should hang back, recording every detail of the encounter,
being careful not to interfere, provoke, or draw attention. If you have
the numbers, one person can pose as an individual onlooker with no
connection to the rest of the group. Decide on your roles before the
encounter, if possible.
Presumably, you are there to defuse the situation, not escalate it.
Don’t goad the police into arresting people as a way of getting back at
you because of your attitude. Reign in the hostility you feel towards
them—be polite but firm. Remember, police are dangerous. Walk, don’t
run, and avoid quick or sudden movements around them.
At the same time, don’t be so easily intimidated that you cannot
accomplish your task. Police officers who feel threatened by your
concern about the victims of their repression may well threaten you,
shouting “Move on!” and puffing themselves up like territorial frogs. In
the course of your interactions with them, you’ll develop a sense of
what to expect from them and an instinct for exactly how seriously to
take their threats.
Carry cards detailing legal rights, flyers with information about
local copwatch programs, and other information with you to give to
people subject to arrest or harassment. Inform people about their
rights, and of any numbers, local services, or internet sites by means
of which they can contact a lawyer or learn how and where to file a
complaint. Citizen complaint review boards are often virtually useless
as a way of dealing with police brutality, but they can be useful for
documenting incidents. Be aware of local laws and limitations—for
example, in some cities, in order to be able to file a lawsuit against
the city, you must send a letter to the mayor announcing your intention
to sue the district within six months of the incident in question. In
such a case, you should emphasize to people who have suffered police
brutality that they should keep their options open: “You don’t have to
follow through with it, but you should secure your right to sue if the
incident was severe enough for you even to think about doing so.”
When observing police officers’ interactions with civilians, try to
get as much information as you can. Make note of the day, time, and
exact location of the incident; the officer’s name, badge number,
district, and physical description; where arrestees are being taken; the
names, addresses, and telephone numbers of any witnesses; and vehicle
or license numbers for any police vehicles involved in the incident. Use
cameras or other recording devices to document the event from beginning
to end. Take down complete descriptions of police actions and any
resulting injuries. If there are injuries of any sort, even preexisting
ones, be sure to detail what medical attention was or was not offered by
the police—people have been let go by officers after copwatch members
observed them being denied medical attention, even though the injuries
had been not caused by the police.
If you feel it is warranted, you can call 911 and report that
someone is being injured. Wait until the end of your statement to note
that it is the police doing so, but don’t leave that out, and stick to
the facts. As all 911 calls are recorded and are relatively hard for the
justice system to “lose,” they can provide useful documentation for
legal proceedings. You can also call a friend’s or your own answering
machine and record what is happening as it happens, assuming the tape is
long enough. The sound quality may not be as good as an on-site
recording device would provide, but the police cannot confiscate the
tape; this method can be particularly useful if everyone present is
getting arrested. If you get arrested and the police don’t take your
cell phone immediately, call a talk show or progressive radio station
from the back of the police vehicle.
If you witness someone else being arrested, try to give the
arrestee a way to contact you, and vice versa. This is not to say you
should give your name or get their name in front of police. Give your
name and contact information only if you are comfortable with the police
getting it, unless there is another way.
If you are comfortable doing an assertive copwatch, introduce
yourself when you approach the scene and explain that you are there
doing a copwatch. Ask police why they are detaining or arresting people,
but don’t ask arrestees for their names directly, as they might not
wish the police to have it. If arrestees say their names and addresses
to the police loud enough for you to hear, write them down. If the
justification for the stop seems to be vague, ask officers to name the
section of the law they are enforcing. Officers will lie and make
mistakes—if you know the code do better or have a copy of it with you,
speak up. Don’t approach or speak to the arrestee directly while he or
she is being detained; if you do, you risk being arrested. Sometimes
you’ll have to do just that, but know what you’re getting into.
If a detainee is let go or ticketed, make use of the opportunity to
give your flyers and rights cards to them. If a detainee is arrested,
you can fold a card in half and ask the officer to give it to him or
her—fat chance, but miracles happen. You can’t speak to an arrestee
directly without risking trouble, but you can loudly talk about what
rights people have with the police or a bystander or your compatriot.
These include the right to remain silent, the right to speak to an
attorney, the right to refuse a search of your person, personal items,
or car.
Stick around until the police have moved on. The Rodney King beating began with what seemed to be a routine traffic stop.
Make use of every opportunity to have educational conversations.
Speak to onlookers about their rights, about what citizens can do about
police brutality, about community alternatives to policing. When
answering questions about legal matters, don’t be afraid to say, “I
don’t know.” This is always better then giving out wrong information.
Collect statements from other witnesses if you can. Many will not
want to get involved. Try to persuade and educate them otherwise, and
get statements from them even when you can’t get their names.
Keep the information you have gathered from your copwatching. If
your copwatch group does not keep records, keep track of it yourself. It
can be useful to submit copies of your records to government agencies,
so they will have them documented and on file. Do not edit any
videotapes you shoot, as this can render them useless as evidence in
court.
If possible, carry with you the text of the laws most commonly used
to justify harassment. In addition to being familiar with and ready to
cite local laws, it can help to learn local police regulations, though
it is often difficult to obtain copies of these. During your encounters
with police, be forceful rather than tentative, but remain polite.
In extreme cases, police will smash or confiscate and “lose” your
equipment to keep you from having evidence against them. If it seems
like this might happen, a member of your group should swiftly leave the
area with the evidence that has been gathered so far.
Be prepared to be arrested. Though copwatch is not illegal, police
will trump up charges. Carry ID and at least $50 if you want to be able
to get out of jail swiftly and easily.
Know what you will and will not do in extreme situations. Consider
in advance what risks you are willing to take and what charges you are
prepared to receive in order to intervene if someone is being beaten,
injured, or killed by the police. Decide this ahead of time and talk
about it within your group, so all of you know what to expect from one
another. If you copwatch in some areas, you will eventually find
yourself in this situation.
Be prepared to follow through on your work. If you couldn’t get an
arrestee’s name and you feel that the situation was bad enough to
warrant further investigation or that the abuse will continue after the
arrest, go to the station to which he or she has been taken. Loudly and
firmly ask what condition the arrestee is in and demand to know the
charges he or she has received; explain what you saw during the arrest,
and ask to make a complaint against the officers. This makes the police
aware that people are concerned and will follow through; it may stop a
back room beating.
Be careful leaving the area after a copwatch. Police have been
known to follow, ticket, target, or beat copwatchers a few blocks from
the site at which they were observed. Don’t let down your guard.
Report on what you have seen to your group, to whatever citizen
review boards your area has, however ineffective, and to your community
at large. Talk to city council members about police conduct, and show
them your evidence. Tell them you want hearings and policy changes. Get
your information to the National Lawyers Guild and or the ACLU. Tell
community and church groups. Write up reports and spread them through
local independent media outlets, both websites and papers.
If your copwatch group is ready, you could establish a copwatch
hotline, a phone number people can call to report the activities of
police officers; you could even have a response team ready to follow up
calls. You could also start your own local copwatch paper or website,
reporting on your observations, the conduct of local police, and the
struggle in your community to survive and thwart police repression.
Copwatching Alone
Don’t copwatch alone if there are other options. You should not
ignore those in exceptional danger just because you are alone, but be
aware that lone copwatching entails taking extra risk. If you have been
convicted of felonies, have a lengthy arrest record, or are not a
citizen, you should probably not copwatch alone unless the circumstances
are really exceptional. Be less assertive in engaging the police or the
individual being detained or arrested than you would be if you were in a
group. Police officers are much more likely to arrest or assault you if
there are no other witnesses present.
Be especially careful to obey the letter of the law. If possible,
remain at least twenty feet from the incident that you are watching; try
to phone someone and let him or her know what’s happening. As always,
take complete notes and, if possible, photos, audio, or videotape of the
incident. If you take photos, make sure that they are taken at the last
possible moment, to ensure the safety of you and your camera. Be
especially careful leaving the area.
In Private and Community Spaces:
Handling a Police Raid
If police knock on your door, do not invite them inside; step
outside and close the door before speaking to them, locking it behind
you if need be. If there are other people in the house, make them aware
that the police are present. Don’t address other people in the house by
name; let them decide how they want to identify themselves. After saying
clearly “I do not consent to this search,” stand aside and maintain
silence. Do not answer any questions.
If you are arrested or detained in the course of a raid, do not
resist unless it is absolutely imperative that you escape and there is a
high likelihood that you will be able to do so; instead, calmly ask on
what basis you are being held. Don’t volunteer any information or answer
any questions except when you are asked to identify yourself. No matter
what they tell you, speaking to the police can never accomplish
anything except making things worse for you and those you care about. If
you have a lawyer, upon interrogation—whether formal or informal,
whether by federal agents or local officers—simply present your lawyer’s
card and state, “You can speak with my lawyer.” If you don’t have a
lawyer, assert and maintain that you will seek legal counsel before
answering questions.
If the police say they have a warrant, ask to see it but do not at
that point resist the search. A warrant is simply a piece of paper
signed by a judge; it should have an address and some terms of the
search. It is not valid without a judge’s signature. In most cases, the
police cannot enter your residence legally without a warrant. To get a
warrant, they must have probable cause and a judge must sign his or her
name validating this; judges can be sneaky, but they also don’t want any
heat to come back on them. This is why we often don’t see warrants used
in activist raids: there simply isn’t the probable cause. If they can’t
get a warrant, the police may try to use other pretexts to get in: fire
code violations, health violations, looking for people who have
warrants out for their arrest. Educate yourself on local laws and
municipal code. If the police come by when there is someone inside who
has a warrant, it may be best for that person to go outside so the
police cannot use this as a justification for entering the building.
If your space may be raided, decide in advance how you will handle
this. Except in a few specific cases—for example, if you are engaged in a
political squatting action with widespread community support, and you
intend to resist eviction by militant means—it will make the most sense
to cooperate carefully with the police, and then take revenge later by
legal or extra-legal means. Determine with everyone involved what image
you will try to project—“nonviolent peace activists suffering unjust
police harassment,” for example—and maintain it from the beginning of
the process through the follow-up media and court campaigns. Hold
discussions in advance, so everyone who may be affected by a police raid
knows what to expect, how to conduct themselves, and what their role
will be in your response. Make sure everyone is comfortable with the
decisions made and understands each other’s needs.
Sometimes a police raid will come as a surprise. Other times,
especially if they are planning a raid on a larger scale, such as at an
infoshop, activist house, or convergence space during a mass
mobilization, you may be able to see it coming. Stay aware: if they are
escalating their surveillance of your building or your activities, this
may culminate in a raid. This surveillance may take the form of
infiltration by undercover agents, who may be easy to recognize as
such—on account of poor acting, suspicious questions, or suddenly
getting involved right before an action—or very difficult to detect.
If you are involved in any kind of activity that demands security,
your collective should decide ahead of time how careful to be in working
with others who desire to get involved in your group and in actions you
plan. Do you need to have a vouching system to protect against
loose-lipped liberals and undercover cops? Or do you want to work with
large numbers of people to such an extent that it makes more sense to
leave things wide open? Some collectives decide not to take on
last-minute stragglers right before an action: police infiltrators
usually show up late, because there isn’t enough funding to put them in
earlier.
If you are on good terms with groups that are in dialogue with the
authorities, they may be able to tip you off when a raid is nigh;
likewise, locals familiar with the workings of the local police force
might be able to provide useful insights. For a serious raid, the police
will establish a staging area a couple blocks from the location, which
may give away their plans at the last minute if nothing else has.
In preparing for a potential raid, be conscious of what you have on
the premises and what can be found nearby in dumpsters and adjacent
lots. Make sure nobody has any illegal drugs or paraphernalia,
recognizably stolen items, or other material which authorities could use
against you. Police officers will routinely confiscate such standard
household items as paint thinner and PVC pipe and claim the possessors
were using them to make bombs. Such ludicrous charges will not generally
stand up in court, but they can enable the police to denounce your
group to the public; they can also paralyze individuals, preventing them
from participating in serious actions until their court cases are
finished.
Knives, spray paint, gasoline, anarchist literature, bottles of
urine, and other similarly dangerous articles will all be needless
liabilities when the police show up, unless you’re actually planning to
fight them off with the stuff. Be conscious of what can be seen even
when your doors are shut and locked; the police can use items “in plain
view” to look further, even without a warrant. In extreme cases, the
courts have declared it permissible for the police to enter a home to
investigate further after seeing something suspicious through a window.
Be careful to follow the very letter of the law: police who can find
nothing else to use against you may ticket you for parking more than ten
inches from the curb, for example.
Have a phone tree in place, to be activated in the case of a raid:
there should be a couple numbers you can call to reach people who can
instantly call others, and so on, until a large number of people have
been informed. It is important that there is always at least one person
off-site who knows what to do if he or she is the only person not
arrested.
Don’t leave phone lists or similar information accessible to the
police; there’s no sense in doing their intelligence work for them. If
those informed by the phone tree converge immediately upon the space
being raided, this will force the police to restrain themselves, and
show them and the community at large that this is an issue many take
seriously; in a best case scenario, this can even transform the raid
into a positive, community-building event. Have local media ready to
come: don’t miss the chance to have the local alternative or pirate
radio station report live from your raid, or to get sympathetic coverage
in the alternative press. Plan in advance what spin you want to give
the story, so the police play into your hands. Compose a press release
ahead of time and have it ready to go out.
If you fear a police raid is possible or imminent, keep a video
camera charged and equipped with a blank tape, ready for use in
documenting police conduct. You can also hide secret cameras on the
premises; these may prove especially important if the police break their
own laws in the course of invading your space. Get every single badge
number and license plate, and record every movement and action of each
individual police officer; in court, it will be very much to your
advantage if you can prove that, for example, a police officer who
claims he remained outside during the raid was actually upstairs
knocking over bookshelves and breaking things. Your camera people should
be levelheaded; even if things are heating up, it may be more important
in the long run for them to record events as they unfold, calmly and
consistently, than to get involved.
Once you’ve got documentation, keep track of it. Don’t edit or
adjust it in any way. Be able to prove that your footage has been in
your “line of possession” from the time you recorded it to the time it
appears in court; this means you should be able to document everywhere
it has been, and show that it has been in the care of good, law-abiding
citizens the whole time—and as few of these as possible. To this end, it
can be wise to leave your material with someone’s conservative parents
or responsible sister-in-law; this can also be a way to make sure it is
not seized in a secondary raid. Keep an organized journal, with times
and dates and signatures, detailing all your observations from the time
you first begin to fear a raid might take place. After one occurs,
compile written narratives, with signatures, from all witnesses and
participants, while the events are still fresh in everyone’s minds.
If you’re in the middle of organizing an action or campaign from
the space that may be raided, make sure it won’t be crippled by a raid.
Keep important materials elsewhere, make sure that all the people in
pivotal organizing positions are never in the space all at once, see to
it that there are other spaces to which activities can be shifted.
Establish a place to get back together after the raid or ways to
reestablish contact with one another and make sure that everyone is
accounted for.
When bringing suit against the city over a raid, work out the local
chain of command and sue as high in the hierarchy as you can. Those who
hold power will attempt to portray any misconduct as the anomalous
incompetence of individual underlings; your job is to show that the raid
was orchestrated from on high and that the people at the top of the
pyramid are to blame, if not the system itself. Get the best lawyer you
can—the American Civil Liberties Union is generally a better resource
than the National Lawyers’ Guild when it comes to violations of 4th
Amendment rights regarding search and seizure and 1st Amendment rights
regarding freedom of speech. If you don’t own the space that was raided,
make sure you have the cooperation of the landlords: emphasize that
they too can get something out of the proceedings. Keep the media
informed throughout the affair, and keep the pressure on.
Account
As we were organizing a convergence against a particularly
ridiculous meeting of politicians, it became evident that our city’s Red
Squad had its eyes on us. We continued our work, though we realized
that, under the circumstances, we lacked the numbers to go forward with
our original plans of turning the city into our playground. We narrowed
our focus and message, deciding our best bet would be to embrace the
image of pacifist peace activists: this would give us an advantage
should the defenders of Power attempt a smear campaign against us.
Having established this strategy, we decided that the weekend would go
ahead as planned, with a festive street march and demonstrations outside
the hotel where the politicians were meeting.
As the dates for the actions approached, we saw a steady increase
in police traffic around our collective space, which was serving as a
meeting and organizing point for the demonstrations. On multiple
occasions, we experienced the unique pleasure of visits from undercover
cops. Keeping tabs on liberal organizers we knew maintained ties with
the police, we received additional clues that we were facing impending
state repression, which was likely to take the form of a raid on our
space.
We met as a collective and resolved to act preemptively in order to
minimize any possible harm we would suffer and, if possible, humiliate
and expose the police. We started by compiling a phone tree of our
friends and supporters in the community, as well as a list of local
media contacts. Drawing on the precedents established by the numerous
police invasions of autonomous spaces that summer, we took a number of
precautions, such as removing items that had justified earlier absurd
charges against revolutionaries: for example, we removed all kitchen
knives and Vitamin C pills, since cooking utensils and supplements had
been considered weapons and drugs in other raids. We also cleaned the
space and planted new flowers around the house, hoping this would make
the police look even more ridiculous should they choose intrude on our
space. We stockpiled photo and video cameras, tape recorders, note pads,
and other recording devices, and spread them throughout the house, both
openly and covertly. We made sure that at least one of the collective
members was downstairs at all times, and that our door was always
locked—though this was particularly difficult, with so many people
coming in and out. People who could not risk arrest stayed at other
locations.
Everyone who spent time in the space was briefed on the situation
and developed an understanding of the collective’s rights. In a move
that later proved to be of some importance, we painted the door with
some “house rules,” including bans on weapons, animal products, and
substances. This has since been used in both the media and in legal
decisions as a further embarrassment to the police. We also prepared a
press release, leaving only a few blank spaces for the details of the
expected raid, and left it with an uninvolved family member in case the
raid was accompanied by numerous arrests.
Busy as we were with organizing against the meetings, we were still
able to keep our space open for concerts and other events. Two nights
before the planned protests began, the police arrived during one of
these shows, an apolitical folk performance. The raid caused quite a bit
of alarm for the artists and visitors! At that time, some of us were
leaving to work on the pirate ship puppets—described as “anarchist body
armor” in police reports to the media—that we were planning to use for
street theater. As we were loading the ships into a pickup truck, we
noticed that police vehicles were assembling at every nearby
intersection and decided to attempt to leave. As soon as we began
driving, we were pulled over for the most minute of traffic violations.
We called back to the space, where police were already knocking on the
door. We set in motion our well-planned phone tree, calling our lawyers,
leaving reports on answering machines, and informing scores of friends
that we were in trouble. It turned out that the police had used supposed
fire code violations to get into the house, because it is standard
practice in our city for housing inspectors to be “protected” by police.
Each cop and each inspector were followed everywhere by comrades from
our ranks who documented everything. The police went through our book
selection, our kitchen, our desks, our basement, our storage areas, even
our bathroom, not to mention the personal belongings of those living
upstairs. They searched our whole house and the squatted house next
door. They towed our cars, on the ridiculous pretension that they were
parked three inches too far from the curb! In the end, they didn’t use
violence or arrests; they just hoped to scare us and reveal our
supposedly violent machinations to the public.
The phone tree, however, paid off. The local media as well as a
slam poetry group showed up immediately, along with about fifty of our
friends. In conjunction with the drumming and the constant flash of
still cameras, the slam poets created an atmosphere of festive defiance
and creatively informed the media and curious passers-by about just how
fucked up this situation was. While normally hostile to radicals, the
local corporate media could not resist covering the obvious foolishness
of the police, who wandered about the property en masse with
bomb-sniffing dogs while obviously earnest and non-violent activists
explained how the events of the evening were—can you believe it?—causing
them to “lose faith in this society.”
Thanks to the thoroughness of our preparations, we were able to
upstage law enforcement prior to the main event of the protests
themselves; this coup gave us much-needed attention and credibility.
Additionally, afterwards we were able to succeed in suing the city for
tens of thousands of dollars. This enabled us to fund many new
subversive projects, which the forces of order are even less equipped to
deal with in the aftermath of their ill-thought-out raid.
