Thread by @wendi_c_thomas

Day 3 of the Memphis police surveillance trial set to begin in federal court soon. @mem_police Director Mike Rallings will testify first. Follow me on Twitter at @wendi_c_thomas for updates throughout the day. #MLK50

To catch up, check out @DanielConnolly @memphisnews story: commercialappeal.com/story/news/201…

That’s not a cause for concern at all. The top of @DanielConnolly story from Day 2.

Rallings testifies about an after-action review of a July 15, 2016 BLM protest at Poplar and Highland: A recommendation to better gather intelligence from social media, using software to determine protesters’ “intentions.”

Next time, the review said, they’d ride through n’hoods around the protest BEFORE the demonstration with blue lights and sirens to attract attention. This was borrowing from NYPD’s counter terrorism unit’s strategy.

Rallings stresses again, as he did yesterday afternoon, that these efforts were to keep the protesters safe from counter protesters who might seek to harm them.

Some of the organizers/activists have said they did not feel protected and that @MEM_PoliceDept did not convey their concern for activists’ safety.

The “he” I refer to is Rallings. This was his testimony yesterday. @tamisawyer is one of the people who was surveilled.

En route to the courtroom this am, I ran into Lt. Col. Eddie Bass, who is scheduled to testify today. I introduced myself as one of the people @MEM_PoliceDept was surveilling. He kinda pshawed me, like it wasn’t anything to worry about. He said when this was over, he’d say more.

Rallings talked a bit more about the threats against police that intelligence was receiving, but it isn’t clear that the one example shown in court was created or disseminated in Memphis.

He’s on cross-examination now.

City attorney asks him again about his general knowledge of the 1978 consent decree and definition of political intelligence.

Rallings: “I knew the consent decree had stuff about spying on people.”

Rallings re the consent decree and the departmental regulations re political intelligence: “It was something that we didn’t do so we didn’t spend a lot of time on it.”

Rallings attended police trainings on civil disturbances in other cities. “All we talked about were ambushes.” Says there were 21 ambushes against officers in 2016, the most in two decades.

Seems like I’ve read something that challenges that stat. Someone link if you find it.

Rallings says his department is down 500 officers since 2011. They need as much advance notice about protests so he can reallocate officers to protests.

Worth noting that in 2017, @MayorMemphis raised $6M from donors he won’t name that he funneled through the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, which then gave the $ to the city, which is using the money to pay police retention bonuses.

I’m told that some of those 2017 donors were also the corporations/organizations that were receiving the joint intelligence briefings, which Rallings said stopped after Judge McCalla’s Aug. 10, 2018 order that @MEM_PoliceDept WAS engaging in political surveillance.

Rallings said the # of unpermitted protests rose after a @MEM_PoliceDept officer killed an unarmed black teen, Darrius Stewart.

Police went to the home of Stewart’s mother and offered their condolences and their support, such as with media that might come to her house.

Rallings said Stewart’s mother “did not ask for any of our assistance.”

I’m just guessing here, but maybe she was uninterested in your offer because one of your officers had just killed her son?

I’m struck by how threats against officers locally and nationally influenced @MEM_PoliceDept staffing decisions.

I covered these protests & know a lot of these organizers/activists. It’s hard for me to believe anyone could seriously think they wanted to hurt cops.

Rallings keeps saying their concern was public safety - but that could be true and it could also be true that they were also illegally surveilling activists.

These two things aren’t mutually exclusive and McCalla has said as much earlier in the trial.

Rallings said that some protesters had his personal cell number and he’d talked to them when, for example, they’d told him they planned to disrupt Graceland.

He said he always asked them: Why does someone have to get arrested?

Why does someone have to get arrested? Rallings asks.

Um... Dr. Martin Luther King answered that question 55 years ago - and was killed in Memphis the day before he was to lead another act of civil disobedience.

MLK in 1963: “Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

Why would people want to get arrested? To express respect for the law?

Rallings is going through what he saw the night of the July 10, 2016.

Q: This was clearly a criminal act? Was anyone charged with a criminal act?
Rallings: No.
Q: Could they have been charged? A: Yes.

Rallings said he talked on the bridge to people who self ID’ed as leaders of the group who went on the bridge.

Those people might dispute that there was any leader of this spontaneous event. My reporting did not identify anyone who led the group to the bridge.

Rallings said that people who emerged on the bridge as people who had influence over the crowd were trying to help and didn’t want any violence.

“Me and Keedran Franklin walked off the bridge drinking from the same water bottle.”

Still, he was concerned that the protest could turn violent. It “could make Selma, Alabama look like a day at the park.”

That’s an interesting analogy if you know who was violent in Selma and who the victims of the violence were.

March 7, 1965 on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma: “Cheered on by white onlookers, the troopers attacked the crowd with clubs and tear gas. Mounted police chased retreating marchers and continued to beat them.”

Source for those screenshots: kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/s…

Now-Congressman John Lewis on the 1965 Selma march:

Prior text is from this CNN story. That’s Lewis in the foreground being beaten by cops.cnn.com/2015/03/06/pol…

What John Lewis, who by this point had been arrested dozens of times while participating in civil disobedience, and a fellow marched looked like after police beat them.

Just wanted to share that context.

Back to the trial: Rallings is peeved about the fake Twitter account created in his name.

“The president is a great example of the power of Twitter.”

His worry was that the fake account would post something inflammatory and the “city would erupt...”

He’s mad about the “gall and audacity” of whoever created the account.

No one has asserted that this account posted anything inflammatory.

I’d think that would be intro’ed into evidence by the defense if such inflammatory tweets existed.

Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, of course, but if you had the evidence, this is the time you’d share it, right?

Rallings says that he hopes the culprit is caught and prosecuted criminally.

Yesterday, an incident report said that the IP address used to send the fake Rallings tweets was the same IP address attached to the @midsouthpeace, where @aktionkat works.

Police subpoenaed Comcast and, according to @DanielConnolly (I didn’t see this on the screen) Twitter to determine that the IP address was the same.

Which is scary, because again, it hasn’t been established that there were any inflammatory tweets from this account.

Also, satire. Rallings is a public figure and like Trump, he should expect to be parodied on social media.

A solution would be for the director to get a verified Twitter account and publicize that, no?

We’re on our morning break.

Let me say this: It is really hard to meet your Apple Watch stand goal while you’re covering court.

Rallings is done testifying. We expect other @MEM_PoliceDept folks to testify next.

One thing to note: The difference between impact and intent. I am confident that many officials do not know the distinction.

The courts have ruled that to establish discrimination, impact is enough.

Take, for example, housing discrimination. You don’t need to prove that the lenders were mouth-breathing, n-word using bigots.

You do need to be able to quantify that subprime products were pushed on black borrowers/neighborhoods and not white neighborhoods.

The city has made a lot about what the police intended to do. They were motivated by public safety, protecting folks’ 1A rights, protecting protesters from counter protesters (although there’s been few examples of that introduced).

But the IMPACT, from where I sit, had a chilling effect on organizing/activism.

As Rallings left, he gave me a side hug. I said that when the trial is over, I’m looking forward to learning why @MEM_PoliceDept was surveilling a journalist (me).

He said if I’m covering the trial, I’ll find out. And then said: We’re watching you? As if that’s news to him.

Just a note for those who are just joining us: I’ve been live tweeting the @aclutn v @CityOfMemphis illegal police surveillance trial.

I’m the editor and publisher of @MLK50Memphis. My goal is to provide the context that you may not get from other journalists.

My @MLK50Memphis team reported extensively on what happened in the July 10, 2016 bridge protest, in the words of the organizers/activists and the people who were there.

We wanted to capture the moment, write that first draft of history in a way that amplified activists.

We’re back in session and Maj. Eddie Bass is on the stand. I believe he was the supervisor of Sgt. Tim Reynolds, who maintained the fake “Bob Smith” Facebook account that monitored activists, friends of activists, people who liked activists’ post, me and journalist @andreamorales

OK, this is important. The Shelby County Office of Preparedness sent an email saying that they’d identified the Twitter accounts of two freelance and a @memphisnews journalist “who appear to have the trust of BLM protesters.”

@KayAnneSkinner
@andreamorales
@katiefretland

This was a July 13, 2016 email that Bass forwarded to the Office of Homeland Security.

The @aclutn attorney had just asked how @MEM_PoliceDept decided what social media accounts to monitor.

Bass said they monitored social media accounts for threats to police or unpermitted protests.

And then @aclutn attorney Mandy Strickland Floyd showed the email where they were monitoring three journalists who appeared to have the trust of #BlackLivesMatter protesters.

So Bass forwarded this email from the county preparedness office re three journalists to the Office of Homeland Security.

Q: Why was that important to forward?

Bass says it was just to make them aware.

@aclutn attorney: What was the threat?

Bass: There doesn’t appear to be a threat.

Yet @MEM_PoliceDept Phillip Penney, part of the Office of Homeland Security (I believe) replied that the accounts didn’t seem to have any info about protests - but that they’d keep monitoring the Twitter accounts of journalists @KayAnneSkinner @andreamorales and @katiefretland.

It’s funny (funny haha and sad) that @memphisnews called police to monitor a protest sparked by their racist headline while police were monitoring one of their own reporters, @katiefretland.

And I’m reminded of the role that the mainstream media has consistently played in creating and maintaining stereotypes about black people in general and civil rights activists specifically.

@aclutn is going through email threads in which @MEM_PoliceDept were monitoring events even after they’d established that there was no threat and even when they weren’t publicly identified as BLM events.

Example: A gathering at 843 W. Raines, where Frank Gottie was supposed to be. Bass said in a July 17, 16 email that there was “no adverse information that would suggest ... potential for civil disorder.”

But @MEM_PoliceDept Mickey Williams said they’d monitor it anyway.

The event was at a church.

The FB post that prompted this surveillance was by Frank Gottie, who wrote: “Meet me at 9:35 am... to watch me get saved.”

@MEM_PoliceDept took photos of the press conference where Mary Stewart, the mother of the unarmed black teen an officer killed, announced that she was going to sue the city.

@MEM_PoliceDept included in their joint intelligence briefings a Darrius Stewart memorial service at Abyssinian Baptist Church.

A photo of the FB event was saved as BLM.jpg.

Also in the briefings (and an exhibit Strickland has Bass read from): A FB post of a July 2016 event, organized by the Official BLM Memphis chapter.

The event? They were going to serve free lunches for kids in the Raleigh Egypt neighborhood.

The FB post of the BLM event had a who, what, when, where, why.

@aclutn attorney Strickland has Bass read the why.

“Let’s feed the children/youth.”

This was included in emails distributed to the city’s Office of Homeland Security.

Backing up to @MEM_PoliceDept surveillance of journalists who “appeared to have the trust of BLM protesters”...

This is what good source development and fair reporting gets journalists. People talk to journalists who have a track record of accurately reporting their stories.

So far, the only journalists that @MEM_PoliceDept was surveilling as part of their intense monitoring of anything related to BLM, no matter how tangentially and sometimes with no connection at all, are: @andreamorales, @KayAnneSkinner, @katiefretland and me. All women.

A question I’m going to sit with later: What, if anything, does this say about all the other journalists that @MEM_PoliceDept wasn’t watching and those journalists’ relationships with and coverage of organizers/activists?

Bass is on cross. He’s talking about the police staffing shortages and Director Rallings also stressed that the officer shortage is why they needed to have advance notice of protests.

I would think that would lead @MEM_PoliceDept to be smarter about intelligence.

Because if you don’t have officers to spare, then maybe spend more time ascertaining whether you need to go to a BLM event where they’re giving kids free lunches, or a church where Frank Gottie said he was going to get saved, or a memorial service at a church?

Attorney for city asks Bass if they’d were monitoring events because of the group’s political position.

Bass: No.

Q: If 600 people with the National Square Dancing group gathered, would you look into that for operational safety?

A: Yes.

OK. So what we’re NOT going to do is insult folks’ intelligence and ignore all of American history and specifically Memphis Police’s PATTERN of spying on people of color.

Like that’s the entire reason we’re here because @MEM_PoliceDept violated a 1978 consent decree barring surveillance for political purposes.

@spj_tweets @NABJ @NAHJ @kathleencarrll @rcfp @womenjournos

Court is back in session. @MEM_PoliceDept Maj. Eddie Bass is back on the stand on cross.

And look, @CityOfMemphis made the @nytimes again! nytimes.com/2018/08/22/opi…

Bass is off the stand after he gave a brief speech about his commitment to public safety and frustration at any implication that he interferes with protesters’ 1A rights.

If he’d gotten an order to surveil protesters, he wouldn’t have followed it.

He would have considered any such order “unethical,” “illegal” and “immoral.”

Bass says he’s a 2nd generation officer, has been shot at 17 times, almost killed in 2012 and will be retiring soon.

Bass: “I hope that this wouldn’t stain my reputation” or the department’s reputation.

Bass forwarded

Sorry, premature send.

Bass: “I hope that this wouldn’t stain my reputation” or the department’s reputation.

Reminder: Bass forwarded to the city Office of Homeland Security a memo about three journalists even though there was no threat.

On the stand now on direct: Aubrey Howard, administrator for the city permit-licenses office.

Howard testifies that his office doesn’t give permits for events on private property.

@aclutn attorney shows him an email he sent rejecting a permit for an event on private property.

Howard is explaining a spreadsheet his office created of parade/public assembly requests. They don’t create these spreadsheets anymore (IDK why) but guess what I’ll be filing a public request for?

On cross, Howard talks about his life in Memphis - his whole life aside from the 90 days he was on a fellowship at Johns Hopkins - and his leadership role with the black students at @RhodesCollege, which he attended.

The point is to establish his civil rights bona fides. Howard says he signed the permit for the KKK rally (must have been the one in 2013) even though he hated to do it.

Howard is off the stand. Back on is Hedy Weinberg, @aclutn executive director, who will almost certainly testify about the history of the ACLU of TN/West Tennessee, which is central to the issue of standing, which Judge McCalla has yet to decide.

I missed this earlier today: The trial gets a shout out here: commercialappeal.com/story/news/loc…

@ryanpoe has this from @CityOfMemphis spokeswoman Ursula Madden.

@MEM_PoliceDept was following at least 4 journalists. What public safety concern did we pose? What disruptions btw opposing groups were prevented by watching @andreamorales @katiefretland @KayAnneSkinner and me?

Now up: @MEM_PoliceDept Sgt. Bradley Wilburn, who works in the Felony Response Bureau.

After his testimony, it looks like Paul Garner, @aktionkat, will testify.

A programming note: I’m leaving court in a few and won’t be here the rest of the week. (Sad face.)

In my place will be reporter @megawatts2000, who has covered the protest movement here and interviewed Rallings for @MLK50Memphis last year.

Follow her.

Wilburn is testifying about how police were collecting info from social media, including a post from someone apparently concerned that the KKK was going to go to the July 7, 2016 FedEx Forum protest that spontaneously morphed into the bridge protest.

That post was a screenshot of a text msg exchange where someone said they were going to carry their gun and a blade if the KKK was coming.

MPD was searching on social media for terms like gun, #BlackLivesMatter, protest, Memphis, rally.

Tennessee is an open carry state btw.

Oh, this is RICH.

Wilburn email to the @MEM_PoliceDept office of Homeland Security

Subject: Looks innocent enough but here it is in case you are asked about it.

It was a July 2016 FB post about... a BLM Vegan Soul Food Cookout.

Wilburn also sent in an email to the Office of Homeland Security an Instagram post for a National Black Out day for Terrence Crutcher. Folks were advised to wear black all day.

Q: It’s not talking about an assembly, is it?
A: No.

Wilburn fwd the Facebook event titled “Nonviolent Memphis” at First Congo (a church) hosted by MIFA (a food bank), @fightfor15, Memphis School of Servant Leadership, Pax Christi.

He says it came up in his social media collator because he searched for the word violence.

On cross, Wilburn testifies that he came up with the search terms he used on social media himself, there was no list but also that his job wasn’t to determine either it was important or not, only to pass it on.

Um... That can’t all be true. The 1st and 3rd point are in conflict.

If Wilburn came up with the search terms himself, then someone DID give him the authority to set the the parameter of the searches. So by default, he IS making a judgment on what’s important.

He was also searching for “Trump” and “not my president.”

We’re on a break. @andreamorales left her job to come to court, since we learned today that @MEM_PoliceDept was monitoring her too.

I intro’ed her to city spox Ursula Madden as one of the journalists police were monitoring. She was like... Um... OK. And rolled out like this lol

Back in court. Wilburn on redirect. Says no, he wasn’t keeping folders on specific individuals like, for example, Elaine Blanchard (who was one of the dismissed plaintiffs). Folders were kept by date and event.

On redirect, Wilburn says others in the Real Time Crime Center used the social media collator and may have had their own filing systems.

He’s done and the lawyers are conferencing with the judge. Paul Garner @aktionkat to come up next.

I’m mostly joking, but she’s been super chilly to me. If I were her, I’d probably be chilly to me too.

She was a journalist not that long ago, though. Presumably she gets what my job is.

Garner, who works at the longtime social justice org @midsouthpeace, is on the stand. He’s in a suit with a @CityOfMemphis lapel pin and tie bar.

Garner says he’s filed lots of permits for protests, but the process has become more arbitrary. Used to be he could walk out with the permit.

Judge asked for some background on Garner. He’s from Louisiana, grad of Memphis College of Art, will be 30 next month, had an experience with homelessness.

@midsouthpeace founded on values of MLK and Gandhi, works with people most affected by issue to build constituent power, like the bus riders union, people experiencing homelessness, etc.

@aclutn asks if he has any experience working with police.

Garner: Last weekend he had a “Know Your Rights” workshop at the Hollywood Community Center at which two police officers participated.

So doesn’t work with them formally, but has had lots of encounters.

Q: You’re aware of the protest outside the @memphisnews. Were you there?

Garner: “I was not there.”

Remember yesterday when I said that @MEM_PoliceDept Stephen Chandler misidentified Garner in a photo of the July 13, 2015 protest?

Garner wasn’t there.

If @MEM_PoliceDept can’t ID Garner in a photo and an officer is free to define the parameters of social media search terms that scoop up FB posts about BLM vegan soul food cook outs and all of that gets included in joint intelligence briefings...

On cross, attorney for the city shows the picture of the crowd gathered outside @memphisnews and circles the picture of the white guy with sunglasses and asks if that’s him.

Several people in the courtroom laugh because it’s so not Garner.

Showing video of Valero protest that Garner live streamed. He’s showing the protesters with their arms inside barrels. He asks people to come out and watch the police. Says media has been kept back.

Asked if he was responsible for the fake @MEM_PoliceDept Director Rallings Twitter account, Garner says if city attorney is referring to the satirical parody account, then yes.

Rallings testified early today that he hoped that whoever created the fake account would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

So...

On the screen is a picture of the @mpd_rallings account, which had 114 followers.

114 FOLLOWERS.

Rallings was concerned that people would see an inflammatory post, think he really said it and the city would “erupt.”

With 114 followers on an unverified Twitter account.

Garner says that Rallings was making some statements that called for commentary, like one about “hot pee pee.”

Someone find the video of that and post it, please.

Now up: Keedran Franklin. He was on the bridge and was a @fightfor15 organizer.

Backing up: The “hot pee pee” comment that Rallings made, as reported by @memphisnews Concerned by pot fines, Rallings warns of 'hot pee-pee'

memne.ws/2fjPmBY

Franklin is talking about his background: born in Memphis, 2004 graduate of Westwood, worked with 901 Block Squad.

Says he started to realize that a lot of the violence was connected to money issues (poverty) and he shifted to more “communal” organizing.

He helped found the C3 Land Cooperative to try to address food deserts and they’ve started three micro farms. Three tomatoes could cost the same as a pack of unhealthy noodles.

He organized the free movie challenge after “erroneous” media reports of “street organizations” rioting at theaters. He said he knew people in the orgs and that they had no intent to be violent.

To counter the negative media stereotypes, he raised $ to take kids to movies.

Watch that: He was motivated to try to counter negative media stereotypes about black youth.

Memphis media, what we do is important. Someone tag all the local TV stations here.

Franklin is on cross now, but I want to go back to something he said on direct.

He said he’s been followed by police, sees them sitting outside his house, outside events he coordinates.

He says he even called Rallings to tell his people to quit following them.

Asked how this affects him personally, he says he doesn’t even go see his mom much because he doesn’t want her to get caught up in anything.

Says he doesn’t go a lot of places and the surveillance makes other people scared to associate with him. It’s “isolating.”

Whew! I feel this. It’s how I’ve lived since the first death threat I got at @memphisnews probably 10 years ago.

Defense is showing video of the die-in at @MayorMemphis house. (After this, the mayor added a whole bunch of names to a blacklist.)

In it, Franklin can be heard saying: Jack Soden (of Graceland) we coming to your house next!

He never went to Soden’s house.

I watched Franklin’s die-in live stream (maybe not live, but I saw it) and it’s really interesting how differently I (and likely many others who spend a lot of time with organizers/activists) hear what Franklin says.

Maybe if I were a cop, I’d be fearful. But the parallels between the strategy of civil disobedience employed by MLK (including economic boycotts) and today’s organizers are so strong...

Defense is showing video of Franklin outside a Frayser business when a man was killed (I can’t remember who) yelling at the store owner - who was going to give surveillance video to police - and telling him he wasn’t going to make any money that day.

MLK after the bus boycott. A boycott is what Franklin called for at the Frayser store where someone had been killed outside (someone tag that story).

From MLK’s “Mountaintop” sermon, delivered here in Memphis the night before he was killed:

It’s as if defense/@CityOfMemphis is shocked - shocked, I say - that residents of the POOREST LARGE METRO IN THE NATION would be upset about their conditions.

I don’t get it.

On cross: Franklin says the protest at the Frayser Rainbow store was about transparency, and that many of the people there were women because men scare people.

Franklin said the owner was inside when he was talking about the boycott, which was just economic, and that he never blocked the entrance to the store.

Court is in recess. Plaintiff has two more witnesses: Elaine Blanchard and Earle Fisher @Pastor_Earle

We’re done for the day. Court will resume at 8:30 a.m. Thursday. I won’t be here but @megawatts2000 of @MLK50Memphis will be. Follow all of us.