A public records request made by Timothy Smith – a spokesman for the local Bill of Rights Defense Committee, which has been fighting the expansion (and existence) of the Northwest Detention Center on the Tideflats – shook loose several years worth of Homeland Security meeting minutes from the Tacoma Police Department.

The meeting minutes note various events and situations that caught the interest of the cops. Take this entry from September 2007:

“On September 18, there was a derogatory article published on the Seattle Indymedia website that summarized some of the complaint findings against TPD personnel stemming from the Port of Tacoma protests. The article mentions that in each case, the police were exonerated.

“The article listed the phone number to TPD Internal Affairs and the e-mail address of City Manager Eric Anderson, so citizens can ‘let them know how happy you are that we have a rubber stamp committee to oversee the police and approve of everything they do! … tell (Eric Anderson) how proud you are to live in a city where the police can get away with anything.’”

Maybe I’m paranoid (or not paranoid enough), but last time I checked, it was still legal to write (nonthreatening) derogatory statements about the police and their internal affairs process on a Web site; to republish the phone number of a subsection of a local government agency (253-591-5283 – according to CityofTacoma.org); and to send e-mails to the city manager expressing your grievances or disagreements (and/or encouraging others to do so). Maybe Tacoma police were simply making note of the article, but it inspires the question: To what end?

To be fair, the law enforcement group noted the activities of both right- and left-wing groups, ranging from the KKK and white supremacists to demonstrators against the Iraq war.

But I don’t think I’m revealing any state secrets by noting that the U.S. government (along with various state and local police agencies) have a checkered history when it comes to monitoring dissident groups.

Ian Demsky, The News Tribune