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Police are preparing use a tactic first developed to handle roaming protests during the NATO Summit two years ago to deal with a growing number of groups of teenagers attempting to wreak havoc on downtown streets and along the lakefront as summer sets in.

By Kevin Gosztola

Few terrorism cases are lost by the government prosecutors in the United States, whether at the federal level or, in rare instances, at the state level. However, last week, a jury came to a verdict in the “NATO 3″ trial that acquitted three young men of all the terrorism charges they had faced.

It was a huge defeat for Illinois State’s Attorney of Cook County, Anita Alvarez, who angrily refused to admit the state had lost during a press conference after the verdict was announced.

Rather than react to the outcome in the trial by examining the decision by Alvarez to abuse her authority and bring this case as a terrorism case when there was no shred of evidence for such charges, the Chicago Tribune editorial board published a state-identified editorial on February 10 that was a fervent defense of all that Alvarez and other prosecutors did in this case. It stood in sharp contrast to an editorial from the Chicago Sun-Times, which stated, “The Chicago Police and State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez almost comically overreached.”

NATO 3 acquitted of terrorism charges; convicted of mob, arson charges

NATO 3 defense hails ‘huge victory’— prosecutor insists ‘this is not a defeat’

Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Betterly were the first in Chicago to be charged as terrorists under a state law that was created after the 9/11 attacks.

But like the crude Molotov cocktails the out-of-town activists allegedly constructed out of beer bottles, the serious charges — while explosive — ultimately never took flight.

A Cook County jury Friday acquitted Church, 22; Chase, 29, and Betterly, 25, of terrorism-related charges some critics dubbed overzealous and a political stunt to scare protesters in the wake of the international NATO summit.

Although the trio was convicted of two counts of misdemeanor mob action and two counts of possession of an incendiary device to commit arson, their attorneys were ecstatic that the most damning charges were dismissed.

“This is a huge, huge victory,” said Thomas Durkin, a lawyer for Chase.

Fear of “anarchists” or “black bloc” committing revolutionary violence or “terrorism” drove the mission of the two undercover officers that targeted the “NATO 3.”

During the summit, it was alleged by Kris Hermes of the National Lawyer Guild that police and the FBI went around to homes of known organizers. They swarmed these homes with squad cars. They showed pictures of people and were asking questions about the protests. In addition to what Hermes shares, there were other reports of real estate managers apparently being visited. They were being told this space was on a list of “suspected anarchist spaces,” as if it was a crime to be an “anarchist.” (But the officers maintain nobody was targeting “anarchists.”

The Chicago Police Department only found these three men through their political surveillance operation conducted under the pretext of figuring out where to allocate resources for manpower or personnel during the summit. They decided these men were probably “anarchists,” “Black Bloc,” “criminals,” or “terrorists” before they had ever committed any sort of crime. Prosecutors fabricated this case out of whatever they could find from the digital footprint they left on social media, said to undercover officers wearing wires, weapons (knives, sword, bow and arrow, throwing star, etc), which they legally possessed, and a large recycled wood sign that has screws sticking out of it and says, “Austerity Ain’t Gonna Happen,” with the “A” in “ain’t” drawn like an “anarchist symbol.” And, also, the car they were driving once breached the “geofence” around President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign headquarters so, instead of believing they were looking for parking to go to where Occupy Chicago was based, they decided this meant they were searching for “terrorist targets.”