The city can work with the feds on a case-by-case basis, without condoning unjust profiling
This week, for the second time, the city of Portland withdrew its partnership with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, an outcrop of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that dates back to the mid-1990s.
This was not an easy decision, but it’s the right one, in these times, under the authoritarian tenor of this administration. Portland should carve out its own relationship, on its own terms, with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office. We applaud Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty for wasting no time bringing this issue forward for a thoughtful and civil debate.
A member of the JTTF from its fledgling days, Portland City Council voted to withdraw from the group in 2005 on complaints of a lack of transparency. Then-mayor Tom Potter, who headed up the Police Bureau, said he needed to know what his officers were doing, and he didn’t while working with the JTTF. Potter was quoted in The Oregonian as saying, “ I don’t think whether we stay in or out of the JTTF will determine the safety of Portland citizens. I think what will determine the safety of Portland citizens is when we work together, when we watch out for each and care for each other, that our society is safer.”
Gradually the relationship warmed again, fueled in part by the FBI frame-up of a Mohamed Osman Mohamud in an attempt to detonate a bomb in Pioneer Courthouse Square. But it was always an uneasy relationship, with battles over the city’s security clearance and feeble FBI reports that left city commissioners questioning task force business. In those shadows also lurked disturbing complaints from people of color, the Muslim community, and environmental and political activists saying they were targeted by FBI actions and have no trust for our cozy relationship with the JTTF.
That’s unacceptable when it comes to the actions of our police officers, federal tactics and our civil rights.
Michael German is a former special agent with the FBI and a fellow for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York. On multiple occasions he has spoken on the matter of JTTF participation before the Portland City Council. His testimony has consistently laid out the changes in the FBI from his earlier days and the erosion of safeguards that used to ensure evidence-based – as opposed to bias-tainted – investigations. He worked undercover on domestic terrorism investigations overseen by the JTTFs in Los Angeles and Seattle in the 1990s. He has spoken several times before City Council on the issue and submitted a lengthy written statement on his perspectives last summer.
“After 9/11 when FBI started reducing those safeguards, the Patriot Act, et cetera, I became very concerned that this would be used to target the usual suspects – immigrant communities, communities of color and political dissidents. And sure enough that’s exactly what happened,” German told commissioners in April. German said among organizations targeted by JTTF investigations are Greenpeace and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. And since 9/11, the guidelines have gotten even looser,” German said.
Under 2008 guidelines, German said in his written statement, “there is no factual predicate required for the FBI to conduct what they call assessments, which can include recruiting informants and sending informants against you, overt and covert interviews, grand jury’s subpoena to get telephone subscriber information. These are very intrusive tools. And what we’ve seen is they are used remarkably against political activists. You might have seen this summer that the FBI put out a report on ‘black identity extremists,’ which seems to be describing the Black Lives Matter movement, and sure enough, many of these BLM activist have been targeted with these interviews.”
These are not just values being stepped on; these are civil rights being squashed. And they’re not to be traded for anything, including FBI assurances of safety from terrorism.
But neither should that safety be sacrificed for protecting our civil rights. We can work together. There is, by all reports, nothing to stop the Portland Police Bureau from working with the JTTF on legitimate criminal law enforcement investigations on a case-by-case basis. This has been the position of dozens of organizations affected by these policies, including the ACLU of Oregon, the Portland Japanese American Citizens League, Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform, League of Women Voters of Portland, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO), Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace Chapter 72, Council on American-Islamic Relations of Oregon, Islamic Society of Greater Portland, Jewish Voice for Peace-Portland, Network Against Racism and Islamophobia, and 350 PDX, to name a few.
“State law protects Oregonians from being surveilled by state and local law enforcement based on their religious, social, or political affiliations without reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct,” wrote Kimberly McCullough, policy director for the ACLU of Oregon, in her statement to City Council. “These crucial protections were put into place to prevent profiling and to safeguard our First Amendment rights. The FBI doesn’t have any such prohibitions on surveillance, as their own policies no longer require ‘reasonable suspicion’ to engage in intrusive investigations. We also know that they regularly target members of our community based on religious or political activities and perceived immigration status.”
The matter of our safety from government oppression and from terrorism will never be settled or come to an end. It is a personal and social ideal in constant motion. This week, it moved in the right direction.
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