At a press conference near the lake on the Friday before Memorial Day 2020, David Brown, the Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, announced the launch of the Summer Operations Center (SOC), a multiagency gun-violence prevention hub. Brown said the center had a singular mission: Reducing murders and shootings this summer.
But internal documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that almost immediately after the SOC s creation, with the onset of citywide protests against racism and the police murder of George Floyd, the police department began using the violence-prevention center to monitor and share intelligence about political demonstrations. The police continued to use the SOC to surveil political organizing throughout the summer and fall even going so far as to quietly add protest monitoring to the center s stated mission.