Flagstaff, Arizona, likes to think of itself as a liberal space within the historically “red” Grand Canyon State. It has been the only city to raise its minimum wage above the state’s, and in October 2018 it decided to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the place of Columbus Day.
But Klee Benally, a prominent local anarchist and indigenous rights activist, sees hypocrisies within the city’s progressive image. He criticizes its anti-camping ordinance that contributes to the criminalization of people experiencing homelessness, the disproportionate targeting of people of color by the Flagstaff police, and what he sees as a lack of urgency surrounding missing and murdered indigenous women in the region.
For years, Benally and others have spoken out about the city’s role in the ongoing desecration of the San Francisco Peaks, a sacred site for Native American peoples in the region. The city of Flagstaff is complicit in a project that pipes sewage to the Peaks, where it is used to make artificial snow for skiers at the private Arizona Snowbowl resort. The arrangement has existed for years, as has local indigenous activists’ opposition.
So on Flagstaff’s first Indigenous Peoples’ Day, on October 8, 2018, Benally and other indigenous rights activists and anarchists took to the streets.
“We were protesting to draw attention to how the city benefits from the desecration of local indigenous culture,” Benally told me.
Among those paying close attention to the protest was the Flagstaff Police Department.
In an email obtained through a public records request, the department’s deputy chief summarized the day’s events: “The group grew to about 40-50 people and after speeches were made in the square the group began to march west down the sidewalk carrying several signs. Our supervisors attempted to speak to a couple of the apparent leaders, Klee Benally being one.”
The “Abolish Columbus Day” protest blocked traffic and ended peacefully. No arrests were made.
But that was not the end of the police department’s and local prosecutors’ interest in the matter. Ten police officers filmed the protesters with Axon body cameras. Emails obtained through public records requests, and an arrest report, show that over the ensuing weeks, the police department’s body camera audio and video footage of the protest, along with social media accounts, were reviewed by prosecutors, police, and an individual whose identity was redacted.
Ed Moss
davis cohen 2
Protesters at the Indigenous Peoples’ Day protest in Flagstaff, Arizona, on October 8, 2018.
“In order for me to determine which protesters blocked roadways, I’m going to need the [almost a full line redacted],” Serena Serassio, a prosecutor, wrote via email to Dustin Kuhns of the Flagstaff Police Department. “It may be helpful if we set up a meeting with [redacted] and you in which you can help Ron [a prosecutor] and me.”
“It’s gonna be a long meeting,” officer Kuhns wrote in response. “There’s a lot of video from different officers to download but we can do it for sure. No get out of jail free cards for them. They caused some problems and need to deal with the consequences!”
The day before the protest, Shannon Chacon, a criminal intelligence analyst for the Arizona Gang & Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission, sent an email to Lance Roberts, also of Flagstaff Police Department, alerting him to the “planned protest.” The email contained a digital copy of the protest flier. “I came across this yesterday when I was digging around,” Chacon wrote, according to an arrest report.
When I asked the Arizona Department of Public Safety how their analyst’s tracking of protests advanced the department’s mission, a representative told me, “Regardless of the analyst’s primary duties, all analysts are encouraged to look for events in their area that may have a public safety nexus or for general situational awareness. While it is unclear why this event was forwarded to the Flagstaff Police Department, all events are learned about through open, public sources.”
There was also a felony child-endangerment charge for “a female [observed marching] with a stroller pushing an infant,” according to police correspondence about the protest. When asked “to remove herself and [her] child from the roadway,” the correspondence reads, “she once again refused.”
As of late August, according to court records, seven of the eleven people charged in the October 8 protest have pleaded guilty and been sentenced to either a $300 fine or forty hours of community service. One pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five days in jail. Three, including Benally, have not accepted plea deals and appear headed to trial. Eventually, the child endangerment charge for the woman with the stroller was dropped.
This case and the investigative techniques used to put it together offer a glimpse into the challenges protesters face on the local level.
“This is clearly an act designed to intimidate protesters and chill speech,” says Chip Gibbons, policy and legislative counsel of the civil liberty advocacy group Defending Rights & Dissent. “Police were on hand and apparently did not see anything to justify an attempt to prevent or stop the protesters from blocking traffic, making these after-the-fact arrests completely absurd.”
Even more disturbing, Gibbons adds, is how surveillance technology was used to enable these arrests.
“Body cameras, which were supposed to be a tool of policy accountability, were transformed into a tool of surveillance,” he says. “Coupled with social media monitoring, police were then able to identify and issue court summons for protesters. The message this sends is clear: If you engage in political expression, police know who you are and know how to find you.”
Gibbons sees this as part of “an alarming national trend,” which has also included social media monitoring of local protests groups by police in Boston, Memphis, and Baltimore.
“This is clearly an act designed to intimidate protesters and chill speech.”
“We know from the public record that the FBI has continuously surveilled or monitored social movements or questioned activists from those movements,” Gibbons says, “including racial justice movements, Standing Rock water protesters, and Occupy ICE activists.”
“This is clearly an act designed to intimidate protesters and chill speech.”
Benally agrees, calling the use of surveillance in Flagstaff “unfortunately typical in the political climate that we are organizing in.”
This is not the first time Benally has been the subject of a sizable police investigation. In 2012, he faced months of jail time for peaceably protesting the use of sewage-effluent snow and the clear-cutting of forests on the San Francisco Peaks. In 2018, he was profiled in Mic, an online news outlet, after he was purportedly told by Transportation Security Administration officials that he was “on a list” that earmarked him for special screening. The list is known as Secondary Screening Security Selection, or SSSS.
According to Mic, which consulted a former FBI agent, this designation was perhaps “part of a domestic terror investigation in which he is a suspect.” Or “it may be part of an increase in surveillance of protesters under the administration of President Donald Trump that harkens back to the George W. Bush Administration.” The former agent told Mic the SSSS designation “probably indicates the FBI has an open preliminary or full domestic terrorism investigation.”
In early September, Yahoo News published a document showing the FBI office in Phoenix has been gathering intelligence from people with “direct access” to “anarchist extremist” protest groups in Arizona. The document shows the FBI has been monitoring the protest groups, including a group in Flagstaff that held a public firearms familiarization training, through social media and “human source[s] with direct access.”
According to Yahoo News, the document was “worrisome to activists and civil rights advocates who say that the government is classifying legitimate government opposition and legally protected speech as violent extremism or domestic terrorism.”
A blog post Benally wrote shortly after he and the other October 2018 anti-Columbus Day protesters were served court summonses was shared with the Flagstaff Police Department from another redacted email address: “Here is the article Klee wrote about the citations,” wrote the sender, whose name was blacked out.
When I asked why the identity of this sender was redacted, the legal adviser for police and fire for the city of Flagstaff told me the redaction was “the email address of a resource used by the police department in the police investigation.”
Since last year’s protests, Benally says there have been two other incidents that have concerned him about Flagstaff police. In April, a native man was shot in the neck after spraying an officer with pepper spray. Benally sees this as “a matter of racial profiling. They had a warrant, but the way it was executed was done in a dangerous and unprofessional manner.”
In July, a twenty-nine-year-old native woman who Benally says had “worked with us to protect the Peaks” was found dead of an apparent suicide. The woman was reported missing and in danger by relatives but Benally alleges that local police “did not take it seriously.”
Though the surveillance and charges might be aimed at sowing paranoia, finger-pointing, and otherwise discouraging the group’s activism, Benally says the local indigenous culture is stronger than the force of repression.
“We have not stopped organizing,” he says, “and we will be organizing another Indigenous Day demonstration to point out the hypocrisy with the city of Flagstaff and its role in desecrating the sacred San Francisco Peaks.”