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More on the Gulf Port 7: Austin Police Enabled Houston Felonies, Judge Campbell is Not Amused and Austin and Houston Police Coordinated Through Fusion Center.
Despite pleas by the Austin Police Department to drop the charges, the trial against the Gulf Port 7 will continue next year.
Undercover Austin Police Officer Rick Reza with his favorite 'dragon sleeve.'
As a consequence, the Austin Police Department were forced to turn photos, emails and documents relating to their investigation over to Judge Joan Campbell. Since APD insists the undercover investigation into Occupy Austin is ongoing, they asked her to suppress the release of the information to the defense. After review by Campbell, a portion of the documents have been released to defense and are making their way to the media.
Campbell’s release reveals that a total of six undercover officers were assigned to monitor Occupy Austin, but three were apparently not involved directly in the lockbox incident where undercover Austin police built lockbox devices. Made from PVC pipes and also known as sleeping dragons or dragon sleeves, lockboxes linked seven protesters together at the December 12, 2011 Port of Houston shutdown. The use of these devices resulted in these occupiers from Austin, Dallas and Houston facing felony charges instead of the misdemeanors brought against those who simply linked their arms and legs.
The first undercover revealed was Shannon G Dowell, who had been forced to testify in the trial’s discovery phase. But now we’ve learned the names of two more — Rick Reza, shown making a phallic gesture with the lockbox in the photo at right. The other, Deek Moore, was apparently the photographer of these rather candid photos of cop antics.
Undercover Officers Shannon "Butch" Dowell and Rick Reza with the Lockboxes
Questions remain about what communication occurred between Austin and Houston police and to what degree Texas fusion centers were involved, either the Austin Regional Intelligence Center or the Texas-wide equivalent. Since Campbell chose to keep many of the documents hidden, much will remain unknown about Austin Police involvement before and after December 12. Campbell has seemed to support the defense’s position — first attempting to drop the charges entirely and then pushing for a thorough discovery phase when forced to hear the case by a grand jury. This potential ally will be lost when the trial continues in early 2013 — Judge Joan Campbell is retiring, and her replacement will be selected by Texas Governor Rick Perry.
One of the Gulf Port 7, Iraq Veteran Eric Marquez remains imprisoned. After fundraising by Occupy Austin, Occupy Houston and Occupy Chicago bailed him out of a Harris County, Texas jail where he’d been held since the Port Shutdown, he was imprisoned in Dallas for missing court dates during the initial jail stay. Though he now has National Lawyers’ Guide representation, an apparent determination by the prison industrial complex to keep him inside means he will probably still be behind bars on December 12 2012. According to Garza, charges in Dallas could add up to four years to the years he already faces for his alleged “use of a criminal instrument” at the Port.
Activists Question Austin Police Chief’s Peace Award
Peaceful Streets Project protest Chief Art Acevedo's Peace Award.
In an audacious act of doublethink, Austin Police continue to insist that they constructed the lockboxes not to entrap occupiers but to keep them safe as the Austin Chronicle reported:
APD Assistant Chief Sean Mannix has said that the officers constructed the lockboxes because they were concerned about safety of protesters and of public safety personnel. Unless protesters release themselves from the lockbox – also known as a dragon sleeve – the devices often have to be cut off, which can pose a risk to both protesters and public safety officials, particularly if the opaque sleeves are booby-trapped. There had already been discussion of use of the lock boxes during General Assembly meetings, Mannix has said, and so the officers got involved in the process in order to keep everyone safe: If the cops actually made the devices then they’d be able to alert public safety officials to how they were constructed. Or so the thinking apparently went.
Occupiers like myself joined members of the Peaceful Streets Project Austin in a small protest against Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo at an Institute for Interfaith Dialogue dinner where he was due to receive a peace award. I told David Maly, a reporter with the Daily Texan, that a peace award was inappropriate:
Peaceful Streets Project member Kit O’Connell said roughly 25 people came out to protest the event. He said their criticisms include Acevedo’s ‘quickness’ in defending animal and human deaths caused by Austin police officers in recent years, the recently enacted ‘Public Order Initiative,’ which has led to the ticketing and arrest of hundreds of homeless people throughout the city and Austin police infiltration of the Occupy movement earlier this year.
On a positive note, the City of Austin recently dropped charges against activist Debbie Russell. Russell was charged with criminal trespass at the February eviction of Occupy Austin’s City Hall encampment.
Photos of undercover officers by Austin Police Officer Deek Moore. Protest photo by Kit O’Connell, all rights reserved.
10 Comments
This is one of the proofs that our government, at all levels, has decided to make war against its own citizens. These “enemies of the state” seek, through non-violent means, to raise their voices against what has become a fascist state.
The militarization of our police, the NDAA, the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act and habeus corpus, and corporate mercenaries operating on U.S. soil (see Katrina), are just the beginning. Further envelopment of the citizenry in the Total Surveillance State will stifle free speech and dampen future resistance.
We are in Germany, mid-1930s. And we don’t even have trains that run on time.
Yes exactly. All in the name of our ‘safety.’
Unfortunately you can bet that perry will get you major felons and supress all the stuff that will show that the whole thing was total entrapment. I am so happy that the police and fbi are able to spend time setting up crimes, capturing the people they entrap, and then being backed by the people at the top for their “good” work.
Yeah, fingers crossed that this trial doesn’t go the same way that the Occupy Cleveland entrapment has gone. People here are fighting hard, but the entrapment is so much more clear — there was no violence intended from the beginning, and police could not escalate us to true violence, just made up charges…
I am not quite sure I believe that this is as much a concerted effort by the federal government as it is an effort by some arrogant law enforcement officers saying, “Who the fuck are these modern era dirty fucking hippies to challenge us?”
Although the federal government is involved, I think that they just pushed buttons that were waiting to be pushed. Either way, it is reprehensible. Only sunlight (and possible jury nullification) will put an end to this.
I tend to believe that Occam’s Razor suggests we should credit normal human failings — greed, incompetence, intolerance, and so on before we look to complex conspiracies. The drug war began in part because alcohol prohibition had been repealed and all those government ‘prohis’ (as they’re called on Boardwalk Empire) needed something to do. Likewise, capitalist inertia leads to our militarized police, as we just ‘have to do something’ with all that surplus hardware, rather than it being in my opinion some overarching conspiracy to hand the reigns of our country over to FEMA or the UN or whatever this week’s bugaboo may be.
At the same time we DO know that the DHS is involved to some degree, with their physical presence at our events being well documented now and the involvement of the fusion centers revealed through cases like this one and the various FOIA and public information requests journalists has done. Now it’s the job of all that sunlight to figure out how much and to what end…
Fascist bastards. Right out of the Nazi’s handbook. Shine the sun on the SCUM and watch SCUM vaporize like cancerous growths removed by laser.
“In an audacious act of doublethink, Austin Police continue to insist that they constructed the lockboxes not to entrap occupiers but to keep them safe as the Austin Chronicle reported:”
Trademark of fascist scum. Chronic liars believing their own lies, until someone comes for them. Ask a German Nazi who ran into a Soviet when Berlin fell. APD…… FUCK YOU!
Speaking truth to power is like telling a crack whore, “Hey your a crack whore,” or a drunk, a “Hey your a substance abuser. Denial sets in fast for this dysfunctional lot. “Fascists are no different and alive and well in Texas, while denying they are in fact fascists, a dysfunctional lot.
Truth hurts when truth in not on your side.
In the ’60s we didn’t trust anyone over 30, it seems that rule still holds today. These young Occupiers are paying the price for their lax security.