Oakland’s chief of police blackholed all emails mentioning “Occupy”

Cory Doctorow

boingboing.net
October 31, 2012

Oakland police chief told a court that he never saw emails from city officials and a federal court monitor who emailed him about police brutality and other illegal actions by his force in its response to Occupy Oakland. That’s because, he says, he used a spam-filter to automatically spam-filter all messages containing phrases like “occupy,” “police brutality,” “press pass,” and “excessive force.” More from SFGate’s Matthai Kuruvila.

The city investigation found that Jordan had city staff put in the filters on Oct. 27, 2011 – two days after a violent clash between police and protesters that made international news. He had been inundated with anonymous messages, he said in a declaration to the court.

But he forgot the e-mail filter was still in effect.

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