LAPD Chief Pig Announces They Did Nothing Wrong in Spying on Refuse Fascism: “Because We Say So”

September 16, 2019 | revcom.us

 

On Tuesday, September 10, LA Police Chief Michel Moore announced at a Police Commission meeting that the LAPD has completed their internal investigation of their spying on Refuse Fascism. He gave a verbal report that concluded that sending a spy into meetings in the fall of 2017 at a church to record meetings and private conversations was fine. The evidence for this? “Because we say so.”

Lies Abound

One way you can tell this whole “report” is bullshit is it began with a basic lie from Chief Moore. In July, when the news of this LAPD spying broke in the LA Times, Moore responded immediately with a promise of a “top to bottom investigation,” acting as if he knew nothing about the investigation into Refuse Fascism which resulted in a total of 57 criminal misdemeanor charges being lodged against 11 members of Refuse Fascism and the Revolution Club. In his most recent comments, we find out that Moore—as Chief of Operations at the time—was one of the people who signed off on placing the spy into Refuse Fascism.

In addition, and more fundamentally, Moore claims that this spying was legal and needed no “independent oversight” because this was an investigation into criminal activity and not political surveillance. Bullshit!

First of all, this surveillance is part of a whole pattern in keeping with the LAPD’s long and bloody history of political repression. In the 1980s, the political surveillance wing of the LAPD had files on 50,000 organizations and people they were targeting including the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, the National Organization of Women and even the LA Times, members of the City Council and more. Through a whole series of lawsuits and public exposés, this surveillance wing was forced to disband and the LAPD reorganized, promising a whole set of reforms and changes which have amounted to nothing but more repression and brutality with a new cover.

In July, Moore himself tried to justify the spying on Refuse Fascism on the basis of lies alleging that members of Refuse Fascism and the Revolution Club were part of protests in the Bay Area wherein “criminal acts including vandalism, assault with a deadly weapon or arson,” are alleged to have occurred. These were protests against fascists marching in Berkeley, including in the days after Heather Heyer was murdered by fascists in the streets of Charlottesville. Not only was this slander and distortion trying to legitimize unconstitutional LAPD spying and criminalize nonviolent protest, it also intimated a much bigger spying operation than has been made public up to this point—spying aimed at political suppression. This time around, though, Moore changed his story, mentioning none of this as justification for the spying. All this talk about this being a straightforward “criminal prosecution and criminal surveillance” is a “top to bottom” lie.

As Refuse Fascism said in a statement to the press, “The allegedly independent Police Commission gave this verbal report from Moore a rubber stamp—with no evidence, no transparency, inconsistencies in Moore’s comments and nothing in place to stop them in the future except an empty promise of reforms... promises the LAPD has made and broken again and again.”

They also said, “Refuse Fascism demands to know the evidence for why they are saying we were involved in ‘criminal activity,’ the extent of the spying operation, who approved it, who was involved and how high it went. In addition to filing a Public Records Act, we demand the release of this investigation, and all associated interviews and documents.”

An Illegitimate System Moving to Enforce a Fascist Order

This self-investigation by the LAPD is not just a farce, it’s extremely dangerous.

The LAPD is criminalizing anti-fascist protest, justifying repression and spying while the Trump/Pence regime is moving rapidly to consolidate a fascist America. This regime is gutting the rule of law, trying to declare anti-fascists as “domestic terrorists,” attacking the press and tearing up what are supposed to be civil rights and liberties.

But it is the members of Refuse Fascism and the Revolution Club who are on trial: for sounding the alarm about these dangers and calling on millions to step outside the bounds of protest-as-usual to fill the streets through sustained, mass, nonviolent protest aimed at driving this regime from power.

In a mistrial in June, a hung jury (with nine voting for acquittal) failed to conclude that the two Refuse Fascism and Revolution Club defendants were guilty of a crime. But still the LAPD and the Democrats in the City Attorney’s office are working overtime to drag all of the #Freeway9 and the #UCLA5 into court, surveil and harass them.

This whole case shows why you cannot rely on the normal channels of this system to prevent the consolidation of fascism. But it also shows the basic illegitimacy of those “normal channels.”

As Bob Avakian says in BAsics 1:24:

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

The LAPD is notorious for murder and brutality. In 2016, they murdered more people than any other police department in the country. This is the law and order they routinely enforce. Now any restraints that have been fought for—by a very active civil liberties community and by mass protests and uprisings—are being obliterated by a fascist regime. Trump has threatened to use the racist policy of “stop and frisk” on a federal level. He’s openly encouraged the police to be even more brutal, saying “Please don’t be too nice,” suggesting the police smash the heads of people on police cars as they’re being arrested.

No one should trust the words out of Moore’s mouth, the LAPD’s investigation or the obedient LA Police Commission. But people should also see through this the deeper reality of the role the repressive forces of the state serve—enforcing a system that has no answer for the horrors it creates except brutality and murder. Every attempt at reform—Police Commissions, body cameras, and “community policing” as a cover for neighborhood snitch networks—has been used to deepen and expand the counterinsurgency and repression against the masses of people who have no future under this system.