Harvard cops deny allegations of fostering "red squad"

The Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) denied allegations that the University maintains an undercover political intelligence unit in the wake of two arrests that attracted the scrutiny of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Despite what the ACLU asserts, we do not maintain an undercover unit,” HUPD spokesman Steven G. Catalano wrote in a statement yesterday. But a police report does show evidence of undercover intelligence gathering at a political demonstration.

“I had been photographing the demonstrators for intelligence gathering,” Detective Thomas F. Karns Jr. wrote in a March 3 report of his activities at a human rights protest in the Square. He described himself as “conducting plain clothes surveillance on a demonstration.”

Massachusetts residents Lisa M. Nieves and Patrick J. Keaney were arrested by Karns after the protest.

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