Who Is The Enemy

Pretty obvious, really.

A police intelligence-gathering unit tracked demonstrators and exchanged information about them with federal officials for nearly three months before getting the required approval from the department’s general counsel, according to the records, which the police released in response to a series of requests made under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

On Aug. 14, 2014, Kathleen Lichay, an intelligence research specialist with the U.S. State Department, e-mailed Chicago Police Department officials to ask whether they had picked up any “chatter” about vigils planned in response to the fatal shooting five days earlier of Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb. The shooting — for which a grand jury ultimately decided not to file charges — prompted protests around the nation.

Half an hour after sending the email, Lichay got a response from the Crime Prevention Information Center in Chicago, where the police collect intelligence alongside agents from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. An official there wrote back that activists were planning a rally that evening at the Daley Center.