The FBI should not be advising or educating our City. Go to the ACLU in SF whose fine attorneys are experts in hate crimes and free speech.

To say the FBI has gotten over it’s “blemished past” is to not understand its past or it’s present, as this secret police force can still be used by whoever is in power for rank political purposes or, as exposed by the ACLU, to perpetuate “the greatest assault on the privacy of ordinary Americans” by its illegal data collection, storage, tracking, and mining.

The FBI institutionalized abuse
- of MLK, the Panthers, politicians or citizens someone wanted to control, including many fine people right here in Palo Alto who were victim to it’s illegal COINTELPRO domestic spying program.

The beat goes on, quietly. There’s a reason why it’s the secret police.

Of course the FBI should be brought in for serious crimes.

It is common to pretend the Black Panthers were decent folk who were victims of a rogue FBI. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Black Panthers, formed in Oakland in 1966, were a violent criminal gang that controlled the distribution of heroin and other drugs in the East Bay. They were responsible for many murders, including their bookkeeper Betty van Patter (see Web Link as well as police officers John Frey (murdered in Oakland) and John Gilhooly and Frank Rappaport (murdered by Black Panthers in Chicago).

The definition of hate speech and hateful actions has not been defined. Some seem obvious, but the gray area inbetween being left to vague individual interpretations will be a huge problem. Free speech is a right. Who makes decisions and these are often split second decisions, is not something that society can agree on.

The FBI question is a tough one and I think the devil is in the details. In some ways, they provide resources that no one else provides (investigatory resources, the force of law). In other cases, they've been known to force people to surveil others in their own community. I'm okay with the first FBI but not the second FBI. Their role in our city would need to be very well circumscribed for me to feel comfortable with them.