Blaming intense media coverage and backlash to the US military deployment in Los Angeles, DHS expects the demonstrations to "continue and grow across the nation" as protesters focused on other issues shift to immigration, following a broad "embracement of anti-ICE messaging."
Don't threaten me with a good time.
The guidance urges officers to consider a range of nonviolent behavior and common protest gear -- like masks, flashlights, and cameras -- as potential precursors to violence [...] Protesters on bicycles, skateboards, or even "on foot" are framed as potential "scouts" conducting reconnaissance or searching for "items to be used as weapons." Livestreaming is listed alongside "doxxing" as a "tactic" for "threatening" police. Online posters are cast as ideological recruiters -- or as participants in "surveillance sharing."
One list of "violent tactics" shared by the Los Angeles -- based Joint Regional Intelligence Center -- part of a post-9/11 fusion network -- includes both protesters' attempts to avoid identification and efforts to identify police.
That can't be correct. Skateboarding, I have been reliably informed, is not a crime.
In advance of protests, agencies increasingly rely on intelligence forecasting to identify groups seen as ideologically subversive or tactically unpredictable. Demonstrators labeled "transgressive" may be monitored, detained without charges, or met with force.