Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

departments and their activities became even more removed from regularpolice work.The upheavals of the sixties and the seventies made police spying a priorityagain, but did nothing to reverse the federalization of intelligence, the specializationof red squad operations, or their organizational culture and its distancefrom other police (not to mention the citizenry). Instead, as police were continuallycalled on to suppress what seemed to be ever-growing social movements,these characteristics only solidified. As the role of red squads expanded and thenumber of officers involved grew, the flaws, faults, and excesses of intelligenceagencies-perhaps of intelligence per se-increased in magnitude and becamemore readily apparent.A RENAISSANCE OF REPRESSIONDuring the 1960s, in city after city, red squads suddenly swelled like an unpleasantfungus. Detroit's intelligence unit had only six members at the end of the1950s; by 1968 that number had grown to seventy. In most places, the rate ofgrowth was most astonishing at the very end of the decade. Between 1968and 1970, the New York City red squad went from sixty-eight uniformedofficers to ninety (plus fifty-five others assigned to undercover work). Duringthe same period, Los Angeles increased its squad from eighty-four officersto 167.34 The Chicago Police Department had 500 intelligence officers at theend of the decade, and illinois State Police Superintendent James T. McGuireestimated that more than 1,000 federal, state, and local operatives were workingin the area undercover.55As the popular movements developed-first the civil rights movement,then student movements, anti-war efforts, and a host of others-the policeunderstanding of these campaigns, their objectives, and the conditions producingthem seriously lagged. The police response, as though from habit,was to blame a conspiracy and seek out the agitators creating all this turmoil.Hence identification procedures retained their central place in the strategy ofrepression, and photography became a sort of obsession. As with infiltration,wiretapping, and the collection of dossiers, photography was easily exploitedas a means of intimidation as well as data gathering.30 At times, intimidationbecame the primary function of police photography; cops would take numerouspictures at close range or, alternately, show their "subject" photographsof herself when she hadn't realized she was under surveillance. Conspicuoussurveillance was often accompanied by other forms of harassment as well,including slashed tires, verbal abuse, and arbitrary arrests.37As the role of surveillance was extended, the number-and type--of subjectsincreased as well. By the end of the 1960s, many red squads were buildingstraightforward enemies lists, going after people outside of any radical movementFor example, after the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Chicago police maintainedfiles on churches and members of the clergy, newspaper columnists and radiocommentators, an ACLU attorney, the League of Women Voters, the Parent­Teacher Association, the chair of Sears and Roebuck, the president of NotreDame University, State's Attorney Bernard M. Carey, prosecuting attorneyBarnabas Sears, Dan Walker (author of the Walker Report on the 1968155