Activists claim spying by state police abused civil liberties

Friday, July 25, 2008

‘‘It’s really just a completely bizarre experience,” said Mike Stark, a Silver Spring resident who was listed in state police reports released by the American Civil Liberties Union last week for his participation in several meetings. ‘‘My reactions initially were like, ‘This is just ridiculous and laughable,’ but when you think about it, it’s really cause for real alarm.”

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-Montgomery), chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, said that he will hold hearings as early as September to question state officials.

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.

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.