NYPD charged with illegal spying on Black community

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(left to right) C. Vemon Mason, the Rev. Alfred Sharpton, and Alton targeted by NYPD "Black Desk" for spying and harassment.

NEW YORK-In March of this year, Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward warned of a "long hot summer" based on growing anger and mobilizations by Black people against racist violence.

But it is the New York Police Department (NYPD) that has turned on the "heat." Several news publications have implicated the department in an illegal spying campaign aimed at the new generation of Black organizations and leaders who have emerged since last December, when a white mob attacked three Black men in Howard Beach.

On July 1, Newsday, a daily newspaper published in suburban New York, revealed the establishment of a "Black Desk" within the Special Services Bureau of the NYPD.

The Black Desk has been assigned the work of photographing, taping, and videotaping events attended by Black activists. Undercover officers have routinely attended demonstrations and meetings, ostensibly to "monitor" developments in the Black neighborhoods.

A New York Daily News article on July S revealed the holding of secret NYPD riottraining sessions, complete with riot primers, mock disturbances, and crowdcontrol demonstrations by both mounted and motorcycle police in riot gear.

Black leaders targeted

The riot-training sessions included briefings on the biographies of leaders "most likely to be involved in civil disturbances this summer," according to another report. Among those listed were Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox, the two attorneys for the victims of the Howard Beach incident. Also listed were the Rev. Calvin Butts of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church and the Rev. Al Sharpton, head of the National Youth Movement. The New York Eight, long-standing Black activists previously acquitted of conspiracy charges, were also mentioned.

"Are we living in Johannesburg, where any gathering of Blacks is seen as a threat to the city?" the Rev. Sharpton asked in an interview on WLIB radio.

A week earlier, in Newsday, it was revealed that the "Black Desk" had secretly taped WLIB call-in shows. WLIB is one of the few Black-owned radio stations in the New York area. It frequently provides air time for Black leaders and organizations Photographs and videotapes were taken by undercover police officers of other Black activists when the New York Eight were not present.

The New York Eight has taken the opportunity to present a slide show in Black neighborhoods documenting systematic NYPD surveillance. The NAACP has also promised to provide evidence of police surveillance, both against themselves and other Black organizations. A law suit is Maddox being considered.

All working people have a stake in the defense of the Black organizations and leaders involved. At issue is not just the New York Eight (however much they deserve the defense of all who care about democratic rights), but the New York millions—particularly the millions of Latinos, Blacks, and Asians.

The rights of this majority to speak out, organize, and even think politically are Leonard Freed Jr. are but three under attack.

Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward, the highest ranking Black man in the Koch administration, has come to symbolize for many Black people all that is wrong with the accommodationist current predominant today in Black political life.

A "house Negro" in the NYPD All hopes that a Black man presiding over the NYPD would lead to a change in its racist policies have been quickly shattered.

Under Ward's tenure, racist attacks have increased, not lessened. The cases of Eleanor Bumpurs (killed by police who were trying to evict her from her apartment), Michael Stewart (died from injuries sustained after arrest by transit police), and Nicholas Bartlett (a student killed by police in Harlem) are but the most publicized examples.

In fact, the presence of a Black man heading the police officialdom has allowed the Koch administration to argue that advances have been made for Black people —even as decisions to institute a "Black desk" are made behind closed doors.

At a press conference soon after the revelations, attorney Vernon Mason likened Ward's relationship to Democratic Mayor Koch to that of "a house Negro, in the tradition of slavery, whose basic concern is for his slavemaster."

"Our dirty little secret"

Unfortunately, Mason and the emerging new Black leadership, despite courageous stands on many questions, have not extended their analysis of the Koch administration to the racist Democratic Party as a whole.

In 1985, Mason ran in the Democratic