An interesting report dribbled out of mayoral candidate Jane Noland's City Council office without much fanfare last week. The March 21 letter and report, from Katrin E. Frank of the law firm MacDonald, Hoague & Bayless, is an audit of Seattle Police Dept. practices in monitoring an anti-police brutality march and rally last Oct. 22 sponsored (through a front group) by the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Once the 12 pages of law-speak are decoded, it turns out Ms. Frank, while doing her best to justify police conduct, reveals that cops went to extraordinary lengths, without "authorization" (i.e., illegally), to monitor and record the demonstration. Those efforts included two videotaping teams (one in an unmarked car, one from the third floor of Westlake Mall), and another team of plainclothes officers taking still photos from various concealed positions. All this for a group of under 100 not very organized people--the most violent of whom are probably undercover agents--exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly.

Frank, in dismissing the lawbreaking conduct of SPD as "not substantial," notes that the videotaping would have been legal if the department had applied for permission on the basis that it had "reasonable suspicion of criminal activity." She expresses confidence that a judge would have gone along with it; she's probably right, both because judges tend to rubber- stamp such things and because the RCP has a track record of acting like assholes in public. Frank also glosses over the requirement that such taping to be done by uniformed officers in plain sight.

The report cites numerous historic instances of SPD taping of demonstrations, in particular Gulf War and post-Rodney King verdict gatherings. Those were much larger events; it raises a question of just what SPD's criteria for initiating surveillance are. How small can the crowd be? What issues get targeted? What crowd composition (e.g., race, ideology) attracts SPD attention?

What are the tapes used for? Why is it political demonstrations are dangerous enough to tape, but thousands of drunks pouring out of Seafair or the Kingdome or Husky Stadium is just another civic celebration? How much is this violation of civil rights costing the city? How much will it cost when some savvy activist sues the city?

SPD has long resisted public accountability, and its self-review mechanisms are an open joke: the foxes, issuing reports on overconsumption of chicken. Jane Noland hasn't expressed interest in asking any of these questions. Now that she's running for mayor, she should be forced to answer them.