LeRoy Moore is a soft-spoken, gray-haired gentleman who preaches non-violence and has spent years working to shut down and clean up Rocky Flats, the former nuclear-weapons plant south of Boulder. His political activism once prompted the Denver Police Department to label him a "criminal extremist."

Since when is speaking one's mind a crime? And just what sort of speech amounts to criminal extremism?

Neither Denver's mayor nor its police department has provided credible answers. The latest revelations about Denver's "spy files" only deepen their credibility gap.

This spring, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado discovered that the Denver police has in recent years kept secret "spy files" on 208 religious and peace groups and 3,200 individuals. Denver has never formally revealed who is on the list. But it is known that peaceful groups like the American Friends Service Committee were labeled "criminal extremists" merely for joining political demonstrations.

Denver Mayor Wellington Webb was mildly sympathetic to those who were put under surveillance — and potentially libeled — for exercising their constitutional rights. In his youth, Webb was himself the subject of unjust police spying.

Webb appointed a three-person panel of judges to determine why the files were kept and what should be done with them. The panel concluded that the spy files were a colossal goof, the lamentable product of a new computer database and an ill-trained staff.

That explanation seemed implausible at the time. Information revealed because of a federal lawsuit now relegate the judges' conclusions to the status of a joke.

The ACLU has sued Denver, claiming that many of the spy files violate the constitutional rights of the subjects. The ACLU is representing several groups, including the American Friends Service Committee, which is a Quaker group labeled as criminally extreme. The Quakers are joined in the suit by the Chiapas Coalition, Sister Antonia Anthony and others.

The contents of depositions in the case were revealed this week. Among other things, the documents disclose that police commanders in the department's intelligence bureau never formally implemented a policy about who should be investigated, and who should be labeled criminally extreme.

One sergeant who spent three years in the intelligence bureau was asked during a deposition why the police kept a file on the American Friends Service Committee.

"Because they're a protest group," he said.

But did the sergeant agree that the group was peaceful?

"I would," he answered.

So why keep a file?

"Every protest group we kept a file on."

Other officers said the department did not spy on people or groups merely because of their publicly expressed sentiments. They said groups were targeted only when there was a potential for criminal activity.

Yet a departmental secretary had the authority to classify groups as "criminal extremist." In her deposition, she could not explain the criteria she used for labeling a group with those scarlet letters.

The public might think this is a tempest in a local teapot. After all, some suggest, these files were secret, and even if they were improperly compiled, there's no harm done.

That argument is doubly flawed. First, a law-abiding person labeled as a criminal extremist in an internal police file could suffer from this designation. Who knows when such things might affect an innocent person's employment or housing?

More importantly, the whole debacle exposes a police department that has been systematically indifferent to some civil rights. As the federal government develops the same myopia, it's high time that constitutional insouciance hit the public radar.

Copyright 2002, The Daily Camera and the E.W. Scripps Company

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