Overton Park – Memphis Truth Commission

A-list, Greensward, Memphis, Memphis Activism, Memphis Corruption, Memphis Police, MPD AoA, MPD Authorization of Agency, Police Political Intelligence Collection, Tennessee Law Enforcement, Uncategorized

Authorization of Agency: Initial analysis

In our most recent post, we revealed the extent of MPD’s Authorization of Agency (AoA) program, inspired by Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission (MSCCC).

We did some preliminary analysis of the data and there are updated spreadsheets (CSV, ODS, XLSX). The update includes some address corrections and the addition of a business category field.

AOA_bar_chart — Analysis of AoAs by race

We saw the racial disparity in the initial AoA post. The profiling nature of the scheme, with seven times (84.9% vs 12.3%) the number of Black versus white victims of AoA is confirmed.

We broke down AoAs by the year the initial AoA was signed. 2018 is low because only half a year of data was collected. Years 211 through 2016 are incomplete because we asked in our FOIA for all AoAs between December 1st 216 and July 9th 2018. All precincts but one simply sent all their AoA data rather than selecting the data range we asked for. In addition, we noted many AoAs which were signed on a given date and had additional lines added over the same signature and date later. We have not quantified this factor as of yet but we think it will skew a couple of percent of the dates earlier.

Adj_AoA_year — AoAs by year adjusted for undercount in 2016 and earlier, and for the 2018 half year

We adjusted the yearly graph by doubling up the 2018 number to estimate a full year, and we added 15% to 2016 and earlier to account for the number of AoAs missing in our sample.

The graphs look similar. From small beginnings in 2011, the scheme grew to about 240 in 2014, then took a big jump to 665 in 2016 and plateaued out to around 600 each in 2017-2018.

We need to look for the impetus behind the 2014 and 2016 bumps. Most likely, some form of marketing or promotional assets were assigned to the program to cause these bumps. We’ll also submit another ORR to obtain the missing data.

We created a new field in the spreadsheet for business category and ran this report. The biggest category is apartment, which also includes mobile home parks, condos, retirement communities and townhouses.

The dominance of this sector may be the result of “Operation Safeway” which had a focus on apartment managers. The majority of these had a just a few AoAs, but complexes like Greenbrier with 48 AoAs and a dozen or so with double digits stand out. Clearly a number of apartment managements embraced the scheme enthusiastically.

The retail sector is largely a handful of AoAs in each store. All branches of chain stores are included. Three chains of dollar stores (Family Dollar, Dollar General, and Dollar Tree) had a total of 38 AoAs, which probably reflects the dollar stores’ well known skimping on security staff. Other chains with large numbers includes Walgreens with 24 and Kroger with 17. Otherwise, few retailers had more than three or four per location.

We think that, like with the apartment sector, that the heavy retail users had an internal policy to use AoA while the light users were probably recruited by police.

The food sector includes all vendors of prepared food and alcohol by the drink. The chains with most branches are the biggest offenders, and CiCi’s Pizza in Poplar Plaza’s 17 AoAs were associated with a well-publicized disturbance at the venue. We know that Operation Safeway targeted food establishments in certain areas, but we think that most of the rest may have been instigated by MPD, including the CiCi’s incident.

The hotel/motel sector includes hotels, motels and boarding houses, has a few stand-outs, probably related to prostitution. The manufacturing sector, though small, is dominated by Smith and Nephew who initiated 85 of the 100 AoAs. This is an anomaly which probably reflects a decision in management to use MPD as part of its security apparatus.

The gas sector looks very much like retail, and when you eliminate the effect of supplier chains like Shell or Exxon, not much stands out.

Public facilities include the downtown MATA terminus, with 24 AoAs and three at the Zoo. We talked about the Zoo political blacklist in the original AoA post. We dispute the legality of public entities barring members of the public.

Churches banned 37 people. It sounds unchristian to us to put people in the system. Even worse, schools had 35 AoAs, and we cannot envision a world where young people can be legally barred from education, or even where a school would involve the police in its disciplinary process.

Summary

We see some high-frequency users of AoA. These AoAs are probably due to business policy and may have been influenced by Operation Safeway in some way. The vast majority of AoAs have the potential of being instigated by police, including a handful where we know the case history.

We will follow up with additional analysis, including enriching the data and sampling some case histories to determine the marketing initiatives that shape the AoA usage curves.

–concluded–

A-list, Greensward, Memphis, Memphis Activism, Memphis Corruption, Memphis Police, Uncategorized

The ACLU lawsuit data: answered questions.

Memphis City and the ACLU have, in the last week, released a huge trove of documents relating to the A-list lawsuit.

The UK-based The Guardian today covered the story, as has Esquire magazine and Citylab. Our local crowdsourcers have only begun to dig in the paperwork, and we are certain that the material will fuel our researches for years to come, but a few vital facts have emerged.

Geofeedia replacement social media “collator” NC4.

Probably one of the most significant finding to date is the identification of the Geofeedia replacement. The ACLU had been after this product as the social media spy tool of choice until the social media powerhouses cut off its data feed in October 2016. The new replacement is NC4, which was revealed in the new a-list documents, we think for the first time. All we can find is this PRnewswire piece which was probably paid for by NC4.com as part of its PR aimed at local LE departments.

This alone means that we are already seeing dividends from the ACLU case, before it is even heard.

Activist counter-intel successes.

TN-Rolling-Block-Party-Fedex_tennesseean — Rolling Block Party at Fedex: 4/23/2018 Keedran on the car.

Almost as interesting, which squares with what we already knew from our previous blog about CCC’s counter-intel operations, is the fact that LE responses have been repeatedly been triggered by fake news planted by people close to CCC. Our blog uses Open Record information to document how fake news about an attempt on the Bridge escalated all the way to the top of State LE and to FBI. That incident appears to have escalated police response to protests, including the arrest of protesters on April 3rd by a snatch squad from the MPD Multi-Agency Gang Unit’s OCU (Organized Crime Unit). It was a pre-emption intended to abort a 6:30 bogus Bridge occupation. The OCU is all over the ACLU documents. The take-away from this is that information gleaned by MPD and TBI’s CIU from social media is even less reliable than the average social media fake news.

LE bites on fake intel, misses the real information.

Bruce_Kramer — Bruce Kramer, longtime ACLU attorney

Also revealed, something we also suspected from our blog: Not only is State LE liable to fly off the handle and escalate fake news to the top levels of local, State and Federal LE, but they have been doing a very poor job of eliciting the real intel they seek.

Our CCC story reveals that the unknown operational security measures CCC used to safely transmit the real April 3rd itinerary are working. The unadvertised first stop of the Rolling Block Party arrived at FedEx to find no police presence, and the police made the scene in a time span appropriate to a 911 dispatch. So, not only is the police intel gathering catching all the fake news, it is missing the real intel they are after.

Here’s the Daily Kos‘ Gary Moore on the April 3 arrests.

MPD gets vindictive from intel defeat.

Frustration at being totally confounded by this poorly financed, rag-tag group of activists may have led to Keedran Frankin‘s July 6th arrest, and the planting of evidence in his car. This arrest was allegedly in a traffic stop done by OCU, which is not exactly their beat.

Limitations of MPD’s social media spying.

The strange story of “Bob Smith’s” bogus social media account is also revealed. We had feared that MPD’s Real Time Crime Center had the ability to penetrate the end-to-end encryption used by Facebook. However, it appears that MPD was only able to view private data on Facebook to which their fake account, Bob Smith, had ‘friended’ itself. All the information in the earliest document released by the city suggests that only activists friended by Bob Smith could be accessed by MPD. In particular, Facebook Private Messages and secret groups which did not include Bob Smith were safe from spying.

We say this with a caveat: private Facebook stuff could be revealed via NSA decryption or by the issuance of a FICA court order, which does not require much in the way of probable cause. As far as I know, CCC used different means to organize the Rolling Block Party, and I don’t want to know what it was. CCC keeps ahead of LE spying by eternal vigilance and strict operational security.

I was personally targeted by Bob Smith and the information used to smear me, as searches for “Fergus” and “Nolan” separately will reveal. In particular, my arrest on Memorial Day 2016 was presented to be because I advocated lawbreaking due to entrapment by Bob Smith as a deliberate act by MPD, which I know to be untrue. In addition, the story of my uncovering the A-list which I documented in this first party eye witness account is smeared by a bogus allegation of a fanciful meeting I was supposed to have with a County employee, who is standing for election this week. I promised I would not out this person until after the election, but this MPD cover story did not surface until after my A-list story needed to be discredited, and is at variance with my contemporary eye witness account. My story did not change. Theirs did.

In other news: Office of Homeland Security identified.

At MemphisTruth.org, we have been looking for the MPD’s Office of Homeland Security. It turns out to be two officers, Sergeant Tim Reynolds, promoted this April but identified in the documents as Detective, Sergeant and Lieutenant, and as Police Officer II in the current City salaries list. Also Sgt. Edwin Cornwell.

The Office of Homeland Security is part of MPD Special Operations, housed in the Special Operations division, which also houses the Real Time Crime Center which does most of MPD’s electronic spookery.

The ACLU papers will give and give.

Greensward, Memphis Corruption

Blacklists from A to Z: New Zoo Z-list

In this Smart City Memphis article, “with the Memphis zoo parking design now revealed, the final decision is headed inevitably to Mayor Strickland’s desk after a week of public comment. That’s where the buck stops. There will undoubtedly be intense lobbying of the mayor by both sides. It is hard to see how the design, which seems senselessly to consume more than two acres of parkland at Overton Park, will not light the fuse for another round of vigorous opposition.”

First we had the City’s A-list, the blacklist of individuals requiring escorts at City Hall. Now we have the Zoo’s blacklist, the Z-list. This list has Hunter Demster and myself on it. It has another thing in common with the A-list – a mysterious MPD construct, the “Authorization of Agency” form.

Hunter called me on Tuesday February 21^st and told me that the Zoo had posted photos of both of us at their security checkpoints. So we saddled up and arrived at the Zoo a little after 4 PM . We photographed our Zoo mugshots through the glass of the unattended parking shack.

our_pics_in_shack — Hunter’s and my photos are posted in the Zoo parking shack. Photo taken through the glass.

When we got to the Zoo entrance, we engaged the Zoo attendants and asked them why our photos were posted, and they said that we were banned from the Zoo and we had to leave. They said they’d called the police and we should leave to avoid arrest.

Zoo employee calling MPD at Plaza entrance

Zoo employee at Plaza entrance.

While we were walking back across the parking lot, a police cruiser pulled up in front of Zoo plaza, and Officer Dan Adams dismounted. He called us, and we turned around and went back to the south-western end of Zoo Plaza.

orifice_dan_adams — MPD officer Dan Adams at the Zoo

Officer Adams was combative right off the bat. He said that MPD had an Authorization of Agency on us and we had to leave. We asked why we were being asked to leave public City property and mentioned that we had committed no crimes.

At that point, a second cruiser pulled up with an unidentified female officer. We asked for a supervisor because her colleague was raising his voice. She led Officer Adams a small distance away to the lion statue and they conferred briefly.

two_pigs — Police conferring at Zoo Plaza.

The officers came back over and informed Hunter and I that we were being detained. Hunter was cuffed behind his back by Officer Adams, led to Adams’ cruiser, parked in front of the Plaza and locked in the back.

hunter_being_cuffed — Hunter Demster being cuffed by Officer Dan Adams

The female officer locked me in her cruiser, uncuffed, but took away my phone and camera.

Here’s the video Hunter took of this interaction, from the first appearance of Officer Adams to where we were informed we were being detained.

At this point, the narrative continues from the back of Adams’ police car where Hunter managed to get his camera going and broadcast live. This video was featured in the Commercial Appeal article.

Antonio Blair and Mark Ravi take up the video narrative from the Zoo parking lot.

During the twenty minutes or so we were in the cruisers, the two original cops were seen in the video working on an Authorization of Agency form, which the Zoo and those police officers had said that they already had filed. An MPD supervisor arrived after a while, talked to the officers but did not address us.

Eventually, the two cops released Hunter and me, and waved a folded piece of paper at us, which they said was an Authorization of Agency. They said we’d be arrested if we again entered Zoo property. They would not show us what was on the paper.

Hunter was later interviewed on video. Channel 5 reported.

What is an Authorization of Agency?

I am not a lawyer. Tennessee trespass law is governed by § 39-14-405. This requires a subject to be advised that she is trespassing, and be given an opportunity to leave, before trespassing can be alleged. There’s also a provision for property owners (or “employers”) to pay a fee to the Secretary of State to have their property listed on the No Trespass Public Notice List.

Besides the Z-list, we saw Authorization of Agency (AOA) used in the A-list (PDF). The list is printed on MPD form AA0306, their Authorization of Agency form. The form is entitled “Listing of Persons Barred from Premises”. In theory, the named property owner has previously notified the named individuals that they are banned from the named property. The A-list AOA was written for Mayor Strickland’s home address, and contains 57 activists’ names, Other individuals who were already on the City Hall exclusion list were added to the A-list, without being on an AOA form. There were some individuals listed twice on the A-list.

Lieut. Albert Bonner, MPD head of City Hall security at the time, had extracted the 57 names from active MPD political intelligence files, had the Mayor sign the order, and added a note in the corner of each page saying the named individuals were required to have an escort in City Hall. The rest is history. The ALCU court case is ongoing.

Another prominent misuse of the AOA is Amy Weirich’s (Shelby Co. DA) “Operation Safeway” , which has been used to harass homeless individuals and for fishing expeditions.

We can’t find any law locally that modifies the State law, or any regulation in the MPD Policy and Procedures manual relating to the Authorization of Agency. Several cities in California, Virginia, Alabama and Oregon have a similar letter, but it does not designate individuals and is like the Tennessee law, in that the property must be posted.

Authorization of agency, as a legal term, is usually a form of power of attorney authorizing a representative to act in relation to specific transactions.

We have concerns as to the legality of the AOA, its use to implement a political blacklist by a quasi-Governmental City contractor, and the absence of due process around the device. This may well be a civil rights matter, especially in view of its repeated use as a blacklist.

Hunter and my previous Zoo visit.

The SmartMemphis article is unclear about why we were banned by the Zoo. The answer may lie in our previous visit to the Zoo. After reports that chainsaws had been heard somewhere north of the 17 Acres, Hunter and I decided to visit the Zoo during Free 3-hour Tuesday on 26^th September 2017.

ice_rink — An ice rink being built at the Zoo on Sept 26.

We entered the Zoo without incident and walked eastwards towards the Reticulated Giraffe enclosure on the eastbound tram route. Along the way we noticed that two Zoo employees were following us. We checked out construction of an ice rink that was in progress east of the giraffe house, and then turned back towards the Zoo entrance.

Zoo security on Sept 26th

Zoo security guy

Along the way, we turned south towards the 17 acres, in an unfenced and unposted area used for Zoo employee parking. The two Zoo employees shouted at us from a 50 yard distance to leave the area. We immediately headed north back on the main drag and resumed heading for the exit, pausing from time to time to view exhibits.

recon_cop — MPD officer in biker boots escorting Hunter towards the exit.

When we got near the Hippo Camp, we were approached by an MPD officer in motorcycle gear. He asked us to leave, and the policeman walked Hunter to the main gate, while the Zoo employees walked behind me. When we got to the main gate, Hunter inquired why we were being asked to leave. The cop said that the Zoo wanted us gone and we’d be arrested if we didn’t, so we left. There was no violence or even raised voices, we never entered any fenced or posted area, and we left when asked.

recon_2_aooms — Zoo security following me towards the exit.

I also visited the Zoo in June and took photographs without incident, and also took photographs in the Zoo parking lot and from a drone at various times in 2017.

What’s next?

“Save the Greensward” is planning an event, “Free Tuesday at the Memphis Zoo”, on Tuesday Feb. 27^th. Park protectors intend to line up in an orderly manner for admission to the Zoo. Hunter and I plan to attend.

The Zoo Parking Plan, a highly defective document, goes to the Mayor for contract approval on Wednesday.