The secret police: A private security group regularly sent MN police misinformation about protesters

[Nevilledog]

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Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D
@RVAwonk
·
Jul 8, 2022
This is a damning investigative report by @techreview, which found that private security contractors in MN have been laundering misinformation about protesters to police from sources like Andy Ngo and the far-right website AntifaWatch.

technologyreview.com
The secret police: A private security group regularly sent Minnesota police misinformation about...
There are 13 private security guards for every one police officer in downtown Minneapolis, but these groups are far less regulated than police departments.

Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D
@RVAwonk
·
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I’ve been asked repeatedly why I spend so much time researching and talking about antifa-related disinformation campaigns and the actors involved in them, and this ^ is why. These people are running disinformation-laundering services masquerading as security companies.
9:11 AM · Jul 8, 2022

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/07/07/1055508/secret-police-private-security-group-minnesota-misinformation-protestors/

When US marshals shot and killed a 32-year-old Black man named Winston Boogie Smith Jr. in a parking garage in Minneapolis’s Uptown neighborhood on June 3, 2021, the city was already in a full-blown policing crisis.

Around 300 officers had quit over the previous two years amid near-constant protests and public criticism in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a member of the police force in May 2020. Intense debates over the Minneapolis Police Department’s budget raged, and some Minneapolis council members were elected after campaigning on a platform of defunding the police. Adding yet more strain to the shorthanded department, homicides had increased almost 30% across the US in 2020. Vital services were starting to fail—in the first half of 2021, response times to 911 calls in Minneapolis increased by 36%.

Minneapolis had been at the vanguard of activism on policing and racial justice since Floyd’s death. After Smith’s killing, protests reignited all over the city—not only at public spaces, like the intersection where Floyd was murdered, but also in private ones, like the parking garage where Smith was shot. As demonstrations spread from the streets into shopping districts and parking lots, the cops couldn’t keep up.

Into the void stepped private security groups. The number of new companies applying for licenses from the Minnesota Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services ballooned from 14 in 2019 to 27 in 2021. Beginning in 2020, many Minneapolis property owners hired these private security organizations, ostensibly to prevent property damage. But the organizations often ended up managing protest activity—a task usually reserved for police, and one for which most private security guards are not trained.

*snip*