Wall Street’s Secret Spy Center, Run for the 1% by NYPD

[G_j]

14. a few bad apples arrested 1,800, many pre-emptively, during the R. convention, or was it a mistake?

I'm not finding much common ground here either. So whose interests were they protecting?

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/nypd-can-keep-its-secrets-2004-convention-arrests-remain-mysterious/

June 11, 2010, 3:28 pm N.Y.P.D. Can Keep Its Secrets: 2004 Convention Arrests Remain Mysterious
By DAVID CARR

On Wednesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the New York City Police Department can withhold 1,900 pages of data detailing police surveillance in advance of the 2004 Republican Convention in New York.

So now and forever, the reason that 1,800 people were arrested, many pre-emptively, during the convention and placed in a pen on the Hudson River – nicknamed Guantanamo on the Hudson by some – will remain very much a mystery. Those documents also might have shed some light on the efforts of undercover police officers sent all over the country to gather intelligence on people who might come to the city to protest.

The city has paid out millions to those who were arrested and a Federal District Court judge, along with a federal magistrate, had ruled that the city was required to release the data that led to the arrests, but the Second Circuit decided that transparency could “undermine the safety of law enforcement personnel and would likely undermine the ability of a law enforcement agency to conduct further investigations.”

The 43-page ruling has the collateral effect of preventing the press from inspecting the rationale that New York used to fence off protests and to raid various church, theater and civic groups before the convention. In part, the city was able to keep the information secret by conflating peaceful political protest with the Gollum of terrorism.

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