OMAHA- The Omaha Police Department monitored activists' posts on social media last year and subsequently planted undercover officers at the protests. The tracking even went so far as to find birthday party plans for a Black protest organizer. This information was found after hundreds of emails were revealed by the ACLU.

The ACLU called these actions biased and unnecessary surveillance of police critics that echoes the “disturbing historical pattern of police monitoring lawful activities of Black civil rights leaders.”

The Omaha Police Department’s public information office released a statement saying that police used “open source intelligence” such as Facebook announcements “to learn of events that may bring a large number of persons together over the summer during a specific period of civil unrest in our city.”

Community organizer Ja Keen Fox said the emails revealed police behavior that was “a failure in the building of community trust and just fiscally irresponsible.”

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