‘Police lacked basic social media literacy’
A CHP spokeswoman told the Guardian that the agency had received no evidence about possible buses beyond the two screenshots, and said its investigative unit reviewed the social media posts “to evaluate potential public safety issues”. She noted that Oregon police had raised similar concerns.
“A CHP air unit conducted a short search for the buses; however, they were unable to locate them,” the spokeswoman said in an email, adding that no specific individuals were surveilled, contacted or apprehended, and that no threat was identified. The full extent of the operation is unclear, though the spokesperson said the actual aerial search was brief: “The Antifa bus mission was a 12-minute event.”
It’s also unclear why Honsal said there was a “confirmed” bus in Redding. A 2 June report from the CHP northern division on “George Floyd protests” said no arrests were made, and noted that all related protests in the region were “expected to be peaceful”.
What is clear to experts, however, is that the correspondence between the agencies suggest they lacked “basic news and social media information literacy” said Ryan Shapiro, the executive director of Property of the People, who has investigated how police
monitor antifascist activists.
CHP had “relied on obviously baseless rightwing social media posts to launch military-style aerial surveillance missions for nonexistent … antifa convoys”, he added.
The photo of a specific van with the “be on the lookout” warning could have “resulted in serious harm to people who are driving that kind of bus when there was no evidence that anybody has done anything wrong”, said Michael German, fellow with the Brennan Center and former FBI agent. “Based on the vagueness of the rumor, it’s hard to imagine why they would have deployed those tactical resources,” he added.
The documents also appeared to fit a pattern of police aggressively responding to “mild progressive dissent”, said Shapiro.
Other records in the data set point in a similar direction. On 1 September last year, the Humboldt undersheriff, Justin Braud, sent an email to staff, saying, “We are in trying times for sure, and we must prepare accordingly.” He encouraged officers to read an attached document, which he said contained “good material on preparedness for the unknown, mentally and physically”.
The document was a police newsletter called “Nor Cal Sheepdog” about “off-duty safety” in the “era of Anonymous, Antifa, and BLM”. Written by law enforcement consultants, the authors said these groups should not be “underestimated” and that their “tactics include attacks on officers”. The letter advised officers to “maintain vigilant watch for threats while off duty”, always be “armed and ready”, “train with your off-duty weapon”, “prepare for the possibility of being a victim” and be “paranoid”.
It warned officers that they could face attacks anywhere, including in their homes, adding, “Indecision is fatal. You must switch to the on-duty mindset.”
Vida B Johnson, Georgetown University law professor and policing expert, said the messages reflected “a pretty paranoid, self-centered worldview”, and that police seemed more concerned with their own safety, than broader public safety.
Asked about Braud’s email, the sheriff spokeswoman said, “During the time this particular email was sent, there was a lot of fear in law enforcement of officers and their families being targeted or attacked due to the current climate.”
But to German, they provide a window into pervasive ideologies in US police departments. Departments have repeatedly shared
baseless claims about BLM endangering them, he said, but have downplayed or ignored real threats to their safety whether
from Covid or
far-right extremists.
“Something that really does kill police officers is treated as not a problem while imaginary threats are treated as real,” German said.
The consequences of antifa hoaxes
The rumors about antifa threats last year were not without consequences. They prompted some rightwing militias and conservatives to
patrol their neighborhoods while heavily armed. In Washington state, armed residents
harassed a multiracial family that was passing through on a camping trip, falsely
accusing them of being “antifa protesters”. Repeated false claims about “antifa arsonists” starting wildfires led
armed civilians in Oregon to set up roadblocks, .
In some cases, police have expressed tacit support for such responses.
In one of the CHP emails from June, a captain spoke positively about the militias that responded to “antifa bus” threats in Oregon, saying that locals “armed with long rifles, shotguns and pistols, wearing blue arm bands (to be recognized by police as friendly)” showed up “to deter violence in their city”.
Shane Burley, a
researcher and expert on the far right, noted that when police describe antifa as a major domestic terror threat, “it legitimizes vigilante violence”. He cited the
rise in
car attacks against BLM protesters, and armed rightwing men
threatening demonstrators.
At least one official in Humboldt county has expressed frustration that law enforcement seemed more concerned with BLM than with legitimate violent threats from the far right.
Two days after the 6 January insurrection, one county government leader emailed the sheriff and others expressing her dismay that officials had not condemned the “attempted coup” in DC. She noted that a local group had also protested at the Humboldt courthouse that day, but law enforcement did not communicate with government employees about it, even though “police escorts had previously been offered when there were rumors of a BLM protest”.
The sheriff responded that he had received no intelligence reports suggesting that there would be a violent local protest and said the demonstrators “were exercising their constitutional rights”. And while he called the violence at the US Capitol “horrifying and deplorable”, he also corrected her language.
According to the FBI, he said, the attack was “not considered a coup d’état”.