A CNN investigation has revealed that some people who participated in an anti-brutality protest over the fatal police shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012 were known to the police.
More than 100 people from a group called the “Men’s Law Enforcement Leadership Initiative” met behind closed doors with the Sanford, Fla., police in April 2012 and discussed their interests and participation in demonstrations, conferences and other activist events.
“The common thread among the men is that they’re involved in law enforcement,” CNN’s Martin Savidge reported on “New Day.” “They went into law enforcement training, but also worked at schools as resource officers and sometimes even as school-based law enforcement officers,” Savidge said.
The centerpiece of the Men’s Law Enforcement Leadership Initiative is a website and a Facebook page that it links to. Savidge reported that it has been linked to a number of the activists who participated in the Trayvon Martin protest. Among them is Kim Foxx, the Illinois attorney general who denounced the “Gospel of Obama” and whose father was a Chicago police officer.
“This is a very serious story,” Savidge said. “The fact that these individuals are called ‘Men’s Leaders’ and have such a strong connection to law enforcement, that those men gathered in the Sanford police station to hold these discussions, that these officers could be influenced by this group of men. And they then participated in Occupy Wall Street and it influenced the decision to fight law enforcement there and then go on to various anti-police activism groups later in their careers.”
Savidge told viewers that he is still investigating the possible link between local law enforcement officials and the group.