DETROIT I
Red Squad
Continued from preceding page
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tion about job applicants.
Most of it just sat in a room
at the old police building on
Second Avenue.
"It was compiled for its
own sake," Paster said. "No
criminal charges were ever
brought against anyone be-
cause of what's in the files."
Throughout the years, the
definition of a "subversive"
changed, and the Red Squad
found itself spying in the
1930s on suspected commu-
nists, in the 1950s on civil
rights activists and in the
1960s on liberals, Paster
said. "There's was always a
new buzzword that meant
the suspension of Fourth and
First Amendment rights."
In 1974 Mayor Coleman
Young disbanded the Red
Squad, and the files sat for
years in police department
offices. They were opened
Jews were involved
in helping collect
information for the
files by serving as
spies on
"subversive"
individuals and
organizations.
when Walter Bankert, a
member of a consumers'
group the squad had labeled
communist, found out about
the files. The United Auto
Workers joined Bankert in a
suit, suing the city for the
files on grounds they
violated their civil rights.
In April 1990, the Detroit
City Council agreed to a
$750,000 lawsuit settlement
in the case. The money will
be used to allow those once
under surveillance to see
their files.
Before anyone receives his
Red Squad file, certain sen-
sitive material, such as
names of informants and
police officers investigating
the case, will have been
removed, Paster said.
During the next 16 mon-
ths, Paster and his
assistants will be sorting
through the massive collec-
tion of material in the Red
Squad files. Information,
contained in beige folders
and on index cards, is often
so disorganized as to not
even be in alphabetical
order. It also is filled with
codes — such as an enig-
matic "B.B." — which
Paster is trying to decipher.
In some cases information
has been removed from the
files. Paster said he came
across index cards indicating
that reports on certain
leading city and state fig-
ures could be found in the
files, but then the reports
were missing.
In September 1991, the
files will be transferred to a
library archive, where they
will remain closed to the
public for the next 50
years. El
Jewish Agenda
Is Frenkel Topic
Mark Pelavin, Washington,
D.C., representative of the
American Jewish Congress,
will speak on the Jewish
agenda in the American
capital at the Greater Detroit
Chapter of the American
Jewish Congress' Rose
Frenkel Meeting. The
meeting will be held 7:30 p.m.
June 18 at Congregation
Shaarey Zedek.
Pelavin, a native of Flint,
will speak on the Jewish
legislative agenda, the Bush
Administration's role in the
Middle East.
Pelavin will also address a
breakfast meeting co-
sponsored by the Jewish Com-
munity Council and the
Detroit Association of Black
Organizations regarding the
pending Civil Rights Act. He
will also speak to the staffs of
the Jewish Community Coun-
cil, Jewish Welfare Federa-
tion and Anti-Defamation
League.