State police spying violated civil liberties, local activists say

According to the reports, state police sent undercover agents to monitor anti-war and anti-death penalty activists at meetings in Baltimore and Takoma Park across a 14-month period during the administration of former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). The agents posed as fellow activists and kept detailed logs of their observations, which then-state police Superintendent Thomas E. ‘‘Tim” Hutchins has said happened under his watch.

The ACLU sued state police to acquire the surveillance logs, which total about 288 hours of spying and take up more than 40 pages. Hutchins and other police officials say the spying was legal. The ACLU says it was a breach of First Amendment rights and a misallocation of law enforcement resources.

Hutchins, who led the state police from December 2003 until June 2007 when Gov. Martin O’Malley replaced him with then-Baltimore County Police Chief Terrence B. Sheridan, said in an interview that he could not speak to individual cases, but was certain that any surveillance was within the law.

‘‘I am absolutely confident that the things that were conducted under my watch were totally within the parameters of the Constitution of the United States,” he said.

Hutchins said he has not seen the documents and has had no contact with anyone about the surveillance cases. Hutchins indicated that while he signed off on the spying activities, Ehrlich was never briefed on it.

‘‘Anything that goes on in that agency doesn’t go on in a freelance fashion,” he said. ‘‘... There’s a chain of command and there’s all sorts of people in the chain of command.”

State Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Dist. 16) of Bethesda, chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, said that he will hold hearings as early as September to question state officials.

‘‘The best face you can put on this is that it’s a misallocation of police resources,” Frosh said. ‘‘Tailing citizens who are engaged in public and nonviolent activities is a dubious benefit at best. There’s plenty of crime for police to prevent and solve and plenty of criminals to catch, and it just doesn’t seem to me to be a smart allocation of resources.”

Hutchins, who now works as a Department of Defense contractor, said he would welcome an opportunity to discuss the surveillance activities.

‘‘In the position I held, I would have not approved anything that was unconstitutional, that’s for darn sure,” he said. ‘‘I’ve always taken responsibility for organizations [I have been a part of] and that’s what I’ll do here, too.”

According to the reports, written by an undercover agent referred to only as ‘‘Analyst Sparwasser,” Stark was among 10 people who attended a March 16, 2005, meeting at the Electrik Maid in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington, D.C., to coordinate protests against the execution of Maryland death row inmate Vernon Evans, a Baltimore resident who was convicted of killing potential witnesses in a federal drug case in the 1980s and who was granted a stay of execution in February 2006.

Stark, 37, a member of the Maryland Campaign to End the Death Penalty, said organizers were mostly trying to mobilize volunteers for protests in Baltimore, he said.

The undercover agent wrote that the meeting ‘‘was primarily concerned with getting people to put up [flyers] and getting information out to local businesses and churches” about the upcoming protests.

Another meeting the agent attended ‘‘in a cover capacity” took place April 6, 2005, at the Takoma Park Presbyterian Church. About 70 people attended that meeting, which featured speeches by Stark and several others, including freed California death row inmate Ernest ‘‘Shujaa” Graham.

‘‘These were routine organizing meetings,” Stark said. ‘‘Most of the people that were there, we already knew them, and then other folks would come in through e-mail blitzes and other kinds of flyering.”

Stark, who is still active in death penalty protests, said he doesn’t know who could have been the undercover agent.

‘‘People come and go all the time, and in general the attitude is the most welcoming and open atmosphere as possible,” he said.

State Sen. Jamie Raskin (D-Dist. 20) of Takoma Park said he has received messages from dozens of constituents, Democrats and Republicans upset by the news.

‘‘People are legitimately angry about the use of the police and law enforcement personnel to target people for their political beliefs,” Raskin said. ‘‘That has a tremendous chilling effect on First Amendment activities.”

Raskin, who teaches constitutional law at American University in Washington, D.C., and serves on the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, said he would use that position to ask questions about state policies.

He also questioned how effective Maryland is in using grants from the U.S. Homeland Security Department, which provided much of the money that paid for the surveillance.

‘‘I believe this is a tremendous threat to civil liberty and a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars,” he said. ‘‘It reflects a perverse allocation of scarce public resources.”

Takoma Park resident Keith Berner, who writes for an online political blog, said he hopes the news doesn’t dissuade or intimidate residents in Takoma Park and elsewhere from speaking out on causes.

‘‘The real chilling part of this is the impact that it has on real civil liberties and the extent that people think they’re going to be spied on, they’re less likely to participate in community and activist activities,” Berner said.

But in a way, Berner said, he is proud that this latest incident shows how Takoma Park continues to be recognized for its politically active citizenry.

‘‘It’s great PR for Takoma Park,” he said. ‘‘Takoma Park prides itself, many of us who live there anyway, on the fact that we have a great number of activists, a great number of people who care about their world.”

Staff Writers Douglas Tallman and Alan Brody contributed to this report.

Learn more

To read the state police reports, go to

http:⁄⁄www.aclu-md.org⁄aPress⁄Attachments⁄MSP_Documents.pdf