Canned Albuquerque cops records manager denied Juggalo records to public – was he ordered to do so by top brass?

 The guy who artfully halted a public records request for documents related to the Albuquerque Police Department’s surveillance of Juggalos now says he was instructed to find ways to block such requests by his superior officers.

The department also has an opening for a public records manager

As part of the upcoming book on Juggalos, I sought open records from a number of police departments around the U.S. to find out what they were looking for and what kind of communications they had both before and after Juggalos were deemed a gang in the FBI’s bi-annual Gang Threat AssessmentReport in 2011.

One of the departments queried was the Albuquerque PD, which has had massive troubles regarding conduct and is now under federal oversight.

Reynaldo Chavez, the department’s records custodian and point man for public records, immediately asked for $250 to even continue to process my request. “When all is said and done that amount will likely be much higher,” he wrote to me.

We call this a creative denial, which is when a public body attempts to prevent a requestor from moving forward. This often indicates there are some records involved that the body does not want to make public but, if pressed, would be forced to.

I called Chavez to discuss this fee but he told me that that he was not permitted to discuss requests. I sent him an email advising him that I considered the $250 up front and his warning of "much higher" costs to be tantamount to a denial. 

“You should also be advised, this is not a denial as you so eloquently state since you are being offered responsive documents,” Chavez said. “So this is an incorrect statement on your part...."

He also claimed he "did not say I was not permitted to discuss [records requests] so again you are incorrect…”

Of course he said it and was now backpedalling We never got the records because it would be foolish to keep sending money to a department with an already-dubious record for truth. After the first $250, Chavez could easily have come back with a $1,000 bill.

Chavez was fired on August 24 and now claims he was ordered by his superiors to concoct a means to deny public records requests. Now whom do we believe? Chavez was abrupt and confrontational in dealing with me, the public. So it’s pretty hard to root for him in this, or even believe him. Was he just carrying out orders when he made his cloaked denial?

It's on - again. Juggalos vs. the Feds, Appellate mix

By now you know whose side you’re on. 

The court's spellcheck is apparently not working

On June 18, lawyers for the Insane Clown Posse will argue that the Justice Department violated the band’s free speech and due process rights – and those of its fans - after a 2011 FBI report determined those fans, “Juggalos,” are a gang.

Appellate arguments are scheduled in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.  Each side gets 15 minutes. It’s one more legal stop in the case of the Juggalos vs. the Feds, a case that was filed in January 2014.

A federal judge in June 2014 ruled that the plaintiffs - ICP and four of its fans - did not prove harm in their arguments in the original case.  They alleged the report led to targeting by police for wearing hatchetman or ICP-related jewelry, clothing and tattoos.

U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland said the U.S. Justice Department is not responsible for how authorities use the bi-annual national report on gangs.

The report "does not recommend any particular course of action for local law enforcement to follow, and instead operates as a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, assessment of nationwide gang trends," Cleland said in his ruling.

The FBI alleged in its 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment that Juggalos “exhibit gang-like behavior and engage in criminal activity and violence.”

The inclusion of Juggalos in the report was based in large part on news clippings sent to the FBI by various, mostly small town law enforcement agencies responding to an email from bureau employee.

Read how it went down in this High Times piece.

The gang designation led to articles in police publications such as this one titled, “Three things cops need to know about Juggalos.”

From the July 2014 article at PoliceOne.com: Their philosophy and dress is derived from the Insane Clown Posse and Psychopathic records “Dark Carnival” from a set of 6 albums. Law enforcement professionals should be aware that this group routinely attracts members who come from difficult lives filled with trauma, parental neglect and, in many cases, serious mental disorders. 

This combination makes them easily manipulated by their leadership of radical organizations such as the Juggalos who have for the past several decades used these groups as recruiting centers.

Dale Yeager of Seraph — a Department of Justice Criminal Behavior Analyst on the Juggalos — said, “As various extreme environmental, animal rights and anti-globalization groups become emboldened by increased funding from NGOs and leftist political action committees, the use of youth movements such as Juggalos for recruitment of members will increase. 

In a legal brief filed in February on behalf of ICP, lawyers allege that the Department of Justice “maintains a digital warehouse containing Juggalo data that – by Congressional design – plays a leading role in law enforcement’s identification of gang members. The warehouse includes an encyclopedia of gang images and a database of materials cataloging distinctive First Amendment-protected Juggalo symbols such as the hatchetman logo and other ICP-related symbols and other information about these music fans. “

It goes on:

“Within these materials, the DOJ does not provide any way for law enforcement to distinguish the vast majority of law-abiding Juggalos from the purported “subsets” of gang members. Now, the DOJ suggests only a circular definition that the good Juggalos are the ones who don’t commit gang-related crimes.”

Read the plaintiff’s brief here.  

The Department of Justice hammers at what it claims is a failure to prove injury on the part of ICP and the four Juggalos, The DOJ insists that the gang report does not designate Juggalos as a gang. Instead, “the Report provides information on trends in gang activity, as reported to [the gang intelligence center] by other law enforcement entities. “

Read the government’s brief here.

Some say it comes down to the way the law is set up. The Feds can declare any group a gang. There is no established way to directly challenge such a designation. That leaves something blandly called the Administrative Procedures Act, which must be named so in order to get us to fall asleep before we can do anything.

But ICP is using that to challenge the FBI. And the Feds claim that the – wait for it – Administrative Procedures Act requires some sort of conclusion. That is, it has to be etched in stone that the Juggalos are forever a gang. And the FBI report didn’t do that for anyone, not the Crips, not the Bloods, not the Juggalos, insists the DOJ. It makes it a legal chore to dispute when the FBI says you’re a banger.

“Even if you have the money, the law is set up to make it difficult to undo either a state or a federal authority calling your group a gang,” says Alex Alonso, who runs the website streetgangs.com and has testified over 50 times in gang-related cases. 

Feds response to Juggalo gang lawsuit: No damages

It has received no attention, but the federal government filed its initial response in April to the action filed earlier this year by the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan on behalf of Juggalos, who claim that their constitutional rights to expression and association were violated by when the FBI designated them as a gang in 2011.

“Plaintiffs lack standing to challenge a report known as the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment, an intelligence assessment made by the National Gang Intelligence Center at the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the introduction to the response states, a common argument in such cases.

The response goes on to claim that the plaintiffs – four Juggalos and the two members of Insane Clown Posse – showed no direct damages due to the gang assessment.

It also claims that the alleged damages cited in the complaint, which was filed in January, did not come at the hands of the defendant. That would be a base-covering assertion, just in case the court didn't buy the 'no damages' thing. 

“To the extent the allegation of injury by the FBI’s intelligence analysis is plausible, any injury involves the conduct of independent third parties, not before the Court, who are not even regulated by the Defendant agencies,” the argument reads.

The defendant is the U.S. Department of Justice. Read the response here.

There is a highly dubious assertion near the end of the fed’s response, which is a fairly standard petition and asks that the case be dismissed.

“The [National Gang Intelligence Center] does not collect or maintain information that does not relate to criminal activity.”

This is quite a statement in light of Edward Snowden’s disclosures last year regarding surveillance conducted by the federal government on U.S. citizens, which includes accessing Google and Yahoo accounts.

No decision has been made regarding the motion to dismiss, although it would be an eyebrow raiser if any court were to let this one go away without more argument. The fun will come if it gets to discovery, where the feds will be required to disclose more information.